HR - WIP - 031

HR - WIP - 031, originally uploaded by James D Thompson.

Via Flickr:
More spines!

From left to right is how the spine is made

Left: The user enters a name and joint count and a pre-rig is made which the user can move around to fit there character. Although its just 3 controls to move the curve is very smooth (depending on the joint count the user entered)

Middle: The pre-rig is converted to two joint chains, one that is a joint chain from start to end, the other is separate joints point constrained to the last chain.

This way the 1st chain or joint driver, moves the 2nd set of joints, this allows the rotation to be hooked to something else later for better spine twisting.

The main problem with IKSplines is that there is no Twist (well there is a twist attribute but its functionality is very limited). So the idea for this to have the spines "Twist" driven by the rotation of the 3 controls.

This has been quite fun to get working because the aim was to get just a pre-set 5 joint spine working but not its possible to get 10000+ joint spine if you think you're Maya could handle it :).