Eduardo Pili

TD showreel from Eduardo Pili, by the look of his impressive resume seems like he's been around a bit. Loads of things here to consider, the opening "quarternian" spine setup being notably impressive.

Looks like an "Isnerspine" setup which accomodates squash and stretch parametres by either adding an expression telling the joints scaleX value to adjust accordng to the curve length of the spline IK (by creating an Arc Len node).

Begins with a MEL window I assume Eduardo's scripted himself, that automates the spine rigging process - very handy because with two clicks of a button the spine is set up with squash and stretch parameters. Where this could be developed further is to add different spine setups to the script - perhaps a ribbon spine button, an Isner Spine button, a simple Spinewave rig, a Spline rig without stretch etc.


Notice the extra squash and stretch articulation achieved on the spine setup, this is called a "quarternion" spine, and in this instance uses widgets to control the volume in seperate area's. Very clever, and is done by creating a keyframe cache node (createNode frameCache). This node gathers numerical information from the timeline, so if you create an animation curve you can increase and decease the point position, which will increase the squash and stretch for that particular joint. The animator now doesn't have to go into the expression editor, they can simply alter the points on a curve - loads more interactve, intuitive and quicker to manipulate.

Good twist control - probably uses the advanced IK twist controls