CGTalk - Wings of a bird rig

skater363636

06-18-2011, 02:04 AM

I’m currently working on an animated short and in my opening shot I have birds sitting on a tree branch. When the birds are on the branch most of their movement is through their bodies with their wings folded back to their sides. I’ve created an attribute to bring their wings back to their sides and if the body is up right and straight everything looks great. The problem that I’m having is when the bodies start to rotate around for movement the wings “mainly the feathers” come up off the bodies. I’ve tried creating switch controls to follow the root, shoulders and world. I have also created a third wing chain with a geometry constraint attached to the body of the bird.

I’m looking for a way to keep the wings and feathers of the wings close to the body while the body rotates and moves as the bird is chirping. Does anyone know if this is possible or have any ideas on how to do this. I am using Maya for the project. Any help will be much appreciated. Thanks

Boucha

06-21-2011, 03:15 PM

Sounds like a hierarchy issue ... parenting of child joints to parent and corresponding controllers. may be you would want to look at my video on a little demo of bird wing. there is no folding or stuff like that but i think you can get the technique!

Link : http://www.vimeo.com/21017670 ;)

PEN

06-24-2011, 05:04 PM

I think that you kind of mention it your self. Have points linked up to the body but aligned to the orientation of the closed wings then ramp on a constraint to keep the orientation of the wings to the body. If you do it as a layer it would mean that you would still have full control over the wing and its shape but it would not also be controlled by the shape of the body as well.

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06-24-2011, 05:04 PM

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