Here is a short script I wrote to help edit the local rotation of a joint. It was helpful to tweak joints so that bending was in positive z etc...
There may be some bugs.
Hope you find it helpful.
cheers
Nate
Before
After
import maya.cmds as cmds
##set local rotations axis to specified rotations on specified objects
#@note default 0.0, 0.0, 0.0
#
##
def setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList( objects=[], rx=0.0, ry=0.0, rz=0.0 ):
if all(x is not None for x in objects):
map( lambda x: setLocalRotationAxisOfObject(objects[x]+'.rotateAxis',[rx,ry,rz]), range(0,len(objects)))
##set local rotations axis to specified rotations on specified object
#
##
def setLocalRotationAxisOfObject( obj, rotation ):
cmds.rotate(rotation[0],rotation[1],rotation[2], obj,objectSpace=True)
def setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList_unitTest():
j1=cmds.joint(p=[0,4,0])
j2=cmds.joint(p=[0,3,0])
j3=cmds.joint(p=[0,2,0])
j4=cmds.joint(p=[0,1,0])
setLocalRotationAxisOfObjectList( [j1,j2,j3,j4], rx=0.0,ry=90.0,rz=0.0)

