Research & Development for 3D & the Web

To add an attribute such as an extra rotate or a fold you can use the Modify > Add Attribute Tool. Simply select the object you wish to add it to and then give it a name and if required some bounds..

A good example for this is when you want to make a hand and have fingers which close into a fist.. You can add in each finger.

It’s also very useful to make a shelf button (or else you keep running the mel script) “select -hi;” This selects the entire heirarchy so you can rotate the entire joint tree at once (IE close up a fist).

To then go ahead and use the hierarchy button to attach the joint chains to the attributes you have added, you can use Animate > Set Driven Key.

Click on the control (so in the case of a hand, the wrist control) and set it as your ‘driver’. You then select the top of the finger chain and click your select heirarchy script followed by ‘set driven’.

You can then select all of the joints in the window and the rotation axis you wish to rotate them on to and click ‘key’. This will key them at 0. You then want to go and select the wrist control again, set the attribute to the maximum value you set and then re-key after rotating the fingers in to their max position.

Now when you slide/adjust the attribute variable when you are using the wrist controller, you can animate/key the fingers.