Modelling & Rigging a Cartoon Parrot in Maya: Part 10

1. Preparation for Skinning

Step 1

Open the parrot file in Maya which was saved in the previous part of the tutorial.    

Step 2

Being in the perspective viewport, go to Shading > X-Ray Joints and check on its option box.

Step 3

Go to Window > Outliner command.

Step 4

In the Outliner window, select all joints hierarchy.

Step 5

Deselect all left side’s feathers joints.

Deselect the right side’s feathers joints also. 

Deselect the feathers of the head.

And deselect the feathers of the tail.

Step 6

Select joints, body and legs poly meshes excluding all feathers poly meshes.

2. Applying Smooth Bind Command

Step 1

With joints and poly meshes selected, go to Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind and click on its option box.

Step 2

In the Smooth Bind Options window, set Bind to as Selected joints, Normalize Weights as Interactive, Max influences as 4. Turn off Maintain max influences option. Click on Bind Skin button.

Step 3

With R_bn_feather_Three_c01 and its nearest three feathers poly meshes selected, go to Skin > Bind Skin > Smooth Bind command.

Step 4

Following the same way, keep selecting and binding feathers with their respecting joints and so on.

Step 5

In this way, the right side’s feathers’ binding has been completed. 

Step 6

Following the same way, bind the left side’s feathers with their respective joints. 

Step 7

In the same way, I did skinning of the tail’s feathers. 

Step 8

Following the same way, complete the skinning of head’s feathers also. 

Step 8

With R_bn_Shoulder_Root01 and L_bn_Shoulder_Root01 joints selected, select rotate tool and rotate them in Y direction. You will see, the feathers follow the rotation of the joints.

3. Creating Box Control Curves

Step 1

Create a poly box mesh on the perspective viewport’s grid.

Step 2

Go to Create > CV Curve Tool and click on its option box.

Step 3

In the CV Curve Tool settings window, turn on Curve degree 1 Linear radio button.

Step 4

Enable Point Snap button on status buttons bar panel.

Step 5

With all corner vertices of the poly box selected, press Enter key to finish the command.

Step 6

Delete the poly box. Now, you will see only the box shape curve for control curve.

Step 7

For creating custom shelf, click on Custom tab.  

Step 8

Click on the Script Editor icon in the lower right corner of the window to open the Script Editor window.

Step 9

In the Script Editor window, select curve -d 1 -p -7.419313............. script text line as shown in the following image.

Step 10

With the script selected, press and drag middle mouse button and drop it inside the blank custom shelf bar. When asked to choose either MEL or Python option, select MEL. 

Step 11

After placing the MEL script, click on the corner arrow button and select Shelf Editor command.

Step 12

In the Shelf Editor window, write BoxCurve in Tooltip text box and BCC in Icon Label text box. Click on Save All Shelves button.

Step 13

With Shift and Ctrl keys pressed, go to Modify > Freeze Transformations and Center Pivot to add these two in shelf panel bar.

Step 14

Following the same way, add Delete History command in the shelf menu. 

4. Creating Primary Control Curve

Step 1

Click on BCC shelf button for creating a box curve as shown in the image.

Step 2

With the box curve selected, click on Center Pivot (CP) shelf button to keep the pivot in the center of the box curve.

Step 3

Jump in the front view. With the box curve selected, click on Point Snap button on the status bar. With the middle mouse button pressed, drag it onto R_bn_Shoulder_Root01 joint to snap.

Step 4

Press F9 button for Control Vertices selection. Select the vertices of the box curve control and scale down as shown in the image. 

Step 5

The box control curve should be out of the parrot body mesh. So, unhide the parrot body mesh and place the box curve control as shown in the following image.  

Step 6

Following the same way, create another box curve with centered pivot. Place it on R_bn_Elbow_Root01 joint by using snap tool.

Step 7

Press F9 key and then put it outside of the mesh.

Step 8

Make a duplicate control curve of it and snap it with R_bn_Wrist_Root01 joint as shown in the following image.

Step 9

In this way, you have created all primary control curves for the right wing. 

Step 10

Rename these control curves as R_CtrlC_Wing_a01, R_CtrlC_Wing_b01 and R_CtrlC_Wing_c01.

5. Creating Driver Locators

Step 1

Go to Create > Locator command.

Step 2

Snap the locator with R_bn_Shoulder_Root01.

Step 3

Create two more locators and snap these with R_bn_Elbow_Root01 and R_bn_Wrist_Root01 joints. Rename these locators as R_locDriv_Wing_a01, R_locDriv_Wing_b01 and R_locDriv_Wing_c01 respectively. 

Step 4

With all locators selected, go to the Channel Editor and type 0 in the Visibility text box. Press Enter key to hide the selected locators.

6. Creating Orient Locators

Step 1

Go to Create > Locator command.

Step 2

Following the same way, create locators and snap them with the respective joints. Rename the locators as R_Loc_Orient_Wing_a01, R_Loc_Orient_Wing_b01 and R_Loc_Orient_Wing_c01 respectively.

