Masters - WIP - 25

Masters - WIP - 25, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Adding the muscles and more bones objects for the thoracic cavity.

The thoracic cavity is the volume under the ribs so as you bend stretch and twist your spine you ribs also move and change the overall thoracic cavity volume, this also happens when you breath. By adding these to the rig when the spine bends the skin better morphs how it should as the ribs move.

I found that by adding this thoracic cavity as one mesh it looks good until the spine bent because it was one object it looked too stiff. To fix this i split the volume up into 4 parts so when they were connected to the spine the each have there own movement. So when the back arches backwards the area expands and when the spine lean forwards into itself the cavity compresses.

So far for the muscles ive added the biceps and triceps. The main thing about muscle rigging is that its best to follow the biology of what you're creating but it doesn't and shouldn't need to be perfect. For example on my rig the end of the triceps is sticking out the elbow because a real triceps would collide with your elbow and wrap around but this isn't possible with current rigging techniques and isn't needed as it would over complicate things. By having the end stick out that means when the arm bends the triceps end moves more, thus giving more of a stretch for maya to work with which in the end give a more realistic result than if i had placed it in the exact biological position.

The volume doesn't need to be perfect either, for my muscles (and others ive seen on industry rigs) have the muscles clipping outside the skin, this is because (like normal maya joints) there not a biological representation of a muscle, there a deformer that gives the illusion of a muscle, so at render time they will be hidden so as long as the skin looks like it has the correct deformation it relay doesn't matter what the muscle looks like. Having said that thought its still a good idea not to deviate from the actual biology of what you're creating.

Also for this i have set up the proper jiggle weight so when its animated the muscles jiggle as the should. Ive also create custom muscle shapes so the muscles deformed like real muscles, so the triceps becomes more triangular shaped when squashed.