Couple of videos for ya

yo I got some updates here- before I go further I need some feedback on the head:

My first attempt at the head spline controls was more flexible as youd expect but it kinda looked weird when deforming. Furthermore when you moved the spine around the head just stayed put and the deformation broke the geometery. I've pretty much worked today experimenting with various head/spline handle setups, and the first video posted is a demo of the best solution I could come up with. It also means the head can now translate as well as rotate, because the spline curve is parented to the head controller. (oh yeah its not on the video but I also found a way to link up those squash and stretch deformers to attributes, so theyr all working nicely now too.) See what you think and let me know.



The second video is mainly demonstrating the working stretchy arms. Feels good to post this one I can promise you! I sort of understand how I did it; it required expressions linked to dimension nodes that work out the difference between the stretched distance and and the intial distance, and filled in that difference on the scale values of the joints. Then a couple of clamp nodes linked to the same values so that the arm still bends like a normal IK setup as well. Thanks to Alex Hulse for finding this very helpful tutorial by Paul DiPierro. I learnt a little bit more about scripting and expressions as well through this. Take note guys, a '$' (dollar sign) at the beginning of a word means your stating the word to be a variable, and ';' (semi-colon) means 'end expression'.
This video also demonstrates the new shoulder controls- these work nicely with the stretchy arms. It also shows the wrist and the hand controls are in working order. Sorted the hands out today with set driven keys, and theyr looking sweet. I also went round most of the controllers and locked off and hit attributes that wernt going to be needed, and changed the wireframe colour of the controllers so that it looks nice, and slapped in a master control with 'Ed' written on it for selecting the whole character.



My concerns for tomorrow then are to do something about the teeth and eyes that just dont quite follow the face properly. To be honest though it'l be a miracle if I could get them to follow every possible movement of the head properly, they will probably require some degree of keyframing to keep them in place. I'l do my best to minimise that though. The clusters around the eyes might need some work as well, as parenting them to stay with the rig doesnt end well. The only other thing was the controls for the right ear and wrist that only seem to work in reverse. Skinning shouldnt take too long as most of it works really nicely already, aside from that it's nearly done. So close.
Also, how plausable is it (should it come down to it) to scale the environments up and down to fit the characters? I remember I was able to do it that way round during bare-bear, and it's looking like if the scale isnt right then thats the way we're gunna have to do it here. Getting a whole rig to scale up and down too much is very unlikely.