Flexi Rig

Before I move onto rigging my character I wanted to try out a few different ways of rigging. I followed a tutorial on Digital Tutors: Rigging Quadrupeds in Maya where I created a flexi rig. A flexi rig allows a good amount of flexibility and twisting, along with squash and stretch whilst retaining its volume. Being a modular component, you only have to build it once, then you can implement it and edit it into other models. By using a twist deformer rather than a spline IK, it can twist further, past 360 degrees allowing more deformation and flexibility.

As part of this rig setup I had to use the Node Editor in Maya. This enables you to view, edit and create new node connections. When adding the twist deformer onto the blendshape surface and connecting it to the base surface, when rotating it did not rotate in the same direction. To change this it had to be done within the Node Editor using multiply and divide utility. I will need to go back and watch the tutorials again to get my head fully around it but the gist of it is that by connecting the rotate x values of the control groups to the multipliers, and then to an plus/minus average node, this will allow you to be able to control the end angle with the mid and end control, or control it with all three controls. The plus/minus average node ensures that if the mid control is turned on, whilst the end control is off, the end control stays in place.

Node editor - twist

Node editor - squash and stretch

Below is a video of me testing out the flexi rig I created. There are switches between the mid and end control which allows certain parts of the rig to be moved at a time. This can allow for more control over certain parts e.g having on the middle controller being able to bend. From this I would be able to get some good deformations and a wide possibility of movements. I'm going to also test out an FK/IK spine to see what produces the best result before deciding on the route I'm going to take with my dragon rig.