IK Setup for a tiger

[mastiff]

This is what i created so far:
Opinions ? Shouldn't it be a bit more simple ?

[mastiff]

Sorry i forgot the file . :p

[Transform Gizmo]

i have yet to deal with much rigging of animals, but by looking at the way you set up your bones, i think that your ik setup could be much more simple. typically, when i rig human characters, i have three solvers per leg. obviously there is an anatomical difference between a tiger and a human, but by the look of your legs you can apply the same technique.

[KiboOst]

I think also that you should put IKSpline solver for the dorsal colum ?

Kib

[Transform Gizmo]

ok, heres a quick example. if you look at this picture, you will notice that this leg, human, has three ik solvers. for this leg, just those three solvers are all that are needed to control the entire leg. i have found that for me personally, the best way to learn ik is to try different setups that i see in samples and other files, play around with them a bit, and then take the parts i like and mix them together to get something im comfortable working with. so try rebuilding the leg in my picture, with the first ik chain from joint 1 to joint 3, the second chain from 3 to 4, and the third chain from joint 4 to 5. get the feel of it, and how it works, then try applying something similar to your tiger. something like this should work for the hind legs, since the structure of the leg is fairly similar, and you shouldnt need ik if your going to animate the hips, fk should work good with that, however the front legs will be slightly different.

[mastiff]

I have just found a tiger skeleton on the net.
Take a look on it.

thanks Transform Gizmo i also thought that it has too much solvers. I will recreate the bone structure. Also wanted to ask, how should i link the legs with the spine? I created a shoulder dummy and linked the legs to that, this way i can apply an expression to the dummy to automatically position it depending on the front two legs position.. this way i only have to animate the legs the body will follow it. Will this work ?
Any comments on it ?

[Transform Gizmo]

what i would suggest, is creating a dummy, either in the shoulder region, our in the "pelvis"(not sure what that particular region is called in a tiger, need to read some more anatomy books) area. link your legs, to the hips, and then the hips to the dummy. to do this, you would want to make sure that the bone in the spine that you link to the dummy, should be the root of the hierarchy for the spine. this means you would have to animate the spine with the dummy, and animate the legs seperately, however i think it would offer more control, and also you would have less issues than if you were to use expressions.

:buttrock: rock on with that rig

and have you posted your tiger model in any of the forums? i would like to take a look at that.

[mastiff]

No i have not posted it. I will get home in an hour and will post it then. :)

[mastiff]

So here is a screenshot of the tiger I'm workinig on. I know it is far from perfect. :)

http://w3.datanet.hu/~vilhelm/images/tiger1.jpg

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