Rigging a straight leg and other qns

Rigging
1

Hi all, it has been a while since I last touched on any riggings and I hope someone could give me a few pointers on the current rig I am doing.

First, I am trying to rig a robot humanoid figure however I am having a few issues with its legs. As you can see in the first attachment, I have place the joints in the middle of the ‘hinges’ as depicted in the second image. But then, I realized that if I did a IK handle, the knee joint will buckle inwards as the placement is almost in a straight line.

  1. As such, how do I go about setting the joints for such straight legs? Do I keep have to keep on pushing the knee joint outwards so that the ik handle will works like it should be when bending the legs?

  2. This model I am using is a combined mesh. I was thinking since it is a mechnical model, will it be a better idea for me to separate out the meshes into individual pieces but that may means tedious SDK setting and changing the pivot etc.

Otherwise will it be better for me to keep on skinning it as a combined mesh?

  1. Prior to Qns 2, what are the pros and cons of skinning combined or seperate meshes?

2
  1. this one is not exactly straight, the knee is bent inward and will not work with an ikhandle
  2. separating will work best so you can place the knee a bit forward to make rigging work better
    3.separating vs combining just depends on what a game engine can handle, but separating is easier skinning as you dont have to get into components to moake sure the weights are correct

if the leg was perfectly straight you could have chosen to set a preffered angle to make sure it follows the polevector, this one is going into the wrong direction

hope this helps