Before I could fully start adding controls to my Maya model, I had to do some quick fixes with the wrist joint as it wasn't properly aligned yet.
I had to select the joint and go into 'Orient Joint Settings' and made sure it's primary axis was 'X'. Though this was easy enough to follow, it did slightly confuse me because my wrist joint looked as if it didn't even need re-orienting, as it was already horizontal to the x axis. I did it however, just in case I could have missed something!
Instead of doing this all again for the other side of my model, instead I deleted the right arm and them re-mirrored the left, so that both sides would have the exact same conclusive co-ordinates and orientations.
Next it was time to fix the orient of the controls and somewhere between doing my quick fixes, I ended up with my model looking like this! I had no idea how I had done it, and every time I tried to undo my steps, the skeleton still went all out of shape, so I had to start over and try and avoid selecting the wrong joints.
HOWEVER after much perseverance, I ended up changing the orient of all my joints and controls with much ease and without distorting my model. Therefore all my controls had the same orientation as the joints so could work in sync.
So the next thing I did was make a hierarchy of the joints (hand connecting to the elbow, elbow to the shoulder, shoulder to the clavicle etc...). To do this, I selected the child group and parent controller and selected 'P' to parent them. This wis a very clever tool, because one you start rotating a joint, it rotates it's child joints also, which makes the model look like it is really coming together!
A problem I did encounter, was that when it was time to parenting the hips, I had accidentally previously parented the hip controller to the root joint, so when I went to orient it, the bottom half of my model flipped vertically. To solve this, I thought about what I could do before starting the whole control process again because I thought I had really messed my model up. But instead I just made another null group and repaired the controller to the hip joint. However because the controller was already paired, I had to UN-parent it, and then re-parent it to the correct joint, and then parent it again back to the root controller and it ended up working great and I didn't have to start from the very beginning!
Then I ran into another major issue. I could not create 'Pole Vectors' for my leg IK handles and knee locators! Nothing would happen and I kept getting this error message 'Handle must be valid and use rotate plane solver', which I obviously had no idea what it meant. So after a quick search into Google, I found this video:
Though the video isn't even in English, I followed what the instructor was doing and was able to fix this issue and allow my knees to bend properly!
I created a 'Rotate-Plane Solver' which is under the IK Handle tool settings, and connecting it from the top of the leg to the knee.
From here, I parented this new IKHandle into the corresponding foot group, and then held shift and selected the correct knee locator and was finally able to make a pole vector!
And as you can see, once I translate the knee locator to the left and right, the knee bends with it, and therefore I think this solution has been a success. Now all I have left to do is the binding, and I will be able to get creating my own character!
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