CGTalk - cane-toad shoulder rig

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quyeno

11-04-2003, 12:47 PM

hi guys,

have anyone tried cane-toads shoulder rig? it has two shoulders joints and two biceps joints. a control shoulder transfers it twist rotation to the rig shoulder and the two bicep joints such that the shoulder only twists a little and the bicep joints share the remainder twist. this apparently reduces deformation problems on the deltoids. seem a good idea but i can't seem to sus out how to set this up. the website give details how the rig works but theres no joint diagrams unfortunately. can anybody explain ( a diagram would be great!). there is a file for download on the cane-toad site but the link is dead, i've tried emailing the guy but got no reply so if anyone has got that file or even their own file with the shoulder rig working, i would really appreciate it i can get a copy of it.

cheers
quyeno

dwalden74

11-04-2003, 01:24 PM

It probably uses a multiply/divide node, which inputs the control arm´s rotations, divides this value by the number of joints you have in your bicep (or whatever), and outputs the value via a direct connection to all these bicep joints´ rotations. This is also how my own dwRiggingTools scripts works with split joints in both upper and lower arms (you can download that on my site if you´re interested).

However, I don´t recommend this technique. It supposedly gives you better deformations in the arm, but IMHO this is not the best way to do this, and it also causes problems- When your arm twists too much you get a strange flipping behavior in Maya in the split joints. Also, in terms of getting good deformations, I´ve found that you really have to add many joints to make it look good (like 5 or more), and even then the deformation isn´t that good. A better way is to just use influence objects parented into your hierarchy.

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