Blocked Transforms

Here is a video of a rig I did showing a cool concept I learned from my friend Paolo. It uses the concept of 'blocked transforms'.

Its pretty cool because there are no typical controllers such as curves etc. So the animator gets a completely clean viewport in which to animate. I like the intuitiveness of the setup.

I added some color to the hotspots on the mesh so the animator can see where the clickable controls are. Its meant to be a proof of concept.

Simple

• IK/Fk matching (blending & snapping)
• IK/FK spine
• IK/FK limbs
• Stretchy Spine (Volume preservation)
• Footcontrol attributes
• independent hip control

Advanced

• autoclavicle
• Visibility Control
• controllable jiggle
• Trigger, shelf, and window selection interfaces
• Low / High res proxy toggles
• Squash and Stretch (Volume preservation)
• bendy arms
• Dynamic parenting (space switching)
• Animatable pivots on feet, root and head
• Stick elbows and knees in place
• Flip & match pose

Gnomon Workshop
Carlo Sansonetti


AFR IIA

Bipedal Rig

Head
Torso
Arms
Hands
Legs
Feet


Torso
Movable Pivots?

It is the relationship between the hips and shoulders that defines the action of the torso.
Pure FK spine is not good coz you want to move the hips and shoulders independently.

eg. Independent Hips - Wrestling Pose

#1 FK Control - Pivot at root
Pro -
Predictable motion
Small number of controls
Similar to "real life"
Easy to move in arcs

Cons -
Difficult to make changes
Independent motion not easily achieved
Spine compression difficult

#2 Independent Shoulders and Hips Pro -
Total independence of hips and shoulders
Small number of controls
Easy to tweak
Spine Compression piece of cake
Allows for unique cartoony poses
Cons -
Arcs can be more difficult to achieve

#3 FK and IK spine on top
Pro -
All the pros of 1 and 3
Cons -
Once the spine is pulled away, its tougher to create nice arcs

Ribbon Spine
Nifty Spine

Split selected Joint script

Spline IK settings
All Auto On

Add 2 extra joints (1 for shoulder , 1 for hips) for skinning the curve!

Curve length
Select the back curve
arclen -ch 1
Back Scale = Current Curve Length / Original Curve Length


Twisting the back

Advanced Twist Controls
World Up Type -> Object Rotation Up (Start / End)
Set "World up Object" and "World up object 2"
Up Axis -> "-Z"
Up Vector -> 0 0 -1
Up Vector 2 -> 0 0 -1

Rotation Order(?)


Squash and Stretch (Volume Preservation)
Squash = 1 / sqrt(Stretch)

Custom Squash and Stretch
createNode frameCache
Connect custom attribute to frameCache (stream) using connection editor
To use it -> .varying

The movable pivot
Direct Connection
Locator Translate -> Cube Rotate Pivot

PIVOT and OBJECT

• (Direct Connections) Connect PIVOT Translate -> OBJECT Rotate Pivot
• Parent PIVOT to OBJECT
• Duplicate PIVOT eg.(NEWPIVOT)
• Key position OBJECT and old PIVOT
• Get Local Position of NEWPIVOT
• Get World Position of OBJECT
• Move the PIVOT to world position of NEWPIVOT
• Move the OBJECT to its old world position