If you now look at this joint chain in the front view, you can see that it was made down the center. Now position .
Keep note of how straight the leg is. If the leg isn’t in too much of a straight line the legs may not bend the way you expect them too.
Next, while still in the front view we’ll make 5 joints for the arm. One for the clavicle, one for the shoulder, one for the elbow, then the forearm then the wrist.
Next I position the joints in the perspective view, with the model in wire frame. I tend to just go into perspective rather than placing them in the orthographic views because I can get a better sense of their placement from all angles floating around the model.
As you can see in the next image I place the wrist joint right on top of the forearm joint. This isn’t something you have to do. This is something I do so we can make the forearm be able to twist, but have the wrist bend independently of the geometry of the arm. If you use the same joint for both bending the wrist can collapse the arm on simpler models. I find you can often get away with only one joint on simple models like this. But when it comes to higher poly models I pretty much always need two joints, if not a third joint in the middle of the arm to better transition the twist.
Next in the top view we’ll place joints for the hand. Of course there’s a joint for each joint in the fingers. There’s also a joint for each finger near the base of the hand to accommodate the spreading of fingers and cupping of the palm. Most people seem to neglect these joints in the hand.
Again, we’ll have to place these in the perspective view.
