Rigging Suspenders in Maya - Character Setup

Subject: Re: is there an easy way to set up suspenders?
Date: Tue, 06 Jan 2004 09:08:24 -0500
From: Joe Spadaro <joe@spadaro.net>
Reply-To: maya@highend3d.com
Organization: Shiny Red Guitar Studios
To: maya@highend3d.com

Andre,
Yes there is an easy way to set up suspenders.

1. Create profile curves (ovals should work well) for your
suspenders. Then place these curves where you want them. Start
at the pants, and place them up the torso and over the shoulders.

2. Find a way to hold your profile curves in place. Your methods
depend on the way your character is modeled and can even vary
for different parts of your rig. I will mention a few.

A. Parent beneath a bone
B. Bind
C. Constrain to body/shirt surface (NOT A SURFACE
CONSTRAINT -- but one of many popular alliterative methods
for point on surface constraining) If the surface is NURBS
try creating a curve on surface and use AttachToMotionPath
with only one keyframe to attach your profile curve. This
method is very stable. There are a few more popular methods.
D. Wrap with body/shirt surface (less efficient but quick
and dirty to set up)

3. Select your profile curves in order and from the modeling
menu choose Surfaces->Loft.

Note: Keep your history and your new lofted surface will follow
and stretch with the profile curves. It is best to have them
evenly spaced or you could get unpredictable results. All
history driven surfaces should be kept in a non transformed
history group high in your model hierarchy or the
inheritTransforms Attribute should be switched off above this
level to avoid double transformations.

Alternatives: If your suspenders are detailed modeled geometry
you can create clusters and use a similar technique to animate
your clusters to achieve a similar effect. -- or -- you could
use a suspender shaped curve as an influence object to drive
your geo. The Influence object method would be less efficient,
but the clusters would be quite speedy.

Good Luck

Joe Spadaro
Shiny Red Guitar Studios

>----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>Date: Sun, 04 Jan 2004 15:41:25 -0500
>Subject: is there an easy way to set up suspenders?
>From: Andre Stuppert <astuppert@mimweb.com>
>
>Hi, I was wondering if there is an easy way to set up suspenders - with
>stretchiness and all? Any pointers are greatly appreciated.
>
>Cheers,
>Andre
>

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