Hi folks,

in scene 2_02_47 (and also in the scenes before) a vine has got hold of SC's foot and throws him through the air. But the vine is set up in a strange way: Two bone chains starting from the middle and going to the ends (and not one chain from one end to the other).

This is of much disadvantage if you want to pull the vine (rather) tight while one end must stay in place. I just can't figure out how that is intended. The vine poses don't seem to help me in this job, either. I would have expected one single bone chain like with an animal's tail ...

Any help or suggestions?

Yeah, you'd probably need to re-rig a copy of the vine. Just delete the existing bones(in a copy!) and create a chain of new bones from one end to the other. All you should have to do is assign the cps to the bones and it'll work.

An earlier shot (specifically 2_02_35) also has vines in it. I'm just now blocking and setting up initial poses. I'll pass on any insights I may get.

Well,
I have re-rigged the vine and made a single bone chain. When I grab the last bone and drag it around, the rig works fine. But when I constrain that bone to SC's leg so that the vine follows his fall, then only that last bone follows the leg, the other bones stay in place.

Where is my mistake in the rig?

(vine can be found in SVN under ...\Shared Data\Models\Props\Loon Props\Vine_B_single_chain.mdl)

The IK was locked on the bones. It should be ready to go now after you update.

Hi Ken,
yes, I had switched on IK because I thought that could help. Because with IK switched off on all the bones (like it is now) it does not work, either ... still just the last bone follows the leg (complete project 2_02_47 is in SVN if you want to take a look at the choreo; just scrub through the timeline).

I took a look. Just putting a Kinematic constraint on it did the trick. The only problem now is only the first half of the bones follow him smoothly but then he gets away from it and suddenly they snap to his foot again. I had to move the whole vine model to get around it. Take a look and see what you think.

Hi Ken,
it somehow still does not work I meanwhile have put the kinematic constraint to the second but last bone so that the vine stays better to his foot/leg. The first few frames it works fine, but then the leg goes away from the vine and later the bone chain performs a strange and much too sudden "snap". I also have tried additional constraints (translate to, orient like), but that does not help.

I also tried it without constraints and manual keying, but that is impossible with so many bones in the chain (the interpolation makes the vine wind very oddly).

Do you have more ideas? (SVN is up to date)

As I said, I had found the same and compensated for the snap by moving the whole vine model. I don't know why it's snapping....could be a bug.