Introduction to Character Rigging in 3ds Max

In this lesson, we'll set up our finger controls. There are several ways we can rig the fingers. We can set up individual controls for each section or we can establish custom parameters to control each part of our finger. Or another approach is to create root controls that we can rotate and then establish custom parameters to control the other parts of the finger. That's the approach we're going to take. We'll create root controls that we can rotate. Then for the other parts of the finger, we'll go ahead and create custom parameters. So let's say we're go ahead and get started with this. We'll head over to our side view and under our Create panel, we'll create an ngon. Let's say we head over to the Modify panel and decrease its sides to amount of four so we have this diamond shape. From here, going back to the perspective, what I'll go ahead and do is Alt-A align this to our left index in orientation and position. So now that the orientation is matched, it's going to be easy for us to go ahead and connect this bone right into this control. From here, what I'd like to do is go ahead and convert this to an editable spline. We'll select our Spline shape and go ahead and rotate this 90 degrees with angle snap to make it easier to select. And then from there, coming out of that spline sub-object, I'll go ahead and scale this down and head over to the Hierarchy panel so we can move its shape up, again, so it's easy to select. So as we start to rotate this, it's going to be very easy for the animator to go in and start to rotate this finger. So our next step is going to be to go ahead and recolor this, rename it-- it's going to be cc_L_index01. And then from here, we can go ahead and just clone it. We can rename the clone-- this is going to be for the pinkie and Alt-A align it to our pinkie bone. Let's clone it again and this will be for our thumb. So again, we Alt-A align to the thumb bone. So now that these are in place, what we're going to go ahead and do is set up our orientation constraint between our roots and these controls. So selecting index, go ahead and choose orientation constrain and tie that into its control. And here's what we get. No shifting has occurred-- that's great-- and we're controlling our finger. Let's say we take care of the pinkie. Again, select the bone, orientation constrain to its control. We'll go ahead and take care of the thumb. We want to select the bone first. It'd be kind of weird to orientation constrain the control to the bone. Be a little confusing, wouldn't it? So now that our controls are established, let's go ahead and select all of these and link them to our hand bone. And I'll show you why we wouldn't want to necessarily link to our arm control. With that selected, as we start to move that arm control around, you'll notice that those finger controls will not separate from our arm chain even though our arm control is separating. So it's just a way of keeping them stuck there. So the next step would be to go ahead and select all of these and freeze their transformations after we've linked. Let's say we take one of these, one for the index, we'll clone that and bring this over to the right side. So we'll just rename it and Alt-A align this to our right index finger. Once that's done, we'll go ahead and clone it. Rename the clone, just as we've done before-- this will be for the pinkie and align it to its bone. Let's go ahead and clone it again so we can create a control for the thumb. So from here, we'll go ahead and select each of these and recolor them. Now that they are in place, we can go ahead and set up our orientation constraints and then go ahead and rotate these around to test it out. And then from there, we'd want to take all of these, link them to the right hand, and then freeze their transformations. Let's say from here, we select all of these controls, store them in their control objects layer, and now for our last task, we can worry about locking their tracks. So again, we just want to rotate this. We don't need any scale nor do we need to move it. So we'll go ahead and lock down position and scale. Not rotation-- position and scale. So that finishes up the left side, and we can go ahead and finish up the right. And we'll close out the lesson. And then by the next lesson, we'll go ahead and finish up the fingers. What we have left to do is establish custom parameters to control the rest of them, unless you just wanted to animate the roots. Then go right ahead. It's your rig. So we'll lock the position and scale. So that should be it for the fingers. Again, with that done, that finishes this lesson. And in the next lesson, we will finish our finger controls.