Creating More Selectable Rig Controls in Maya

Jarred Love Shows How You Can Create Rig Controls Using a Deformable Curve

Rigging Artist and Technical Animator, Jarred Love covers creating what he calls “dependent shapes.” a method he uses for deforming control points on a NURBS curve. The technique supplies you with a more dynamic system for rig controls, rather than a static one.

“In this video, I briefly describe what I mean by “dependent shape” and then provide a few examples of where you might want to use them for various control curves in a rig” Jarred says. The tutorial covers using Maya’s Matrix Nodes to drive the control points of the curve, working much the way that a parent constraint would. One example that Jarred uses is creating rig controls for pole vectors.

In the end, you will have controls that that will be ultimately easier to select in all situations.