Maya Rigging

Rigging is creating controllers like bones or locators to move geometry. =Joints= Joints work like a skeleton that will move geometry and can create hinge points.

Creating Joints
Joints are created by clicking with the Create Joints Tool. The Create Joints Tool can be found in the rigging menu under the skeleton tab.

Moving Joints
Joints can be moved like any other thing in maya with the translate scale and rotate tool. Note that joints are usually parented so by moving a joint you will move the children as well. If you don't want this behaviour you can press insert or d to enter pivot mode to move a joint individually.

Connecting Joints
When having separate joints you can parent them by selecting the two joints and hitting p.

Mirror Joints
Select the Joints you want to mirror over and click mirror Joints in the skeleton menu. When you click on the option box you can specify in what way you want to mirror the Joints. Joints are mirrored over a specified plane, you can see it as an actual mirror. The XZ plane for example will mirror joints in the Y diretion. Joints are mirrored from the scene origin. You can also do a find and replace when in the option box so you can give the mirrored Joints appropriate names.