HR - WIP - 030

HR - WIP - 030, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Via Flickr:
This is what the spine set-up sphere controls look like. (the joint have been moved for the pic but they lay on-top normally).

This is the same as the other limbs where you are given a "Pseudo" rig to work with that is converted to a rig after your happy.

This has 3 spheres with little tangent spheres in the middle to show the direction of the curve. Unlike other limbs, the user is asked how many joint the want in there spine, then the "Pseudo" curve has the same amount of cv's.

Moving the spheres moves the curve via a smooth skin so the curve eases in and out of the controls for better smooth spine placement.

After the user is happy the curve is converted to joints, to do this it needs to know how many CV's there are on the curve so:

curve.degree + curve.spans = cv count

Now we can run a loop that xforms the position of each cv and makes a joint chain on them.

Now we have a clean joint chain to make a spine from :).