Set Driven Keys

Heres a link to a good tutorial website.
http://www.learning-maya.com/24-0-character-setup-tutorials.html

It's there where I found this tutorial into set driven keys for hands.
http://www.final3.com/html/tutorials/drivenKeys.htm

This tutorial was definately useful, as it explains different attribute types that led to my revelation in the last blog. It also pointed out for me that I can in fact key more than one driven object at once, meaning that I can have just one attribute on a hand controller controlling the whole finger movement. This may not sound any different to what I had done before, but there is a big difference. Previously I had set driven keys in a chain reaction effect. I.e I keyed one joint to be effected by an attribute, which in turn drove another joint, which in turn drove the last. This meant that if I were to individually move any of the joints in the chain it would inevitably drive the others. The way the tutorial suggests however, means that none of the joints actually drive anything; only the attribute does. This means the animator would be actually be able to move individual finger joints without causing the rest of them to curl up.

The only downside to this however, is that I can't create any new attributes attatched to the same rotation used by the driven joints as Maya won't let me. Meaning I can no longer have attributes in the channel box for every bone. You can still adjust them manually, but it's not as animator freindly.

Either way, this is still progression. However, I will look into it further to see if there's a way around this. And I know there is. The tutorial talks about using a 'seperator' which it promises can help solve this issue. Theres a lot of MEL bogging down this tutorial though, so I will have to look at this tomorrow when I'm not knackered.