Three Bone Rigs Compared

Three bone rigs, same number of joints/bones. The difference being the parent bone.

The parent bones are indicated by the strawberry color. I used constraint tags on the parent bones.
An Orient Constraint for rotation and a Point Constraint for the up and down motion.

The Orient Constraint targets a Cube for rotation. And the Point Constraint,
an Arrow for up and down. Then I just Key framed the the Cube and Arrow.

threebone_rigs02.gif


Each has a slightly different action. Now I wonder how they will work in the same skin.
 
The idea now is to give each set of foot targets different action.

After studying the motion of the rigs, the hip rig looked perfect for a limping gate.

threerigs_feet1.gif
 
Neat! That's pretty much what ringing is all about. Having one object drive others. This does give me ideas of which constraints to use for which motions.

Bob
 
The other two look more like they're dancing.

So now we have three rigs sharing actions by constraint control.
Each with independent foot control utilizing IK targets.

So what else can we do. :unsure:

threerigs_feet2.gif
 
Even though there's an Orient Constraint on the parent bone,
you can turn off constraint for Pitch, Bank and/or Heading.

That means we can key frame those actions that are not constrained, directly to the parent bone.

OC Panel.jpg
threerigs_pb1.gif
 
Well for these I used Screenflow to capture the Cheetah screen, and then PS to make it into a gif.
Mostly one second loops I did at 12 fps, limiting the colors used.
 
OK. Thanks!

Another quick rigging question: have you ever tried using Cheetah's Spline IK? No matter how I set it up, it never works right. As soon as I add the spline to the tag everything goes haywire. And, not the same haywire, it just kind of explodes every time!
 
Here's an area for exploration, did you know you can animate the Constraint Tag.

Switching constraints mid animation, that is so cool.
 
OK. Thanks!

Another quick rigging question: have you ever tried using Cheetah's Spline IK? No matter how I set it up, it never works right. As soon as I add the spline to the tag everything goes haywire. And, not the same haywire, it just kind of explodes every time!
I'll post something for that...
 
I must be doing something wrong. I have never gotten it to work.

Did you just start with a straight bone chain and a Line spline? I made the spline editable so I had access to the points.
 
I'm attaching, what I think is the simplest set up I can think of, and it doesn't work. Put the spline in the tag and tell me what happens.
 

Attachments

  • splineIJ-test-2.jas.zip
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The spline was in the bone hierarchy and set to linear, set it to Bezier.
Although you can use multiple points on the spline, one on each end makes it easier to control.
 
It seems the Spline IK can't be influencing the bone it is in.

It does go nuts when you do that.

Check where the spline stops here:
Spline IK macro.jpg


The spline is in the parent bone, but the spline IK is set to influence only 6 bones.
 
OK. One of the versions I tried the bones just started spinning wildly in the view port. And, with the one I sent you, if I put the cursor over it, the whole thing just kept moving to the left on it's own!

I appreciate the troubleshooting! I really want to understand rigging in Cheetah, but it's got some odd behaviors at times.
 
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