As we all know there are couple of techniques for building advance twisting torso . One is by Jason Schleifer which became a very standard and well known technique in the industry and second is Arron Holly’s Ribbon Spline.
As we know there is always an issue when we rotates spine about 180 degree, which can be avoided by using, yes you are right thats “Ribbon”. Very handy and great technique.
Recently I saw a tutorial written by Mat Berglund about creating no flip spine with the help of ik handles, pretty straight forward and time saving. It is a blend of quite a bit of ribbon and number of IK handles. Very useful technique.
Finally after spending 2 months, I completed coding for Create Biped, auto rig script for Maya.
I included most of the techniques from Maya MasterJason Schleifer.
It is based on broken hierarchy, each part of the biped need to rig separately.
Rig features :
Torso :
User can on/off stretch and volume preserve and he can also adjust value of squash (is volume preserve is ON) by selecting proper node and now, he need to just manipulate graph in graph editor (as shown in video).
Neck :
User can on/off stretch for neck too. Head could be totally independent as well as follow along neck, shoulder, hips and COG with positions and rotations controlling independently .
Arms :
1) If user needs segmented arms, which also handles real arm twisting from upper arm to wrist, means arms doesn’t break at all even elbow rotated any directions. And of course it is very use full for deformations.
2) Stretchy Arms, as usual arm will get stretch far away having model on
3) Elbow Lock, this will lock down elbow at pole vector’s position and user will still have access of stretching the arm from both side i.e. from upper arm and from hand.
4) Auto Clavicle, this will automate the clavicle movement considering elbow position. User can adjust blend from 0% to 100%, for how much it need to follow with the arm. So, now user don’t require to animate the clavicle. Because most of the time animators ignore the clavicle.
5) Seamless FKIK Snapping, it snaps FK arm to IK and IK arm to FK. Very handy.
Fingers : Fingers are having advance behavior like bending, sliding, scrunch etc..
Legs: 1) As usual leg is having FKIK setup
2) Stretch and knee lock feature
3) Segmented limbs for better performance (same as arms)
