Now we need to add controls to the Triple Arm setup.
First let's make a nurbs control cube.
1. Create>Nurbs Primitive>Cylinder and draw a cylinder on the ground plane
2. In the channel box click the "makeNurbCylinder" options and change the followingshouIK
Degree: Linear
Sections: 4
3. In the channel box change Rotate Y to 45
4. In the outliner delete the bottomCap and topCap from the nurbsCylinder object
5. In the attribute editor go to Object Display>Drawing Overrides and check the box "Enable Overrides"
then UNcheck the box "shading"
6. Modify>Freeze Transformations and Delete History on the object Edit>DeleteByType>history
Now you have a great Nurbs Cube to use as a controller, save this file so you don't have to recreate it again.
1. Copy the cube and name the duplicate shoulder_ctrl_L and snap it to the origin.
2. Select the cube and group it (ctrl+g) and name the group shoulder_ctrl_L_pos
3. Now move and snap (v) the shoulder_ctrl_L_pos group to your shoulder_L joint
Parent shoulder_ctrl_L_pos to the shoulder_L joint
4. On shoulder_ctrl_L_pos Set the rotate values to 0 in the channel box.
5. Now you can shape the shoulder_ctrl_L box to fit the arm.
6. Now unparent shoulder_ctrl_L_pos (shift + p)
7. freeze transforms on shoulder_ctrl_L.
8. Now you have a Control perfectly aligned with the bone with Zero translations and Zero Rotations.
9. Select shoulder_ctrl_L and shoulder_FK_L and constrain>parent
(Repeat this process for the elbow joint.)
Now let's make the hand controller that will orient the hand and an IK controller for moving the wrist with the IK arm.
1. Duplicate the original cube and name it hand_ctrl_L.
Repeat steps 2 thru 5 from above aligning the hand_ctrl_L to the wrist_L joint
2. select wrist_L joint then hand_ctrl_L and constrain:point (This will cause the hand_Ctrl_L to move with the wrist joint)
3. select hand_ctrl_L then wrist_L joint and constrain:orient (This will cause the wrist joint to follow the orientation of the hand_Ctrl)
4. Duplicate the original cube and name it IKhand_ctrl_L.
5. Do not orient this control just leave it with it's default orientation.
6. Snap it to the wrist joint and freeze transformations.
7. select IKhand_ctrl_L then arm_ikHandle_L and constrain: point
Finally for all these controls we need to lock and hide all attributes that the animators won't be using. Do this by selecting the channels you want in the channel box right-click and select lock and hide selected.
