Hello! =)
I had a couple of questions pop into my head as I was going through this lesson. I couldn't get the images to paste in here properly, so I put links to them instead. Thank you!
1. Does Bone_01 have to be parented with keep offset, or would it also be fine parented and connected? I wasn't sure if this was for the sake of the example or there might be some other reason behind it. I figured it might make sense if the bendy chain represented something like an arm and there was a gap between where the clavicle ends and the arm bones begin.
Image of the part of the schematic I'm looking at.
2. I'm trying to understand why there is an extra layer of mechanism bones for this setup. It doesn't look like there would be any circular reference or something that could break the constraints. Why not place the 'B' constraints directly on the DEF bendy bones instead?
Schematic that I scribbled on for visual reference.
Oh. Wait. Maybe the mech bones are needed because of the deformation bendy bones having their handle targets set to the tweak bones?
When you parent to the root bone it's 99% of the time will be offset. Only in rare cases do you use connected to the Root. Of course, you can always use connected and see how it works. Playing around and trying different things to see how it works is one of the best ways to learn Rigging.
Hi Elouan,
1. Yes this bone HAS to be a disconnected child for 2 reasons.
Firstly, it would snap to the tail of the Root bone rather than staying where it is.
Secondly, the connected option means it won't be able to to be translated away from that position. The 'connected' option is like super-super-glue and nothing can break it, not even a constraint. So that would mean the rest of the chain would work but that first segment would just be stuck to the root bone no matter where you moved it.
2. I see you figured it out. The handles.
In this setup, the MCH bones do all the work, but they can't do that last little bit, so that's where the DEF bones finish the job. Now that I'm thinking deeply about this, often in works the other way around. (The DEF bones do all the work but can't do that 1 last thing so the MCH bones help them over the finish line)
Anyway, a good way to figure this out is to break stuff and see what happens.
Breaking stuff is fun!