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What component would you recommend for this neck?

#1

Hello

I’m modelling a flamingo neck and thinking about what kind of chain to us. I’d like to be able to

  • Create pleasing S shapes

  • Have an IK/FK hybrid head with space switching.

  • A stiffness and stretch control

  • Game engine compatible

  • The root of the chain will also translate (ideally using a mesh deformer & wrap but something simple will work for now)

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#2

Do you need it to go straight too? That will be the biggest consideration. If it always stays in S-shapes, I’d make the model in an S-shape, and then simply use a chain or ribbon style control.

If it needs to make all sorts of custom C / S and straight shapes, you are probably right to start modelling it straight.

I probably wouldn’t use an mGear component for this. I’d likely make my own custom ribbon IK. You might want to look into “Variable FK”, which is a very flexible system.

And in the past, I’ve made a ribbon IK that maintains length by using two splineIKs, and then lofting the 2 curves to make a ribbon. You get the twisting control of Ribbon IK, but the length-preservation of a splineIK.

Game-engine compatible doesn’t really matter. No matter what fancy rigging techniques you use, you can always end it in a basic joint chain that is constrained to the rig.

2 Likes
#3

Thanks Chrislesage

Two things

  • Where do I go to learn about using mGear alongside manually created rigs. I’m looking for best practices, short cuts etc

  • If you had to, and there was a gun to your head, choose an mGear component for this neck, what would in your personal opinion be a good option?

#4

I’ll just list what I do:

  • Store all my custom parts in a group called “custom_rig”
  • Write POST Python scripts to attach them to the rig during building
  • When I delete the rig to rebuild, make sure I delete any dangling skinClusters that rely on joints that come from both the rig and the custom_rig. Because the importSkin commands need to have no existing skinCluster to load the data. And if you delete the rig but some of the joints still exist, you’ll end up with a partial broken skinCluster.
  • When I publish the rig for animators, I parent custom_rig underneath the main rig group.
  • Sometimes if you have empty groups or utility nodes in your custom_rig that were connected to the rig, Maya will attempt to automatically delete them when you delete your rig to rebuild. You can prevent this by adding some “dummy” attribute on “custom_rig”, and connecting it to the nodes you want to persist.