Changing the Bone's Axis Alignment for Mocap Data

When you create a chain in Softimage, its X axis is aligned along the bone by default — that is, in the direction of the next joint (or if it is the last bone, the effector). However, you can change this so that the bone's Y or Z axis is used instead. You can also offset any axis by any value for a more arbitrary alignment.

When you're importing motion capture data on a skeleton, the bone's Y axis is often the one that is aligned instead of X. To fix this, after importing the mocap skeleton into Softimage, you change its bone axis alignment to be X instead of Y so that it matches the skeleton in Softimage.

A	Default axis (X) of bones in chain. You can also click the X Axis button to do this.
B	Axis set to Y for bones in chain. Click the Y Axis button to do this.
C	Axis set to an arbitrary position by entering values for each axis' slider.

To change the bone's axis alignment

Select one or more bones and open the Chain Bone property editor.
In the Bone Axis Offset group, do either of the following:
- Click the appropriate Set Axis button to quickly set the X, Y, or Z axis as the axis for alignment.
  
  or
- Set any value for the X/Y/Z sliders to offset the bone's axis alignment by an arbitrary value.