Rigging Ideas - Fake Ribbon Part 1
- jasondobra
- 1 day ago
- 2 min read
Recently I've been working in video games, Coming from a film background I have to rethink my rigs to include more low poly/joint solutions that have minimal joint chain depths and influence budgets.
If you've been following me before, I'm a big fan of simple proxy skinned solutions.
One that comes to mind is the ribbon setup, which is handy for getting desirable shaping through the use of a skinned surface. generally involves the pinning of follicles to a surface and adding a number of joints to deform a geometry. These days tend to steer away from ribbon setups in game mainly due to the constraints and budgets for keeping performance. There's also the case where ribbons in my experience follicles flip and presents another skinning solution that needs to be managed and rebuilt.
This "Fake Ribbon" idea is a proxy skinned based solution designed to mimic the behaviour of a ribbon. as you can tell its not hundred percent accurate especially with chains and ropes. how ever from a distance its not bad. Especially when rigging for games. The setup more or so, is just the constraining of a regular ribbon setup, only eliminates the need for costly IK splines and ribbon surfaces setups. To set this example up.
5 controls are parent constrained to 5 joints that are skinned.
The 3 master controls are on the ends and in the middle.
the Middle and Ends are a parent constraint to the middle and end groups respectively.
the Ends and Middle are used to aim the control groups with aim constraints.
The Middle and Ends I have made rotation up objects so you can twist the chains in sections.
That's basic setup to make it easy i used a proxy skinning. And Presto! Again not a hundred percent if you plan to stretch it on bend it the illusion quickly breaks however if you are rigging a background object not to close to a camera this is great.
Anyhoo give it a go, I can see this working in other places like arms and legs of cartoonie rig bow bend controls, possibly in the face rigging. I've recently set is up on animal face rigs works great just be careful of interp types I generally set most things to no flip, but can be costly in DG if you use too much. Of course the vanilla nodes can be replaced by more efficient math nodes.
If you need anything reach out.
Jase
Comments