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View Full Version : quadrupeds--especially their spines?

blurgh
10-15-2008, 01:09 AM
hello all,
Ive been reading all the posts I can find on the old quadrupeds as Ive got a tiger to put a relatively simple rig into (in maya).
heres a picture of what Ive got so far
http://i60.photobucket.com/albums/h21/tobywinder/tiger.jpg

now im fairly happy with what the legs are doing.. as I say its fairly simple.
My main confusion is about rigging the spine up.. now I was thinking of putting a splineIK on the joints
(from the one after the root down to the one just before the hips, is that the right way of thinking about it?
my thinking being that I can put a controller in the middle of the back to get curves in the spine? only problem with that seems to be that it ends up moving the hips as well?

I read soem posts by EEK where he mentioned independent hips and shoulders.. but how do you actually make them independent from the spine but keep them as part of the hierachy?

hope that makes sense :P
thanks for the help!

-D
stewartjones
10-15-2008, 05:56 AM
Play around with Spline IK and see if that gets you to sort of where you want to be.

Just a note. Looking at the picture itt seems like the root joint of your character is up around the shoulder area? If so, think about moving that to the hips, I always find that works better, and closer the the center of gravity for the character.
eek
10-15-2008, 08:04 AM
I read soem posts by EEK where he mentioned independent hips and shoulders.. but how do you actually make them independent from the spine but keep them as part of the hierachy?

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You don't, the spine is just controlled by a set of controls/puppets that follow there own hierarchy. The spine itself follows a hierarchy but it doesn't have to be controlled by the same constraints an example being a wooden puppet attached by strings - the strings just pull the puppet around, but aren't part of any real hierarchy. Thats the key to it all - your the master of a system to allow poses to form and change with relative ease. Thats why i treat more like an art.

The root should be at the pelvis, but really the direction of a quadraped comes from the arc of ifs spine, and direction as a whole.
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