Character Modelling Part 6: Controllers and Locators

In this blog post, I will talk about adding in controls on my model and I will also talk about the locators on my knees and elbows to explain why they are necessary.

Controlling the character

Whenever an IK chain is added to a arm or a leg, moving it becomes a problem because it'll move up, down, left, or right but the axis point will change. Adding in a control will help to keep everything in place and constrain the IK to the controller. Below is a GIF of the different controls I have made for my character.

As you can see on my model, I have added controls on my hands, fingers, feet, neck, hip, and a master controller. The hand controllers helps to move the hand around with ease. The feet controllers are almost the same as my hand controllers but both have attributes for my reverse footlocks to move the toe and heel. The neck and hip controllers simply move the model left or right. You'll notice a small circle next to the hands; this is the finger controller which I'll now explain.

Finger Controllers

When rigging fingers on the hands, I found it is a good idea to have the controller for the fingers on a separate controller. I added in attributes for the finger controller to move all the fingers on that hand when shifting the value up or down on each corresponding finger. Below is a GIF showing the index finger moving up and down.

The attributes I made for these fingers to move up and down are maximum 5 and minimum -5. I had placed four joints in the finger, corresponding with where they should bend at. I had to also weight each finger so that when a finger moved up and down, it would not move the tip on the next finger along, but move the knuckle part like a real hand should.

Locators

In order to make sure that when an arm or a leg bends it stays in proportion, a locator is needed to tell the middle joint to follow that part. Below are the locators on my model highlighted and why they are necessary.

When adding locators to an arm and leg, it helps them to keep the elbow or knee joints focus on that area so that they don't flip over themselves when moving the arm in or out, and the leg up or down.