Lesson 2 - Arms

Many of the concepts in making the arm are similar to the leg. As such this will be a brief overview on how to use the same features for it.

First with the joint tool create an arm. Forget the fingers for now. Start with the shoulder, move to the elbow then the wrist. Remember to add a slight bend. Name these joints.

Next we'll add an IK however this time it will be a 'Rotate-Plane Solver' type. Open the option box on the IK Handle tool and set it in the drop down.

Set the options to the ones above and add the IK from the shoulder to the wrist. Now, add a controller (A simple circle curve with suffice) and snap it to the wrist. Freeze and name it then orient constrain it to the wrist joint.

Here we'll begin adding fingers. First, create a controller (It can look like a hand or just a text curve). This is what we'll add the finger controls to. Add an attribute for each finger (Little, Ring, Middle, Index, Thumb) with minimum at -1 and max at 10.

Create a finger using the joint tool. Each joint here relates to a phalanx bone. Parent the first joint of the finger to the wrist joint by pressing 'P'.

  

  

Now add a SDK to control the curve of the finger. Load ALL the joints of the finger as the driven and the finger controller as the driver. Now select the attribute corresponding to the finger you're editing (In this case it's the Index Finger).

Key the attributes value to the side rotation, in this case it's Z. Once the min/max is keyed it should be able to clench.