Re: spacer rigs

[Raffaele Scaduto-Mendola <raffaele(at)turbolinea.com>]

This doesn't solve the problem, but I did want to mention it should any 
coding guru/plugin expert might be following this thread.
I have also been thinking about this problem for a bit. In my previous 
jobs I had access to custom deformer that offer a base.
You could then rig/deform the deformer without moving the base, and you 
would get a normal deformation, you could deform the base only so the 
mesh would transform through the deformer, or you could move both and 
the mesh would not deform.

If you ever take a look at the SharkTale pirhana or sea horse crash 
sequence you can see the result. I used this setup mostly to blendshape 
deform the character to its basic shapes but then have secondary 
"influence like" deformers to control the lip, and have the control move 
(but have no effect until you moved them ) with the blendshapes.

Influence deformer from my understanding are global based, so the mesh 
heiarchy doesn't affect them.
Now what would be nice, ( and maybe theirs a way to do this using 
moondust), is to have a optional "influence base" you could optionally 
connect to any given influence.
Then you could get that control of when and when not to deform.

Just some tips, that might help figure this out.
RSM


Eric Thivierge wrote:
> Hey David,
>
> If I'm understanding you correctly, have you looked at Steven Caron's 
> post on XSI Blog about dorritos? Is this what you're looking for?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Eric Thivierge, XSI Database Admin
> www.xsidatabase.com
> eric(at)xsidatabase.com
> Forum Username: EricTRocks
>
>
> David Gallagher wrote:
> > Oh, I guess one method would be to parent the second mesh and all the 
> > joints as a whole to the traveling mesh, but I'm looking for a way to 
> > more discretely parent controls around the body.
> >
> >
> > David Gallagher wrote:
> >
> > > Does anyone have any ideas of workarounds for "spacer rigs". It's 
> > > common in the Maya world at least to rig a second mesh and pipe in 
> > > the result as a live blendshape. So, the second mesh is skinned to 
> > > joints, for instance. Some of the joints, you might want direct 
> > > control over, but they can't leave their location. In order to get 
> > > them to ride with the main rig but only engage when actually 
> > > directly used, you make "spacer" controls that mirror the actual 
> > > joints, parent them to some part of the body, then pass their 
> > > numeric transform values only back to the real joints sitting at 
> > > global center.
> > >
> > > I think this is pretty standard, but I've heard of alternatives, 
> > > such as inverting the shape from certain deformations, cancelling 
> > > out the unwanted deformations.
> > >
> > > Anyway, I'm interested in any alternatives to spacer rigs that are 
> > > used.
> > >
> > >
> > > What would be optimal, is if you could transform the same joints in 
> > > two different ways. One which just changes their location in space, 
> > > and another which makes the deformation.
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