Other than perhaps artistic purposes (maybe this wrangler is a distant relative of Elastigirl), why might we want to have our models stretch?
A quick assumption might be to help with posing and animating. If the arms could stretch just that tiny bit then perhaps the wrangler might have a better time holding onto a banjo, or it could help with having him sit on a horse but his feet don't easily reach the stirrups? That's what I'm thinking, but are there other reasons?
Another concern might be too much unintended stretching when animating. Maybe a walk cycle might look a bit funky. Could something be set up with a custom property to turn on/off the stretchy limbs?
For cartoon animation exaggeration is common. This is one of the uses for stretching. Even in realistic animation, sometimes you need to stretch the body or limbs to get a realistic feel to the animation. It's one of those things that comes with experience. As for your second question, Yes it is common to have switch property to turn stretching off/on. Some riggers do all stretching. Others do individual zones like legs, arms, etc. It just depends on script and the demands of the animators.
This might help you to understand it a little more. This is more about animation smears, but the concept also applies to stretch. Plus weird stretching can be used as smears.
Hey Harris,
Stretchy limbs are so much easier to work with. And your reasoning is spot on. Sometimes you just need to stretch it that tiniest little bit even on a realistic character. Say you're doing a walk cycle, and the leg needs to stretch like 5 more pixels - w/o stretching you would probably need to rework ALL the other poses in order to fix it. But if there's stretching, no problem - and it still looks good. But without that stretching the leg could pop or slide, making the whole shot look weird.
Also it's easy to avoid unintended stretching by not animating poorly.
This connects to what I was saying in one of your video reviews. I love how you were thinking how to make the rig 'idiot proof' (for lack of a better phrase).
But all that extra complication in the rigging isn't necessary (in that instance) because it's the animator's job to make the animation work. If they animate it poorly - that ain't your fault ;)
Cheers Dwayne - That video is excellent! I now recall an interview I listened to a while back with Sir Wade where he was talking about smears and multiples in the recent Kung Fu Panda film and I thought that was a fantastic concept. Great to get more context on it!
And Cheers Wayne! This is something I had a real problem with a million years ago when I used to use pivot stickfigure animator when I was a child. Granted, it is, or at least was, a 2D animation program. I was constantly having problems trying to make my characters hold on to objects but their hands couldn't reach far enough for it to look quite right so I often gave one arm a little extension that I could unravel in order to give them the extra reach. But yes, I totally get what you're saying about trying to make things unecessarily idiot proof and the implications entail!
Cheers guys!
Wow, I follow Sir Wade on YouTube, I'll have to look up this video. I haven't seen it yet.
I'm fairly certain it was this interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XUXdrqGNzI0&t=5202s