Artist and Coder… Nice.

Thanks for checking in, it’s great that you are interested in rigging, I’m starting to focus more on tools as well, maybe we can both learn from each other, since unlike you, I come from the opposite end of the spectrum doing art/animation. Anyways, I’d be glad to answer your question about World/Local/Object axis.
World orientation/axis is pretty self explanatory as you have so figured out, the remainder work in a similar way going down the chain.
Simply put, Local orientation is based on the objects’ parent axis, and Object orientation is based on the objects’ own axis.
Hope that makes things easy to understand, I’ve also added an update to the post about your question. Also, you may have just given me a good idea for another video, it’s been awhile.
Cheers!

Also, I was watching a video and instead of using the “Orient Joint” tool through maya, they guys used maya’s quick menu, selected Object, then brought the menu up again and selected Axis > Local. What did that do? Can you also explain to me why do that instead of use the Orient Joint tool?

I know this post is old, but I thought maybe you could still help. Thanks for the great read, and hopefully an answer.

- Austin

Link: http://www.documentarytube.com

Catch you later!
Sarah

Python is a great language. A lot of cool sites are written in Python these days. I remember it gained popularity pretty much at the same the Ruby got popular. Always wanted to learn more about it myself. I hear its multi-threading support is pretty amazing.