Rigging stretchy tongue in 3DS Max

#1

Hi,

I´m currently trying to rig a frogs tongue and kind of hit a brick wall again…

What the rig should be able to do:

  1. Have a rotation Control at the beginning of the bone chain, that controls the overall rotation of the tongue.
  2. Have a control object, with which I can make the tongue grab things by using a link constraint or something like that.
  3. That control object should also effect the overall stretching of the bones in the chain.

What I tried so far:

  1. Set up a bone chain with helpers at each bone.
  2. position constrain each bone to its helper.
  3. position constrain the helpers in the middle each to the first and last helper and then weigh them to keep their original position.
  4. setup look at constraints for each bone, looking at the next bones helper in the hierarchy.

This gives me the ability to stretch the bone chain evenly by grabbing the last helper and moving it around.
The bones follow the orientation correctly, but now I can´t figure out a way to control their rotation, because of the look at constraints.

I´ll try to record a video of the process if you need more information…

#2

Hi Samuel,

you could use this script i created the last few days…

http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?f=98&t=1075262

you could create a extra helper at the beginng and the end to control the rotation with orientation constraints or a simple orientation scripts on the bone helper objects.

hope this helps.
cheers Tommy

#3

Hi, thanx for the link, but I already got a decent script recommended to me by the guys over at tech-artist.org:

http://joleanes.com/scripts_plugins/chaintools.php

Now I got other problems considering the CAT rig I need it attached to…
I keep bumping into problems with CAT while going beyond the basic rigs, but my employer wants it this way.
Guess he doesn´t trust my custom rigging skills.
Which I guess he´s right to do so unfortunately.

Hope there are some new Master classes out from Paul Neale soon…:wink:

#4

felix joleanes chain tools script is very nice!

Forget CAT its actually unusable. I used Cat the last years in some Projects but its still to buggy.
And if you struggle over a broken feature forget the ADESK support…
And a Problem is that Cat doesnt store the animation of your custom Rig elements in the CAT animation layer system.

#5

Hehe, yeah, nice script. Didn´t mean to spoil your success though…:wink:

I can´t script for shit but I really should get into it…

I know CAT is buggy and I guess I really should try to convince my employer to let me try to build a custom rig instead.

Might take longer to set up and it doesn´t have the layer animation system, but in the end It might be worth it.
Since its only an internship I also got plenty of time to do the research…
But I also like the idea of CAT and Its a pleasure doing walkcycles with it, so I´d still love to figure out some of the strange things happening…

I figured I´d buil the CAT rigduring work hours and work on a custom rig in my free time. So if it works out well, I could suprise him with my superior rigging skills and make him forget about CAT…:wink:

#6

I´d also recommend buying PENs pose manager I guess…

#7

Haha, and then I´ll convince him to send me to Paul Neales Master Classes in Vegas.
Cause that´s how I roll.

#8

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