Maya Tutorial: Pivot Controls

If you've ever animated in 3D, you've probably encountered a pretty big problem whenever you've had to make the entire character rotate around any spot other then the base of the model, such as spinning on one foot or swinging from something. You COULD manually animate EVERY SINGLE JOINT to do what you want, but, come on, don't do that to yourself. So I'm basically gonna teach you how to do this real quick and good cool thanks

You can do this with literally any model, even just a really basic cube or upright snake or what have you.

First, make sure you have a controller set up that all the controls, bones, or whatever controls the animation of your model are parented to a curve or reference. In my case, I have a sub-root control, which is parented only to a control that moves literally everything.

Next, we're gonna want to go Channel Box for this controller, go to Edit -> Channel Control

This'll open this menu:

You'll want to scroll down and find the "Rotate Pivot" controls — NOT "Rotate Pivot Translate." This is a different thing entirely and it is a beast I cannot tame

Next, we'll want to add a new control that handles the pivot of this sub-root control. Make sure both controls are zeroed out (every translation and rotation values all at zero) or things will get bad. I made mine a star because it looks cute but it's not important in the SLIGHTEST. For this tutorial, anyway. It is EXTREMELY important to me and my br

If you have something the sub-root control is parented too, it would be wise to parent this new pivot control to that as well.

Next up, make sure you have this new pivot controller selected, go to the Channel Box, Edit -> Connection Editor (Windows -> General Editors -> Connection Editor works too)

This should pop up:

If "Outputs" is on the right instead of the left side, you can click "to <- from" in the center to swap it back.

Next, select the sub-root control, click "Reload Right," and then connect the "translate" channel on the left to the "rotation pivot" channel on the right by just, clickin' em

We're pretty much done! As a bit of clean up, select the sub-root control again, and in the channel box select the three Rotation Pivot channels, right click (ctrl+click on Mac if you've got one button???) and mark these as non-keyable. If you wanna be extra thorough you can hide them too. This'll prevent you from accidentally keyframing that channel, which we don't want.

That's it! We're done! The new pivot control can be keyframed whenever to make it do what you want. Go nuts go ape go hog

Please keep in mind that if you move this pivot controller while the base control is rotated, it might get a little wacky. Which is not exactly ideal, and the way you work around this depends heavily on the rig you have set up. However, for the most part, as long as you don't move this pivot mid-animation, it shouldn't be a problem.

OKAY COOL HAVE FUN