The MEL command to change a joints rotation order is outlined as follows:

joint -e -oj yzx -zso;

The xyz is the order of rotation and can be changed to any combination available. The �oj flag stands for orient joints, -zso flag specifies that the local scale axes also be reoriented and the �ch will include all children in the hierachy under that joint. Apply this command to the hip joint.

Now check the rotation manipulator for the hip. It should be closely related to the world axes. Now go through the skeleton working with the MEL command and changing the ordering of axes to match as best as possible the joints rotation order with the world. Leave the root, cervical and head joints alone.



Now connect the hip to the root using Connect Joint w/the parent option turned on.

Pick the left hip and Mirror Joint on the yz plane to create the other leg (NOTE: the order of rotation gets a little screwed up here because of the mirror so we will rebuild the leg).

Create a layer for your skeleton. Make that layer a reference. Using the joint tool again (along with vert snap) create the mirrored leg over again by creating new joints on top of the mirrored joints. Hide this new leg. Turning your skeleton layer back to standard Disconnect the hip joint on the mirrored side and remove the remaining joint. Unhide the new hip joint you just created. Make sure the local axes are correct for the joints. Use Connect joint to add the new leg to the skeleton. Now use the same process outlined above to rebuild the mirrored arm and attach that to the rest of the skeleton.



Now you should have a skeleton comprised of 19 joints that allow a solid range of motion with not a lot of overhead for your run-time transform computations. A nice balance.

Once that is finished be sure to Set Preferred Angle on the joints (RMB over the joint).



At this point we could go ahead and skin the character and edit the deformation. Instead, we will focus on giving the skeleton controls that the animator will use to pose the character. These are the objects that the animator will set keyframes on.