Tutorial
Maya Tutorials -- Rigging for Animation
Page 3 of 7

Lock and Hide:
Just as important as having only the controls you need, you don’t want an animator keying channels that aren’t necessary. Any channels that will not be keyed by an animator for movement should be locked and hidden. I separate my FK and IK controls, so if you’re like me, you won’t need “rotateX” on your “rightArmIK” controller.

Lock Hide 1 (Click for larger view)

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Get rid of what you don’t need using channel control:
(Window>general editors>channel control)

Lock Hide 2


If you’re familiar with MEL, use the following commands in a script to speed up your workflow:

// Lock an attribute to prevent further modification
setAttr -lock on object.channelName;


// Make an attribute unkeyable

setAttr -keyable off object.channelName;


Making sure that unneeded attributes are locked and unkeyable will keep animators from keying them accidentally and will make it easier for them to see what’s going on in the Graph Editor.

Lock Hide 4






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