need a pointer for my rig

posted to: Bendy Bones

You're right, bendy bones are awesome ... but are they a valid choice for my rig?

I'm trying to rig wings.
I've watched the rigging portion of Kent Trammell's short film character production course, and it's exactly the setup I want. In addition to IK-FK blending he also used an IK spline to make the wings more bendy and cartoony when desired. Perfect for my cartoon character.
But now I'm wondering if I could use bendy deformation bones instead of the additional spline IK and simply add a driver to "ease in/out", and switch between realistic wing and "feathered tentacle" that way.
But how would I make the feathers' root bones follow the shape of a b-bone? The spline approach provides a ton of bones/joints to directly parent them to .... but there's no way to directly use a b-bone's segments, right? Would armature constraints work?

  • adrian replied

    @waylow will undoubtedly have an answer for you, because as they say 'only smarties have the answer'


  • Wayne Dixon replied

    If I understand the question correctly, I think you want to parent a bone to a bendy part of the bendy bone.


    Yes you can do that.  Use the Armature constraint.

    It will twist and bend with the bone.  However, make sure the bone  doesn't have a parent.  Otherwise you will get double transformations.

    https://cgcookie.com/lesson/armature-constraint-demo

  • protator replied

    Thx. Haven't touched modeling software in 8 years and there was no bendy stuff in my old Maya2010.
    Now that AD apparently decided that my perpetual license isn't that perpetual after all *insert rant* I'm back at square one.
    A noob with faint memories of what's possible. But there are worse fates than having to learn Blender I guess ^^ .