- Edited
[Rigging in Spine] What's the best way to set this up?
I have a flying snake.
I want to generally have it 'ripple' as it moves (flies) through the air.
So far? Bone chain bound to a path. Ok, no problems.
Now, while it ripples while moving through the air, I want to draw a path for the flying snake diving into the water, jumping out and diving back in again like a flying fish.
I ideally want the bones of the snake's body to follow the 2nd path, while still doing the up and down 'rippling' movements of the body.
How should I rig this?
Finally, I want the ability to have the snake stab its tail into something and use what used to be the 'root' (head) as its control point - sort of an extended many-bones IK setup so the tail stays fixed and the body chases the head.
How should I rig this?
-Alex
Attached:
Example test case so-far... which is prohibitive to use.
Interesting use case.
I would use two paths for this. One large path that has the ripples, and then a small path for the snake.
For my snake I used five bones which I constrain to the large path. I then skin the small path to those five bones.
Then create five more bones, same size as the first five bones and constrain them to the small path.
If you set it up like this you can do manual animation on the snake while keeping the ripples from the large path.
It's tricky to explain so I've attached a sample project. Note it uses the latest beta.
Ah! This is perfect!!
I will rerig my character.
@Shiu - question - how did you make this work so that the green path is following the red path?
I am missing something key here - as far as I can tell, the bones aren't parented to each other in any way
OH! I see it - it's skinned. Duh
Is there a shortcut to spread out the weight impact of 10 bones across 10 path control nodes other than modifying the weight manually in the weights view?
Is there a shortcut to spread out the weight impact of 10 bones across 10 path control nodes other than modifying the weight manually in the weights view?
I'm afraid you will have to weigh the path manually.
Ah, darn.
Is there a technical reason that's challenging or is it more along the lines of 'hasn't been important enough to prioritize solving"?
Meshes and paths are so different that it can't auto weigh the same way. I'm not sure if it's going to be possible. But maybe it could be an option when you split a bone to also have it create a path that is weighted to the bones automatically when splitting. Not sure how often it would be used.
I guess I just don't understand.
If a mesh is a 2d array of 2d points and a spline is a 1d array of 2d points... it seems like the spline should be feasible to weight similarly, by using the distance from the bones for each point as a starting weight.
It could be made possible, but not by using the same auto weighting technique that is used for meshes. When a mesh is auto weighted it actually builds another denser mesh underneath. This method would of course not work for paths. With that said weighting a path based purely on distance to bones should be possible. I don't know if it's something Nate will be able to add any time soon though.
Can I request a waffle ticket be entered? :happy: