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joe pineapples
03-28-2005, 04:59 PM
Hello to everyone. First post on here, and hope you can help me out.

I've modelled a snake using the editable poly option, and as i may want to animate it moving later, decided on a path deform spline - also for the initial pose. The only problem is that although the snakes body deforms in a pretty realistic manner as it moves along the path (using percetage), the head deforms (bends) as well at certian points, which doesent look right. So i am basically wondering if there is a way to let the body bend with the path, but not the head?.

cheers

joe
Adriano-Zanetti
03-28-2005, 05:41 PM
I believe there are differents ways around to avoid your issue here. try to play around with skin wrap for instance, just animate a low rez model with let's say a split rig, one part for your body an other one for the head, so you can then even keep the head straight the exact way a snake would move, the only thing here is to make sure the body and head are syncronized perfectly along the path.

An other way would be to use a splineIK rig and animate the dummies along the path, make sure they're syncronized along the path, then attached an extra bone(s) for the head on the front dummy which will give you orientation and elevation freedom for the head of the snake when moving ahead.

There might be much easier and better solution, but with the 2 minutes of thinking I spared on you right here it's all I could come up with.

Good luck !
joe pineapples
03-28-2005, 09:11 PM
thanks for the reply - i'll give that split-rig idea a go. Sounds like a good idea now you've come up with it :-)
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