Is there a way to rotate the shoulder bones without having the arms rotate with them?

For example if I am doing a shoulder shrug up then down, I 'd really like to have the arms maintain their orientation while following the shoulder bones rather than have to counter-animate them down then up to hide this FK-like behavior.

Is there a control to turn this on-off already perhaps?

Not at the moment, Robert...I'll look at it this evening. I used to have one in there, it got lost in the shuffle when we were going through all of the arm changes. Hopefully, I'll get it done tonight.

Here's a possible solution, Robert. Mess with it and see if it's what you're looking for. I think it is better, but I might have to make it switchable between the old method and this one so as not to mess anyone's work up. Let me know if there's anything you think needs to be different.

Yes! this is the behavior I would find more useful and I think would be more typical.
Probably, although I'm not sure I've seen anyone animate the shoulders yet.
yeah there's a spine thing i think is kind of iffy. It seems to work a bit better on this squetchy thom than on the scarecrow.

I'll make a new thread for that after i experiment with it some more.

Okay, here it is with a switchable shoulder...the controls are located in the "Animation_Controls/Arm_Controls". With the "right/left_arm_move_with_shoulder" turned "on" is the old shoulder movement.

I was thinking of asking for the same thing this is awesome.

David

Cool. I didn't update any of the TWO characters yet, I want to give everyone that is doing any texturing a heads-up before I start. I want to try to avoid any conflicts with anyone elses work. I think I can get them all updated in an evening, so, if everyone that is doing any texturing will upload their work today I'll knock it out tonight/tomorrow....Thursday night my time, which is in the US...Central Time. I'll hold off until around midnight Thursday, my time. I hope everyone reads this...well, pass it around, maybe we'll get most of the texturers' the info.

The Squetch Rig installations have been updated and I'm going to update the installation rigs on SVN in a few minutes as well.

I wouldn't count on everyone seeing your post here. But the models should merge as it's different parts of the model....texturing and rigging.

Yeah, it should merge...just covering all of my bases, Ken. I'm looking at the Quad Rig on this as well to determine if I should add it there. If it benefits (which I'm thinking it will), I'll add it to the Hippogyraf when I do the adjustments necessary once the face is done.

I should have his face done by Friday.

I'll have to pick it up again tomorrow, but, I am finished updating the shoulders on the biped characters up to and including the Scarecrow alphabetically...about two thirds done. I ran into some weighting that slowed me down more than I expected. I should get the remaining bipeds updated tomorrow...very late Friday night/early Saturday morning.

I set the default on the TWO characters to have the old shoulders so that any previous animations won't be affected. To turn on the updated shoulders, go into the "Animation_Controls/Arm_Controls" folder, there are two new on/off poses.

If anyone finds a problem, let me know.

I just took a quick look at this setup, This seems to cause problems when switching to IK, the elbow controller no longer works. I came up with a different solution with another option to boot. I'll try to post something later.

Here's my version. This also gives you the option to maintain the arms orientation when rotating the chest controller, but only if the option for the shoulder is on. These do not effect the IK arms, as far as I can tell.

Thanks for double-checking, Mark! That got by me...I'll take a look at it tonight. Thanks for working on it!

No problem David.

Too bad there isn't a way to just update just one skeleton and that would be mirrored to all the characters.

Guess not, huh?

It's not too bad, I spend a lot of time confirming that I didn't mess anything up.

I went back and took out the shoulder update I put in and replaced it with Mark's shoulder update (it's very cool), then, I set the default dopesheet percentages for the Preston Blair phonemes to 40%. I got the installation rigs done, Chief_Loon, Chopfyt, Fat_Farmhand, Generic_Loon, Green_Monkey_Woot, King_Bal and Ku-Klip (about a third of the way through). So, it'll be another day before I get them all done...I just ran out of time. Sorry for the delay.

I didn't finish putting in the updated shoulder, but I came close. Alphabetically, I have finished through the Tinwoodsman...so, just three or four left. I'll have to get them tomorrow/tonight.

All of the TWO characters on SVN now have the updated shoulders (when they have shoulders) and all of the Preston Blair pose defaults are set to 40% (when they have those poses). The only possible exception might be the textured Skinny_Farmhand that Jeff Bolle uploaded tonight. Once I find it, I'll update it to the present state of the Skinny_Farmhand model...I don't think it actually got uploaded though.

Is there any way that non -two-er's can use this rig?

The rig is posted in the rigging and relationship forum under squetchy Thom.

Did all the bugs get worked out yet on this rig. It sounds awesome even with them.

I'm not sure what bugs you're referring to, Mark...I'm not aware of any problems at this point. Everything that has been brought to my attention (and things I found on my own) have been corrected or improved on the biped rig (the Quad updates will be posted soon) by either Mark Skodacek or myself. If you find something that needs to be fixed, let me know and I'll take a hammer to it. There will be a new installation method once a fix we're waiting on happens.