help!

[MikeRhone]

Spline IK would likely be the best route to go. I would suggest you look into the way people set up spline IK for characters' back rigs. It's the simplest way to control a complex setup such as a tail or a back.

As for how many joints, it depends on how much control you want. As a rule, more bones is usually better in cases like a spine or a tail. Be sure to create joint in the center of your edgeloops. By that I mean, if you have a character with 10 subdivisions, put a joint in roughly the center of each subdivision. This is crucial in getting proper deformations for your model. Once you add spline IK, all of those joints should be easier to control.

Also, in case you didnt know, Maya 6 has a cool new feature to lock a curves length. If you dont want out of hand squashy stretchy animation, its under the edit curves menu. (Although I think everything should have squash and stretch, its good to know it's there.)

[gordon7up]

Thanks for the response Rhone, spline IK it is.. this is probably a really dumb question but how do I offset the IK curve handle from the joints (IK spline) and maintain full control? I messed around with this for ages last night and still could not get a nice offset curve to control my joints.



Thanks again,

Gordon

[Octagon]

Usually you don´t touch the ik handle itself when youre using spline ik. You can move / rotate the whole chain as a whole when you move the handle but thats not what you want i guess :)
Make a few clusters for your spine curve. Make sure you make a cluster of the first two and the last two cvs on the curve. This will make the deformation a lot smoother as those two first and last points have tangency.

Parent the clusters to control objects that you animate or even better, make a new chain with less joints (3 bones maybe -> 4 joints) that you animate with fk and parent the clusters to the corresponding fk joints.

I hope this gives you a start.
-matthias

[gordon7up]

folks,

many thanks for the help on this one, this has given me a great start. Also found a nice spine (spline IK) tutorial at www.rigging101.com (http://www.rigging101.com)

Cheers,
Gordon

[meatpuppet]

given that it sounds like the matchstick needs to perform very little might it not be best to just animate it f/k. i won't disagree with rhonedog (he's helped with a lot of my rigging, thanks mike!) but my personal philosophy is always keep it as simple as possible.

of course, having said (typed?) that i do really dig spline i/k so i might be worth it for the learning/experimenting and it's fun...

[MikeRhone]

Hey hey Jason...!

Ya, FK would be a good option as well. It's actually one of those things where 50% of the people love FK, the others love IK. Me and a buddy are both on opposite sides of the fence on that one. I love the gooey-ness of IK. He just sit there and smells bad.

I remember reading an article recently where both FK and IK were compared with different animation styles. Ultimately it comes down to the animators preference I guess. They are the ones that will whine if stuff breaks. And boy do they whine ;) I guess the only real solultion would be to set up both, and use blend2Attr nodes to toggle between the 2. I know Meatpuppet is very well versed in the ways of the IK splines... Maybe he is trying to warn you, Gorgon ;) The benefit of FK is you will never have to worry about hunting down double transforming clusters.

And dont forget to add volumetric scaling on the bones for good squash and stretch!

[Octagon]

Hey hey Jason...!

And dont forget to add volumetric scaling on the bones for good squash and stretch!

volumetric scaling -> new thread! Cool subject :)

-matthias

[gordon7up]

well folks again thanks for the feedback on this, I setup an IK spline with clusters last night and managed to get the effect I was after (match stick nice and flexible and with nice smooth deformations :), one thing that was weird (I managed to get around though) was when I parent everything (parenting joints & IK to the match mesh) the mainipulator tool was greyed out? by grouping the joints and clusters Ive managed a get around but would like to understand exactly what this means, any ideas?

Cheers,
Gordon

[MikeRhone]

volumetric scaling -> new thread! Cool subject :)

-matthiasMost used deal I put into EVERY rig:

Simple expression for correct volume scaling in 3d space:

objectScaleX = 1 / objectScaleY;
objectScaleZ = 1 / objectScaleY;

(X and Z will squash/stretch driven by the Y scale. I recommend using nodes instead of an expression, but this is te easiest way to show it.)

I put this on all my back rigs and IK arm/leg rigs. Even in 'realistic' characters, it adds so much.

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