Skeletons: The Hand

For another foray into a skeletal system, you can give yourself a hand—literally. You’ll use a skeleton to deform the geometry and animate it as a hand would move.

cd.eps

Load the file poly_hand_skeleton_v01.ma from the Poly_Hand_Anim project on the CD. The hand is shown in Figure 9-25.

You’ll use it to create a bone structure to make the hand animate. This is called rigging.

Figure 9-25: The hand mesh

f0925.tif

Rigging the Hand

To create the first bones of the hand, follow these steps:

1. Maximize the Top view window. Switch to the Animation ...

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