Video Game Production Techniques - Manual Rigging: Foundations

Throughout this unit, I have been introduced to the basics of rigging a skeleton within a character in Maya, and was tasked with drawing out a skeleton using the joint tool, taking into account all of the required naming conventions and parenting procedures.

I began from the spin, and built one leg, then built upward from the root point of the spine up toward the neck and head, from here I branched a new joint string out to the shoulder, to the elbow, wrist, into the hand and down to the tip of the first finger. Once finished with the basic outline I selected the hip bone and shoulder bone, allowing for all child joints of each to be selected and modified.
With these joints selected I mirrored the joints so that I had two identical legs, and arms all the way to the fingertips.

I have included a capture of my outliner to give a rough idea of my naming conventions and parenting scheme.

This has provided me with the basic foundations to go from, from here I can apply IK handles and manipulators of different types to gain control of joints using advanced methods, I can also apply other manual methods to rig a character using control constraints, which are otherwise more commonly applied through scripting, allowing me to select an external control point, for smoother control as opposed to selecting by single joints. Also, when bound to the skin, this skeleton, whether transformed into a full scale rig or not, will ultimately let me animate a character.