Problems I Had Whilst Rigging

A lot of the problems I had whilst rigging were mostly due to me making careless mistakes I made. I think the key to creating a good and problem free rig is to take things slowly and work in a very methodical way.

The importance of naming conventions is a really vital thing to remember, this can often cause problems in maya. Whilst rigging I had a problem with creating the joint for the centre of gravity and I realised it was because I had forgotten to name things properly. This is also important when exporting to put into a game engine, if things are named incorrectly or joints share names then there will be problems.

Another thing I had problems with was connecting IK handles and NURBS circles for the controllers. I had a lot of problems to begin with and my leg wouldn't move once I had connected the hip and ankle with an IK handle and used a NURBS circle to control it. I realised it was because I wasn't selecting the actual handle and was selecting the joint by accident. It's very easy to get confused when trying to select the IK handle, it's very fiddly and small.

Another problem I had was with pole vectors. I created my pole vector correctly, but because I didn't fully understand what it was for or that you had to move it to control the knee as well as moving the leg from the foot, the leg looked like it was twisting in on itself. Once I understood pole vectors and the knee controller I realised that actually there wasn't a problem at all I just wasn't moving the knee controller properly.

Taking your time to make sure you're doing everything correctly may seem like it's taking a lot longer but actually it saves time in the long run because it saves you from having to correct errors. Most problems I encountered could have been solved by taking my time and being more careful.