7. Applying Constraints

Step 1

First select R_Loc_Orient_Wing_a01 and then select bn_Hip_Root01 and bn_Tail_a01. Go to Constraint > Orient and click on its option box.

Step 2

In the Orient Constraint Options setting window, check on Maintain offset box and click on Add button to apply the orient command. 

Step 3

Following the same way, select R_Loc_Orient_Wing_b01 and R_bn_Elbow_Root01 and then apply Orient constraint. With R_Loc_Orient_Wing_c01 and R_bn_Wrist_Root01 selected, apply Orient constraint.

8. Parenting Control Curves

Step 1

First select R_Loc_Orient_Wing_a01 and then select R_CtrlC_Wing_a01. Press P key to make R_Loc_Orient_Wing_b01 as parent. Following the same way, parent R_CtrlC_Wing_b01 with  R_Loc_Orient_Wing_b01 and R_Loc_Orient_Wing_c01 with R_Loc_Orient_Wing_a01.

Step 2

For testing the orientation and parenting controls, unhide the parrot body mesh. Rotate R_CtrlC_Wing_a01 and check the orientation.   

9. Duplicating Controls For left Side

Step 1

With R_CtrlC_Wing_a01 selected, go to Edit > Duplicate command to make a copy of the selected control curve.

Step 2

Rename it as L_CtrlC_Wing_a01 and snap it with L_bn_Shoulder_Root01.

Step 3

With L_CtrlC_Wing_a01 selected, click on FT and Hist buttons in shelf menu bar to freeze the transformation. After that, delete the history.

Step 4

In this way, you have duplicated the required controls curves and snapped with root joints and locators.

Step 5

After completing the left side feathers, you can check its deformation.

10. Creating Auxiliary Controls

Step 1

For creating auxiliary control curves, first click on BCC button and then click on CP and Hist buttons for center pivot and delete history. In the vertex selection mode, scale down the control curve.

Step 2

Make three more duplicated box curves and then snap each of them with its corresponding shoulder joints. 

Step 3

With three indicated control curves selected, press Ctrl-D keys to make duplicate copies of the control curves. 

Step 4

Make another copy of the curve for each big feather control.

Step 5

Create ten box curves for every big feather. With all auxiliary control curves selected, click on FT and Hist shelf buttons. 

Step 6

Rename these curves as R_CtrlC_Shoulder_a01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_b01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_c01, R_CtrlC_Shoulder_d01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_a01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_b01, R_CtrlC_Elbow_c01, R_CtrlC_Wrist_a01, R_CtrlC_Wrist_b01, and R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01.

Step 7

Following the same way, create and rename the left side’s auxiliary control curves also.

11. Creating Locators For Auxiliary Controls

Step 1

For creating locators for auxiliary controls, go to Create > Locator command.

Step 2

With Locator tool selected, press and hold V key and click on R_bn_Shoulder_a01 joint to create the locator. Snap it with R_bn_Shoulder_a01 joint.

Step 3

Make three duplicate copies of the locator and snap each with R_bn_Shoulder_b01, R_bn_Shoulder_c01, and R_bn_Shoulder_d01 joints respectively.

Step 4

In this way, you have created locators for all auxiliary control curves.

Step 5

Rename the shoulder’s locators as R_LocOrient_Shoulder_a01, R_LocOrient_Shoulder_b01, R_LocOrient_Shoulder_c01 and R_LocOrient_Shoulder_d01. 

Step 6

Rename the elbow’s locaters as R_LocOrient_Elbow_a01, R_LocOrient_Elbow_b01 and R_LocOrient_Elbow_c01.

Step 7

Rename the wrist’s locators as R_LocOrient_Wrist_a01, R_LocOrient_Wrist_b01 and R_LocOrient_Wrist_c01.

12. Applying Orient Constraint

Step 1

With R_LocOrient_Shoulder_a01 locator and R_bn_Shoulder_a01 joint selected, go to Constrain > Orient command.

Step 2

In this way, you have applied orient constrain to all locators and joints respectively. It’s time to parenting the auxiliary control curves with locaters. So, first select R_LocOrient_Wrist_c01 locator and then select R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01 curve. Press P key to make the last selected object as the parent.

Step 3

Follow the same procedure for all locators and curves.

Step 4

For parenting the curves, first select R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01 and then select R_CtrlC_Wrist_b01 curve. Press P key.

Step 5

Keep doing parenting towards the direction of R_CtrlC_Wing_a01 curve control. At last, select R_CtrlC_Shoulder_a01 and then select R_CtrlC_Wing_a01 and press P key.

13. Testing Completed Auxiliary Controls

Step 1

Select all auxiliary controls (R_CtrlC_Wrist_c01, R_CtrlC_Wrist_b01................. R_CtrlC_Wing_a01) one by one. 

Step 2

Select Rotate tool and rotate it in Y axis. You can see the result as shown in the following image.

Check the rotation with different angles too.

Step 3

Following the same way, complete the auxiliary controls for the left side feathers also.

This completes the making of feathers rigging controls.

Conclusion

In the next part of the tutorial, I will show you how to do the skinning of the rest of the parrot's body parts.