Toolkit 2: Autodesk Maya: Jetpack Jones: Skinning (Part 1)

I started the skinning tutorials for Jetpack Jones.

Creating the locators

Snapping the locators to the grid, and putting them on a layer with a colour to make sure that they are more visible in the viewport.

Adding in a nurbs plane, rotating it in the X axis, and scaling it in the Z axis.

Deleting the lower locator, adding more patches to the nurbs plane, and then freezing the transformations and history on it before renaming it

Using the 'Rebuild Surface" function on the nurbs plane

Using the "nHair" function

Cleaning up the outliner by removing unnecessary components from the scene and renaming them

Creating joints and parenting them to the ribbon spine

Creating control joints, scaling them up, and adding them to a layer with colour to distinguish them from the other joints

Using the local scale function on the locator, duplicating it, and changing the names

Creating the upper, lower, and middle locator sets and then creating the additional offset locator in the middle group. 

Putting the control joints into the locator groups

Adding a point constrain to the locators

Creating aim constrains for the lower aim locator

Creating another point constrain on all of the aim up locators for rotation

Using the connection editor to connect the rotates in the X and Z axes.

Using the "Bind Skin" function to attach the nurbs plane to the joints

Using the component editor to adjust the way that the plane bends.

Cleaning up the outliner again and organising the objects in the scene into groups.

Creating a curve by selecting the isoparm option on the nurbs plane, selecting one of its edges, and duplicating the surface curve, before renaming the curve and snapping it to the centre of the spine.

Binding the curve to the joints in the same way that the nurbs plane was binded.

Repeating the process of editing the bend of the curve using the component editor.

Making Jetpack Jones' torso and legs visible again before placing the spine into the body.