Male skeleton for Maya.

[Fiona Branagh]

I've spent quite a bit of time searching for a male skeleton for rigging my mesh in Maya, but no luck. I've rigged the mesh to the skeleton originally provided by Reed Steamroller (that skeleton.ma file we've all seen) but it clearly is for the female, since my mesh only looks right in SL when the avatar is set to female.

I see that some avatar makers have just forced the wearer to switch to female avatars to make up for this, and I'll do the same if necessary, but it seems pretty silly. Do we have access to the male skeleton, and if so, where, and if not, WHY?

 

[Chosen Few]

There's only one skeleton.  There's no such thing as "male" or "female" with regard to it.  All that happens to it when you change your avatar's gender is a few bones move.  It's just a change of pose, not a change of actual skeletal structure.  For example, when you change from default female to default male, the hips narrow, the shoulders widen, the height increases, along with some other really minor tweaks.

The skeleton you've got is in the neutral bind pose.  It happens to fit the default female shape just because the avatar model itself happens to be female by default.  The model is called Ruth.  There is no separate male avatar model.  Every avatar variant, whether male or female, is just a morph of Ruth.  Some of the morphs include changes to the skeleton's pose, some don't.  None make any changes to the skeleton itself.

If you want your mesh model to use a pose other than the default for its bind pose, that's what the joint positions option is for in the mesh uploader.  While it might be useful to have the default male pose as a preset option, it's hardly necessary.  If you really want that pose, you can create it yourself. 

Or you can just leave the default alone, and not worry about whether it happens to be labeled "female" or "male".  All that really matters is that it's a functioning humanoid skeleton.  The outward appearance of the mesh model can be male, female, space alien, robot, manbearpig, or what have you, no matter what the bind pose happens to be named.  The word "female" in the appearance editor is just the label for the bind pose.  It doesn't mean anything beyond that.

[Fiona Branagh]

I suppose, really, I assumed that was all understood. What I am hoping for is a skeleton posed for the default male so I don't have to fiddle around and figure it out with a lot of tweaks. Having one set for the female is very handy and doesn't require me to mess around with trying to get it all to line up.

 

[Sae Luan]

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Standard-Sizing-Package/2894727

 

Listing has a download link in the description to working maya scenes with all standard sizing avatars, plus defaults, along with the skeleton... all the avatar sizes are positioned on the skeleton correctly, so it's super simple to build your mesh items and expect them to fit (male or female) with very little error.

[Fiona Branagh]

Thank you! Sorry I didn't notice this response for a while. Should definitely come in handy.