So I have a simple stretchy IK leg rig, or a squash and stretch spine, or basically want to scale anything. And I run into a couple of issues.
- By default segment scale compensate is on for bones. So if you have a parented rig and scale a rig control then your rig will scale differently than the bones.
a. Do people work around this by having a totally unparented control rig? - For games some engines don’t support Maya’s segment scale compensate so it’s actually better to untick it. This has the benefit of having your rig scale match your bone scale.
a. This is perhaps harder to animate? I guess it depends exactly what you are trying to animate - Downside of having segment scale compensate off is that if you stretch say a leg bone you need to counter scale the foot bone. I guess this can be automated simply enough but it doesn’t seem ideal.
a. You could create a rig with scale compensate nodes built in I guess? Might be better to animate?
Was just wondering if anyone had any tips for making a properly scalable rig. If you simply translate bones you get similar results in stretch (but can’t compensate with volume) and all the scale problems go away and life is simple 
Previously I’ve worked with UE3 which doesn’t allow bone scale so again, no issue