joint orientation question

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# 1 20-02-2016 , 04:45 PM

Registered User
Join Date: Nov 2012

Posts: 107

I'm jointing a skeleton and trying to reset the transforms with a mel or just in component mode and I'm confused. Are all the rotations in the attribute editor supposed to be positive, in all directions or when you rotate back in the negative are they supposed to be positive as well (in all joints)?

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Last edited by cj74; 20-02-2016 at 06:26 PM.

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# 2 21-02-2016 , 09:19 PM

Technical Director
Join Date: Feb 2004

Posts: 2,988

Hi cj,

It is completely legal to let joints have positive and negative rotation values. For example, I usually set up a spine such that positive rotate x curls the spine forwards (so that the character's head is now looking towards their navel), and negative rotate x curls the spine backwards, (so that the character's head is now looking to the sky)

The reason why I do this is that when an animator is looking at the fcurves in the curve editor, they can easily see when the joint is at default (0), bent forward (>0), or bent backwards (<0). Having 0 as the default position also allows an animator to reset the character to default simply by zeroing out all values.

Take a look at this document for more information. It also covers another important topic: rotation orders. https://www.riggingdojo.com/2014/10/0...-orient-wrong/

You can also take a look at this tutorial for a more concrete example: https://www.3dtotal.com/tutorial/82-h...ean-hewitt-lra

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Last edited by NextDesign; 21-02-2016 at 09:22 PM.

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# 3 23-02-2016 , 01:52 AM

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Join Date: Nov 2012

Posts: 107

Thank you Nextdesign. I was thinking it made more sense (at least in my case) to have neg numbers. When I get back to the character, I'll watch those links, thanks again.

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