Identifying the skeleton type

00:04

Here, we have our creature model.

00:06

And as you can see, I've adjusted the pose slightly so that when his arms are lowered,

00:10

he will be in a more relaxed pose.

00:14

We also have the topology updates too.

00:16

So he's pretty much ready to start working with,

00:19

with that said,

00:20

there may be areas on the model where we need to add in the extra edge loop or two

00:25

to help with the defamation.

00:27

But we will come to those as we work our way around

00:30

before we create our first joint.

00:32

Let's take a moment to think about the sort of skeleton we want,

00:36

we know this is going to be a game model and that comes with its own set of rules.

00:41

We also know that this will eventually be used in the Unreal game engine.

00:45

So what I've done is export the default Mannequin from Unreal.

00:49

So we can take a look at that and use it as a guide.

00:53

Now, you don't necessarily need to follow it exactly.

00:56

But sometimes it makes things easier if you intend on using existing animations.

00:60

For example,

01:02

you can quite happily ignore the joint names and

01:04

orientations and use your own setup if you prefer,

01:07

which is what I usually do.

01:10

So here he is

01:12

and we can see his skeleton here.

01:14

So this is pretty much how we want our creature's skeleton to be.

01:18

It has all the main joints we need. So the engine can use it without any issues.

01:24

We will use roughly the same joint count.

01:26

Although I do like to add a few extra joints in

01:28

to help with defamation and make the character more flexible.

01:32

We will also use the same names

01:35

where we will stray from. This skeleton is with the joint orientations.

01:40

As you can see,

01:41

the unreal mannequin uses X as its primary axis which points to the next joint.

01:48

What we are going to do is use Y instead.

01:50

And there are a couple of reasons behind this choice.

01:53

Firstly, when it comes to moving around in Maya,

01:56

X and Z are seen more as the positional axes,

01:60

whereas Y refers more to height.

02:03

So it makes sense to replicate this in our rig.

02:07

The second reason is that there has been research done on this subject

02:10

and why was found to have fewer issues when exported to unreal,

02:15

particularly with Eula flipping.

02:17

This is when joints have a wide range of movement and the rotations

02:21

go above 360 or below minus 360 which can cause them to flip.

02:28

You can sometimes correct these using May's Eula filter found in the graph editor.

02:34

So this is the skeleton

02:37

and we also have twist joints which will help when we

02:40

come to rig the upper and lower arms and the legs.

02:45

OK. Let's hide the parts of the model we don't need. So the clothing mainly,

03:00

oh, we need to keep the head

03:04

and let's turn off the texture

03:07

and let's use default lighting.

03:09

Let's also hide the floor playing for. Now,

03:12

we also need to see the wire frame as that will help guide joint placement.

03:19

Let's open the create joint tool options.

03:29

So as mentioned, we do need Y to be the primary axis. So let's set this to Y

03:35

and change secondary axis world orientation to Z because

03:39

we want our Z axis to point forwards.

03:42

Now these can easily be changed.

03:44

So it's not essential, you set these here, but it could save a bit of time.

03:49

Let's also enable projected centering.

03:52

So may can help place each joint in the middle of the model.

03:57

Let's move the outliner

04:00

and hide the mannequin.