Creating Character Hierarchy Setups from a Guide

In addition to rigs, you can create a variety of typical character hierarchy setups from any proportional guide — biped, biped dog leg, or quadruped. These skeleton hierarchies are similar to the shadow rigs that you can create when you create a rig, as described in Creating Shadow Rigs.

TipThe hierarchy setup rigs have a synoptic view, similar to what's available for the basic rig. Select any part of the rig and press F3 to open its synoptic page.

A	The biped guide.
B	A box hierarchy created from the guide.

To create setups from a guide

Set up and select any proportioning guide (see Setting Up the Biped Guides).
Choose Create Character Hierarchy from Guide from the Animate toolbar.

TipTo load predefined hierarchy setups based on default guide values, choose Get Primitive Model Biped - Box, Biped - SI|3D Skeleton, or Biped - Skeleton from any toolbar.
In the dialog box that appears, select the Type of hierarchy you want to create:
- Made of nulls (a null is created at the root of each chain)
- Made of boxes (as shown previously)
- A simple SOFTIMAGE|3D-style skeleton (effectors are children of the last bone)
- A simple XSI-style skeleton (effectors are children of the chain root)
Set the number of Lumbar Divisions, which is the number of bones/nulls/boxes that make up the spine.
Click OK and the skeleton hierarchy is created.