For the purposes of this demonstration, I will be using this lovely Zelda rig by Christoph Schoch (pronounced “shock” – I checked!). You can find it for free here:
So when you open most rigs, the arms and head will move like this:
As Zelda’s face expresses, this kind of setup is undesirable. The head and arms are locked to the torso and she moves like a wooden doll. In real life you usually don’t naturally move like this. Try moving your chest side to side. Do you do it like that, or do you do it like this?
Now she’s groovin. To achieve this effect with the previous setup, a lot of counter-animation would have to be done on the head and shoulders to make them appear to move independently.
Now how do we do this automatically by setting up our rigs in Maya?
First, it will depend on how your rig is made. To take the arms, neck, and head out of “body space” or “local space” (locked to the body), and put them in “world space”, some fancy tricks have to be implemented by the rigger. Usually, you can find these options in the shoulder, neck, and head controllers.
If no such options exist, you’ll have to make do with counter animating. As an animator, you will have to deal with a lot of rigs that are unoptimized, even if you work at a big studio. If you’ve ever attempted rigging, you know how hard it is to get rigs to do even the simplest things.
If you are able to set up your rig this way, I promise it will make your animation seem a lot more natural. Of course, you will want to bring those controllers back into body space if your character is ever doing the robot.