An animators best friend is not a dog. Flying Fox is an animator friendly rig that allows you to squash and stretch according to a direction and a position that you choose. It will also allow you to shape the rig according to how you would prefer to draw it with the use of "super-controls". Any pose is possible! It also has a tail and ears that work with the rest of the rig nicely. Watch the video to see how to use the controls.
- Bouncing Ball
- Tail
- Ears
- Partially Control Free
CreativeCrash link: FlyingFox v1
Download link: FlyingFox v1
Hi David,
Just a word of caution. The fox rig is really similar to Animation Mentor's Tailor Rig. But other than that it's a great rig. Maybe if you changed it and made it more like a snake with a big head, just an idea. Good luck with everything.
Sincerely,
Lord Ryan Santos
Hi David,
Just a word of caution. The fox rig is really similar to Animation Mentor's Tailor Rig. But other than that it's a great rig. Maybe if you changed it and made it more like a snake with a big head, just an idea. Good luck with everything.
Sincerely,
Lord Ryan Santos
Hi David.
wonderful rig you have here. I am having one simple problem with it. If you bend the joints of the tail a bit too much, the tail starts to deform and edges/corners form.
Is there a smoothing function in the rig in order to get rid of this?
Thanks a bunch
Screenshot of what i mean: http://img10.imageshack.us/i/flyingfox.jpg/
Hey Yacoub! Glad you like the rig. I knew about that.. I have a fix that I'm not happy with. But if you'd like to try it, follow these steps.
1.) Make sure the flyingFox is loaded in your scene in Maya. It can be the default flyingFox or one that you've animated already, it doesn't matter.
2.) Open your script editor, and enter these commands (under a MEL tab).
addAttr -ln "smoothTail" -at double -min 2 -max 30 -dv 2 flyingFox_MainControl;
setAttr -e-keyable true |flyingFox_MainControl.smoothTail;
connectAttr -f flyingFox_MainControl.smoothTail ffd2.localInfluenceS;
3)Then run it.
It's simple. You just have to apply this fix once for every file. If you open the original file, apply this script and save it, succeeding animations on that file will have the ability you requested.
In essence, the script will add another attribute in the ball control (where visibilities are set). The attribute will control how smooth the tail will be. It goes from 2-30.
The only downside of the method behind this and the reason I did not use it for another update on the FF is the lack of volume preservation whenever you bend the tail. If I better method (and hopefully simpler) comes to mind, I'll update the rig. In the mean time, I'll keep it as is. The purpose of the rig was to demonstrate the possibility of a controller free set up by the use of blendshapes.
Hope this helps!
So essentially what it does is reduce the volume of the tail so that the segments of the tail don't intersect? I'm no modeler/rigger but is there a way to rig it so that when the tail is bent, the tail 'squashes' in a way - the same way a human arm would at the back of the elbow when bent?
Anyway I think this is the best solution for now, i'm only using the rig to learn overlapping action
Many Thanks David, this rig helped me alot
and aside from that simple problem, the rig is very easy to use.
Keep up the good work
hi john, i am a student from china ,and i have watching your book rigging demo reel , it's awsome! i like it. but i can't find the tutorial about it , can you give me some advice for it or the tutorial !~ tks very much !!~~~~
Hi Kingtjl, unfortunately, I wont be able to finish the tutorial I started long ago about the book rig. If you want to learn how its done, try using the book rig that I just placed in this site that people could download.
Hi David,
Thank you very much for this rig. I used it for my animation exercises. Obviously it has got a fluent tail than other rigs. Only problem is overlapping faces, it seems dark while rendering. But I fixed that problem. Thanks again.