Creating a skeleton hierarchy

So far you have created five separate joint chains: one for the spine, and one for each arm and each leg. You need to create a single hierarchy from the five joint chains so you can move all of them as a single unit. To create the single hierarchy, you parent the arms and legs to the nearest joint in the spine.

To parent the arm and leg joint chains to the spine

1. In the Hypergraph, -drag left_arm_root to upper_back.

   When you parent one joint to another, Maya creates a bone that connects the parent to the child. In this case, the bone connects upper_back to left_arm_root.

2. -drag right_arm_root to upper_back.
3. -drag left_hip to back_root.
4. -drag right_hip to back_root.

   Now if you need to move the entire skeleton, you can move back_root—the root of the hierarchy. The completed skeleton is shown in the following figure (with Jackie hidden).