Maya Tips: SELECT THAT JOINT!

Sometimes you would be faced a situation in rigging where you cannot locate the proper joint for the proper part due to unwanted and complex geometries or whatsoever that may be blocking your view to the joint, and would want to have a control that would literally select the joint. Of course you can do that by using selection handles but sometimes its not what you would want or by constraining it to the control. Another tricky way is to parent the control's shape node to the joint (provided that your control is not a joint). Since a joint doesn't have a shape node, you can parent it to a node that does have a shape node. Like for example i do have created a joint and a curve, the curve would serve as its control. Select the curve's shape node and shift select the joint, then type this in the script editor or in the command line:

parent -r -s;

-s flag is shape, it means that because joints do not have a shape node it now inherits the shape node of the curve. From then on when you select the curve, you will be selecting the joint itself and keying the curve will just key the joints. This is just a simple tip you can do if your just testing something that you don't want to meddle with complex rigs and so on. The same method can be followed with clusters, when you can't even see that letter C in the view port.

Hope that helps.. ^_^V