Im working now on the guide placement. And im not sure where to place the guides on the neck and the clavicles. The center of the mass is not the center of the rotation right?
For cartoon characters, I like to place the guides more in the center of the geometry, than the real bone placement.
For example your neck position is realistic. But, placing the joints in the center will create better deformation when twisting, same for all limbs and body 
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Hello @oglu
Do you think you can send me the guides export with the latest model so that I can take a look?
@Miquel is correct on the guides placement. When twisting this might go wrong. That been said there is a lot that can go wrong on this character if you don’t experiment different positions. What I usually do is generate an automatic skinning that will allow me to test several joints positions in a row that I think might work. This allows me to better control the deformation work later on. In this character is tricky because if has a lot of volumes and a pretty defined silhouette so placing the guides requires some hit and miss.
For the automatic skinning thingy what I do is the following.
- Build your guides rig
- Duplicate the full skeleton joints that mgear’s creates
- Bind the geometry to those dup. joints but with 1 INF MAX per vertex (to make a rigid skin) and a Dropoff rate of 100. The idea is to make the binding rigid and closest to the bone.
- At this stage I might go and rigidly paint/fix some of the influences but again this is rigid skinning
- Add a delta mush and a tension deformer (without squash) on top of the skin
- (optional when it comes to testing joints positions). On a duplicate of the mesh I bake the other meshes deformations using Maya’s Bake Deformations to Skin.
At this point you end up with a pretty much badly weighted asset but good enough for you to see how the mesh reacts to your joints positions. If you did step 6 you can even copy back that skinning to the actual mGear’s skeletton so that you can test the rig (I usually just move joints around).
Anyway, all this just to say that placing the guides and spending actual time on this step is going to save you more time down the road and will help you predict what type of extra deformation work you will need to do!
Cheers
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Hi its me again.
Is there a reason why those middle hand guides are missing in the piped?
Are they important? Miquel is creating them in the “Data Centric Rigging 003: Guides Placement 02” youtube video.
Im trying to get my Char skin binded and im wondering why does the finger tips wont get any weight.
Is this normal?
@Jerome
I do the bin skin on the duplicated bones to get different versions. Right.?
Is there any other reason why i dont use the orignial rig?
Yes this is normal behaviour for Maya.
@oglu forgot to mention that I do indeed duplicate the fingers tip joints and extend them so that they have some weights on the biding process.
This controls are something I like to add to deform the hands in some poses. For example if grab something a little bend can give an extra feeling of contact and pressure. Obviously real hand don’t have this articulation and not always wanted. The biped template is the minimal, a base to start
It depends 
@chrislesage posted somewhere in this forum a little script to add temporal tips to the joint chains. Also check Heat map for hands. Sometimes is a nice starting point.
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I created the Proxy Mesh for weight painting.
If im right it does not make much sense to reduce also the head?
Is there more geo needed for the fingers?
I like the idea to have props to show/hide depending of the configuration. That will help with a lot for animation acting and action exercises
some extra ideas (not only weapons):
- 2 katanas. (One in each hand, maybe this can apply to all props)
- lance
- spoon
- fork
- knife
- cigarette
- glass of wine
- phone
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Miquel those are great ideas. If i find time i will do a whole scene for him.
I did a first pass on the weights.
Im not sure about the neck and clavical area. He is so massive its tricky.
And im not sure about the ellbow position.
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Next version available!
He is warming up.
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Beta 0.8.5 is now ready.
I have included the Geometry into the Rig file.
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Eyebrows are now added and some weights fixed on the legs.
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