Hi everyone! I downloaded the "Electra" sample file to study and learn the new tools for rigging and animation in Houdini 20, and to learn better I decided to replicate the same setup they did with Electra on the UE5 Mannequin, however I didn't expect to be overwhelmed so fast.

The picture I attached is from the very beginning of the graph/file, the green skeleton node showcase a different skeleton that is used for control joints, however in the viewport as you can see these joints seem to be parented to the original skeleton, and I can't find a way to replicate this control skeleton. I've looked on tutorials but I can't find relevant info on this.

Any suggestions or help would be appreciated

Hi, I believe the skeleton in the GUIDES is a stashed copy of the original electra skeleton with some additional joint added that will serve as a guide for the following autorig node.

for exemple, the additional join will serve for positioning of the twist controller for the leg and arm, and some extra position like COG and main bone.

the purpose of the Guides.skel is purelly to aid the rig building section of the autorig to correctly place controller that wouldn't really fit in the base electra skeleton. It could be generated procedurally, but they choosed to use a Skeleton node with manually placed joint for the example.

Hi! Thank you for your time and response.

Yes,I'm aware and completely understand the purpose of this GUIDE skeleton, my problem is that I'm not able to replicate a similar skeleton on my own character.

Green Joints are from the base skeleton, that's done and easy to do.
Black Joints are from the GUIDE skeleton which I'm unable to create because it seems the joints are parented multiple times, something like:
foot_r->leg_ikhandle_r->leg_ikhandle_r_hook.

As shown in the picture, everytime I enter the viewport state of the Skeleton SOP and try to create these new joints I fail because I can't create a similar hierarchy as shown in the electra example.

I found the "problem". I though these joints somehow were parented together but they are not, they are overlapping. If you hover over a joint and there are other joints overlapping or sharing the same location Houdini will display the name of those joints at the same time, sorry, still very new to KineFX and rigging.

SideFx should fix this electra rig to remove all stash nodes, so its more clear how whole stuff was created, preferably not on mesh that already have skeleton, but just on a test mesh.