Rigging Masterclass: Day Two

Continuing with the scene file from yesterday's session, I spent today learning how to rig the spine. Although a lot of the technique involved was similar to rigging of the leg, a few different methods and tools have been used.

Step Snap

After the spine joints were created, each individual joint was rotated using step snap to align the orients to ensure that the rotation was synchronised.

Advanced Twist Controls

I also used the advanced twist control, which initially appeared to break the model, but was quick to fix the issue with a few alterations in the attribute editor.

Advanced Twist Controls (Fix)

A controller to control the object's centre-of-gravity was created, which was parented to the hip and rib control offset groups.

The final spine rig

In MEL: arclen -ch true "spine_CRV" was used to find the length of a curve, followed by 
createNode multipleDivide -n spineScale_MDV along with a few connections in the Connection Editor to enable a stretchy spine.

Below is the final outliner display for spine:

I then began working on the arm, which included rigging, creating an IK and FK handle and creating attributes.

Adding the FK/IK attribute

In tomorrow's session, we will be continuing to rig the arm.