Post 25 - Finger Controls

In order to complete the arm setup, the last thing which needed doing was to make the fingers controllable. At this stage they can be manipulated in the scene, but it would be better to establish a set of controls/sliders in the attributes panel. This process was achieved by taking the following steps below:

1) Firstly, I created a NURBS curve shape and parented this to the wrist (this will be the finger manipulator). I then created a series of custom attributes (same as the other manipulator configurations). An attribute was created to control each finger's curl (rotation on the Z axis), and one for each of the thumb's axis' (XYZ as humans have opposable thumbs and are more agile than fingers). A 'finger spread' attribute was also created in order to be able to animate the fingers spreading apart and coming together.

2) The next stage is similar to that of the connection editor, but with a twist. To create the control, the 'set driven key' panel is utilised. select the controller as the driver, and the finger's joints as the driven; then select the rotation axis / attribute you wish to animate with. Set an initial key (with all finger attributes set to zero). Then, move the slider to its highest value (10 for this instance). Rotate the finger joints to the desired amount (I found what works best is the first joint at 80 degrees and the second at 60) Set the second key. Repeat this process for each finger.

Set Driven Key panel

What you will now have is a controller, which when selected brings up a series of sliders that can be used to control the fingers. These can be altered at a later date and even additional rational and translation values may be effected. The limits are near to none and driven keys can be used not just with joints but on any object/s which require some sort of relationship within the 3d space. The 3ds Max equivalent is the wire parameters and the use of MaxScript to create custom attributes. I am not a fan of streams of code and would much prefer this system. I find this methods much more straight forward and I like the idea that this same technique can be used to drive other items. The clip below demonstrates this process.


Finger control set up clip - LINK