Spine Rig setup

"awesome spine" fonund on:


http://faithofthefallen.wordpress.com/awesome-spine/


Very similar to the Jason Schliefer tutorial - IK spline setup, with two skinning joints either side and a simple stretch mechanism implemented. In this example the rigger has duplicated the joint chain and connected each joint with ik handles. The handles ten parented to the spline joints so they follow the spline.


This twist mechanism implements a locator for each joint, connected to the joints using a multiply divide node, to achieve greater twist articulation control. In the Schliefer tutorial he uses the advanced twist controls implemented in the IK handle - seems to work fine, but gives you a uniform result. The ribbon spine's twist attribute can be adjusted by allocating different weight influence to nurbs vertex, so comes somewhere in between.


What is good about the Schliefer spine is the ability to control the volume of the distortion at different points down the back, using an animation curve. This provides good characterisation control for the animator and certainly help the shot look more interesting.