[Rigging] How to Rig in Maya

After Chris's lectures, I made several notes based on the Rigging process. These were the rough notes that I made which just detail the entire process for easy reference:

Rigging
--------
Select Leg Mesh -> Layer New Selected [Puts Leg Mesh on its own layer]
4 screen perspective, work on orthographics or joints will become misaligned.
Switch to Animation tab, Go to Side view.
JOINT TOOL (Or Skeleton -> Joint Tool)
Shading -> X-Ray Joints [to see joints in perspective]
Move joints sideways over leg.

Panels -> Saved Layouts -> Persp/Outliner

O Hip_L
         O Knee_L
                  O Ankle_L
                           O Ball_L
                                    O Toe_L


OPTIONAL: Create Locator to plot Joints.
                      CTRL + D -> Duplicate
                     JOINT TOOL, hold down V, middle mouse button -> Snap to points


Function F8 -> Joint orientation - Goes Blue
                        Press the [?] icon at the top to show orientation
                        'x' is going down


Skeleton -> Orient Joints [ ] -> untick "orient child joints"
                                                second axis : [+y] to [-y]


ALT+B -> Change background colour


Skeleton -> Mirror Joint [ ] -> Mirror across: YZ       -           Behavioural
                                               Search for: _L
                                               Replace with: _R             // this changes the naming convention in the Outliner


IK Handle Tool -> Options: Needs to be set to "ikRPsolver" for the first joint connection.
                             Select Hip -> Select Ankle (joints)


Create -> NURB Primitives -> Circle
Middle Mouse, Hold V, Drag to Ankle IK Handle
Modify -> Freeze Transformations
Select the NURB Circle - then shift select the IK Handle. Contrain -> Point     // this is done so you can use the NURB circle as a controller, and  the contrain means moving the controller will always move the IK Handle.


Front View -> Joint Tool -> Draw one for base of the spine, one slightly above. P to Parent.

At this point the lesson ended, so I researched the rest of the process myself and followed the tutorial that Chris gave from Rigging101. This included finishing the Reverse Foot Lock so that the foot could be controller easier.