Lamia Rigging Reqesting Advice

TAN

Hello people. Just a quick question about rigs.

I am animating a lamia character for potfolio purposes. I am using CAT in 3ds Max 2013.
I just can't make this forward movement of snake body ! I watched several videos of snake "locomotion" and even searched around using "meduse + rig + lamia" ect.

Any ideas about where to look or what to do ?

Oh and here is a screenshot. She has quite a long tail you see, and that is partlt to blame

Thanks and regards.






Rig only.

Haftoof

So, snakes move through curved motions. Couple of things, figure out the key sections of the snake body that are "pushing" and the key portions that are just following the whip-like motion. In either case the "push" is going to be a left to right motion that is going to appear to "roll" down the length of the body.

You might want to look into studying "whip effect" motion in animation. I played with it on a 7 section tail, and it simply involved having the later segments (farther back) affected "Later" in the timeline for the same motion. With a snake though that motion is going to come even slower as you can have several "pushing" curls in the tail at once.

TAN

Whip effect eh. Gonna check now. Thanks Haftoff.

Haftoof

As for changing the timing on motion I utilized a dope-sheet for a lot of the shifting of the motion. I did this in maya, but each Joint of the tail rotated a certain amount to two key positions on either side. I then went ahead and shifted each joint down the tail so it's key-lock position was reached later than the previous. This created the "wave" you're looking.

Now as far as snakes and their anatomy, it may not be a perfect whip motion as I suspect snakes move by rippling select muscle groups in tandem, but the motion should be the same.

Found this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLptFF7Epow Might be a decent idea, basically using a control plane it looks like. No sound though... Do some looking around, might find what you need.

Also you will probably want the way the snakes motion works to affect the body of the lamia. Check out some other animations (video games movies for naga/snake people/medusa) and you might find that their hips gyrate and move a lot more than a standard walk cycle. Being "Pushed" along at the waist is slightly different than walking.

Good luck :P

Concept Material: http://www.rubberbug.com/reptiles.htm

More source material: http://science.howstuffworks.com/zoology/reptiles-amphibians/snake3.htm

TAN

Haftoof, thanks for all the advices and links. I searched quite a bit last night and worked hard this morning. I managed get it working by using CAT + Apply Max IK+ Spline Shape+ Wave Space Warp ( Kinda long I know)

A simple shot.







I had a great problem with my rig though. I think I must write it down here so that people with the same problem would make a quick forum search and get their answer.

Tail of my rig had in fact a Tail + Bone setup. I had Tail parts of CAt from Tail01 to Tail05 and then added simply bones to it by using "Add Bone" . That created a huge problem.

CAT asks you to select the bone at the top of the hierarchy, and since I had Tail bones 1-5 it only applied Controllers to these bones. There was just no way to extend these controllers.

So I had to animate frame-by-frame by using Wave Space Warp as a reference. Result is not bad ( although would be WAAAY much faster and more beautiful if I hadn't screwed up the rig) But I still managed to do it.

So strictly stick to your CAT rigs own conventions people. You will have a much easier time later on. Trust me.


For reference I also found this. It is quite insightful so to speak.