Bones Tutorial      by Brett Fattori Part II   Adjusting the Joints Let's get started adjusting the joints. First, load the model that we finished up with in Part I. Next, orient the view so that you can see the shoulder joint pretty well. You don't need to see any of the other joints right now because we're not going to work with them yet. Now, left click on the Build Skeleton tool and you'll see the panel above. Using the navigate hierarchy tools, move down in the hierarchy to select the skeleton. Then use the right or left arrow keys to locate the shoulder joint that your looking at. When you have it, click on the button that is highlighted in the panel above -- Adjust Joints Directly. Right click on the custom joint tool to bring up the Add Joint panel pictured to the left. It will also bring up the Joint Attributes panel, but you can move that aside for now. We're going to be replacing the shoulder joint, which currently uses a 1D Rotation Joint, with a 2D Rotation Joint. As you can see, the joints that are available are suited for different purposes. A 1D Rotation Joint really isn't very useful in a shoulder or hip, so we use the 2D Rotation Joint instead. You'll notice that there is a 1D Rotation/Hinge Joint already in place. We want to make this a 2D Rotation/Spherical Joint instead. The way this is done is pretty simple. Click on the 2D Rotation Joint and the gizmo will disappear. Next, Click on the Adjust Joints Directly tool to deselect it. Finally, click the Adjust Joints Directly again and you'll see that there is now a 2D Spherical Joint in place of the old one. Pretty cool, huh? At this point, you can continue through the rest of the model putting the correct joints in their proper places. Shoulders, hips, and ankles should be 2D Spherical Joints. The knees and elbows should be 1D Hinge Joints. Don't worry about the orientation of the joints, or their limits yet. We'll get to that... Oh, and as for the neck, I'll show you a special way to get that 3D Spherical Joint later. © Copyright 1998, Brett Fattori    Next    Previous    Tutorials Index