Dragon Rig
Hey all, first time posting on here so be gentle 
I'm in the proccess of creating a dragon rig using both gizmos and sliders/spinners etc for control. This is my first attempt at creating my own creature rig, so any help would be appreciated.
Here's what i have so far:
The model im using as the example mesh for the rig is from blizzard's World of Warcraft:
So far i've created an IK FK blend for the arms and legs(only the upper arm, lower arm and wrist, same for legs). For added help on the gizmos, i've made them scale with the slider for selecting the blend control.
The hands are IK controlled at the moment, i did have them as FK with reaction manager controlling them giving them a finger curl slider, but with that setup it didnt give me the freedom of an IK wrist.
This is really as far as i've got with what i know propperly, the rest is basic spline IK, i.e. the tail, spine and neck.
For the wings im thinking of just a plain IK setup.
I'm not sure if its the right way to go about it, so yeah any help is appreciated
I'm in the proccess of creating a dragon rig using both gizmos and sliders/spinners etc for control. This is my first attempt at creating my own creature rig, so any help would be appreciated.
Here's what i have so far:
The model im using as the example mesh for the rig is from blizzard's World of Warcraft:
So far i've created an IK FK blend for the arms and legs(only the upper arm, lower arm and wrist, same for legs). For added help on the gizmos, i've made them scale with the slider for selecting the blend control.
The hands are IK controlled at the moment, i did have them as FK with reaction manager controlling them giving them a finger curl slider, but with that setup it didnt give me the freedom of an IK wrist.
This is really as far as i've got with what i know propperly, the rest is basic spline IK, i.e. the tail, spine and neck.
For the wings im thinking of just a plain IK setup.
I'm not sure if its the right way to go about it, so yeah any help is appreciated
Replies
Cause it's almost impossible to see if it looks alright from photo's
It looks like there could be some cool stuff up on the head too, such as for the ears and dangly things on his chin. Animating that kind of stuff would probably add a lot in the way of characterization.
Really sweet rig so far man!
For the wings i actually made a rig about a year and a half ago using a modifed biped, which turned out pretty good for the flying animation. So if i could recreate that in my own setup using IK that'd be great.
I've run into a few problems recently.
Here are 2 videos showing my rig so far, one is a rig test that shows the problems i've come across and the other is an animation test to demonstrate the hand animation and automation (mainly springs and stretch) of the rig at the moment.
[ame]
[ame]
The main problems i'm having here is that:
a) the main control (the green rectangle) when scaled, doesnt scale the IK spline chains correctly.
b) the IK/FK blend needs a snap on it to switch between the 2 without any change in the rig, which i still need to find out how to do.
However, there is a problem with it and im not sure whats causing it. It seems to be a linking or orientation problem with the FK ankle control, see video below.
[ame]
Heres the maxscript im using:
ca = attributes RightlegFKIKblend ( Parameters params rollout: IKFKsnapR ( RightlegFKIKblend type:#float ui: IKFKsnapSP ) Rollout IKFKsnapR "Left leg IK/FK" ( button IKFKsnapSP "Snap FK to IK" on IKFKsnapSP pressed do ( $FK_rightleg_end.transform=$IK_rightleg_end.transform $FK_right_tibia.transform=$IK_right_tibia.transform $FK_right_femur.transform=$IK_right_femur.transform ) ) ) custAttributes.add $.modifiers[1] caThe problem here is that even though the FK to IK snap script works, its only the upper leg bone and the knee controller that snap corectly, the lower bone and nub plus the ankle controller seem to fly off above the leg, not too sure whats up with it. If anyone has any comments on how this might of happened i would appreciate it
I think the problem with your script is the order the bones are in. It should go from parent to child down the chain. Right now it looks like you are snapping the foot first, then the tibia then the femur. So what's happening is the foot gets aligned, but then when the tibia gets align, the foot gets moved because it's a child, and then moved again once the femur gets aligned. Make sense?
So reverse the order and see if it works.
Also, you should look into 3ds max's weak referencing for this sort of thing. Right now you are hard coding the names of your controllers which means if they would ever get renamed, your script would break. Here is a good write up from Paul Neale on it:
http://www.paulneale.com/tutorials/Scripting/weakReferences/weakReferences.htm
CGTalk also has a lot of good info on it if you search their Character Rigging section
I'm kind of a beginner at scripting e_x so i'll be looking into that weak referencing soon, but at the moment im just too busy with other stuff
But i did find the problem! it was that my script had a wrongly named object in it, which is now fixed and so it now works. But yes that ties into the referencing technique you've suggested aain e_x.
anyways, heres the final rig with the model on, got a link here:
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