Maya 6 for Windows and Macintosh: Visual QuickStart Guide

Chapter 11. Parenting and Binding to a Skeleton

Once you’ve created a skeleton, you need to either parent or bind the surfaces to the joints in order for the surfaces to move with the skeleton. Anything that doesn’t need to bend, like a hat, glasses, or eyeballs, can be parented to the joints. Anything that does need to bend, like an arm, leg, or torso, must be bound to the skeleton (Figure 11.1).

Figure 11.1. For the leg to bend at the knee, it needs to be bound to a skeleton.

Parenting to joints works much like parenting to anything else. The bone is the parent, and the surface is the child, so the surface rotates and moves when the bone is rotated. ...