Hi.

I am using Maya 8.5 on a friends computer, which happens to be a Mac. I normally use a PC. Here's the stats.

iMac
Model Identifier: iMac8,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Memory: 4 GB

I have a humanoid robot character I have created. I also built a skeleton for it. Most of the robotic parts I have merely parented to the respective skeletal joints so that the rigging moves the figure in accordance with the mechanical joints. This works great. Well and good. The fingers of the robot are flexible like flesh fingers, so I have bound them with a smooth bind to the fingers of the skeleton. Here's where the problem begins.

Once they are bound to the skeletal finger joints with a smooth bind, as long as I keep the finger meshes un-grouped in any way with the rest of the mesh or the skeleton, they move with the rest of the rigged robot through the poses as they should and also smoothly bend with the finger rigging. This even though they appear unselected (not green).
If I try to group them in any way to the joints or any other part of the rigged robot, they don't transform with the rest of the rigging properly. If I rotate the elbow, the whole arm moves, but the fingers move with a separate transform and disengage from the hand.

So, I keep them un-grouped and the figure works fine.

However, If I try to duplicate this rigged robot, the fingers being un-selected don't duplicate with the rest of the figure. If I select them as well, they will duplicate with the whole rigged robot. However, the duplicated fingers no longer share the transform attributes with the duped rigged robot and no longer move with the poses as they should -- as the original robot's fingers do. Likewise, If I first group these fingers to the finger joints and then duplicate, I get the same problems with the copied rigged robotic figure. I

I need to be able to copy this figure to use in the scene I created for him. I also need multiple copies of him in different poses, so I need to be able to duplicate him. Does anyone know how to fix this problem I am having?

Is this a problem where a skeleton is only partly bound to a mesh and partly parented? Is it a Mac problem? Is there some step I've missed?

Any help would be most welcome.

T