I have an unusual rigging challenge--sort of like rigging a cross between an octopus and a tree. I am creating my own artist's conception of one of the "old ones" described in H. P. Lovecraft's "At the Mountains of Madness". I started this a while ago as a low priority 3D modeling excercise. Then I heard that Guillermo Del Toro will be producing a movie of "At the Mountains of Madness" and later had a nice chat with William Stout (while at Dragon Con) who will be doing concept art for the movie. Since then, my interest in developing this project has grown considerably.

Attached is a picture of what I've created so far. I'd like to develop a custom rig for animating this puppy. I think this will be a very interesting challenge, so I'll certainly appreciate any input in the form of suggestions or examples that could help this process along. Think in terms of tentacles for the most part. Then progress to branches of tentacles!

I figure by the time we get this thing moving we'll have advanced the art of rigging invertibrates in A:M.

The wings are normally folded against the barrel like torso, tucked into the recesses. (They would not be used like normal wings--I picture them being used more like electrodes for a plasma drive.)

The fact that this thing has five legs should make for a very interesting walk cycle!

The branching arms will provide a lot of room for creativity when it comes to the complicated gestures these creatures could execute. Imagine getting "flipped off" by one of these!

Anyway, I figure this might create a lively project for this special topic forum.

What the---

I think I got stung by one of those at Myrtle Beach!

I'd certainly look into using The Setup Machine and it's ability to create 'creature' custom rigs. For the tentacles, look for the 'Old Bendy Legs' tutorial. I hope you can help them out with the concept art!

Wow... whatever that is... that is a riggingchallenging

*Fuchur*

Well, it's certainly time for a Lovecraft revival! Can't wait to see this textured and rigged!

I think TSM allowed for "multiple tail" rigging. You could make each "tentacle" a tail. Then you could even put in some partial constraints for some tentacles to follow others with lag so you wouldn't have to animate them all, all the time.

-vern

one way to walk with 5 legs Click to view attachment



Rigged in 20 minutes in TSM2!

How to rig 5 legs in TSM2 pentapedrig.mov (48 megs)

Thanks for the demo! As you noted at the end of the rigging demo, a rotating cycle of leg movements is a possible pattern. The walking motion I imagine is a rotating lift of two legs at a time to give it a sort of rotating "glide" kind of gait. For instance, the two legs would lift at different times, so one leads in time, but they are both aloft for part of the gait. The first of the next pair would lift almost as soon as the second of the preceding pair touches the ground. I think this would give the gait a smooth gliding affect and would make a change in direction as easy as changing the "vector" of each foot's motion. Wish I had time to give it a try tonight, but I'm swamped with "priorities" most of this week.



I think that will be an interesting experiment! One thing I want to be able to do is control the tentacles at the end to work like both fingers (albeit "jointless") and yet also be capable of whip-like tentacle motions as well. It might be interesting to be able to move the tentacles in very symetrical patterns as well as independently. Since the tentacles are the arms and hands of the creatures, they will take on the most complex and expressive motions. I even imagine a sort of complex sign language using the arms. Squash and stretch is also a very natural part of "tentacular" motion, especially when grabbing a human victim (like a gecko's tongue)!

Thanks!

The wings I imagine being deployed by "inflating" the ribs, rather than extenting bones like a bat wing. No flapping motions as I imagine them being sort of "ion drive" fins.

Attached is a rather complicated looking diagram showing the order of movement for the walk cycle I imagine. Foot "a" is the first moved of each pair. This rotation could of course be done in the oposite direction (clockwise) as well. I'm not sure exactly how this would look, but I bet it would look pretty natural. (I did not take the time yet to figure out what of this makes one complete cycle that could be smoothly repeated.)

It occurs to me that a simpler rotating pattern might work as well, where consecutive feet move in the rotating pattern instead of pairs.

How about the lugnut tightening pattern?

Click to view attachment

you could overlap consecutive feet quite a bit since they are always about opposite from each other.

That too!

For faster locamotion, I also imagine the creature hopping, with lag between the arms and the legs in a graceful manner. So basically any human prey would not stand a chance of escaping one of these Old Ones.

(BTW, Robert, I also decended from Vikings, but in my case they WERE the stocky, hairy ones, who invaded and settled what is now Normandy. The ones that became impoverished Huguenots later on. Check out Chateau Gaillard, which was probably one of my ancestor's digs before Richard the Lionheart moved in.)

Here is a zipped project that can be used for joint experiments (even though technically a creature without bones probably does not have any joints--other than the one he might be smoking). It contains models which are parts of the Old One model. We can use these to experiment with rigging the particular parts of the overall model. I am reserving copyrights to the Old One model for now, but you can use these parts for inspiration or feel free to modify parts you like to derive your own creation.

Feel free to experiment with these.

Here is the leg geometry for the Old One's leg. It probably has more splines than necessary for tentacle type movements. I'm guessing this many cross-section spline rings should allow for smooth whip-like motions.

In most cases, I just want a walking motion, so TSM2 rigging like what Robert Holmen did in the demos would be just fine. I'd prefer that for animating walks. With the simplified geometry of his example, I can see how normal leg and foot bones would work just fine. With the additional spline rings in the full model do any of you have suggestions for getting a smooth tentacle like arc? I don't want it to look like it has bones and joints.

I've been away from rigging stuff for too long, so I've gotten pretty rusty. Not that I had gotten very far understanding it in the first place.

Thanks!

I have a plan. What if I created a control spline for each leg with just enough points that I get a nice rounded curve that will work nicely with two leg bones (thigh and shin). Then constrain to this spline the bones that the rings of the leg mesh are linked to. These leg mesh bones can be restricted to point along the spline controlled by the leg bones of the rig. Nice round curvature (no obvious joint) and each spline ring can be scaled to shrink appropiately if the length of the control spline is increased (preserving the volume of the leg). In fact the position of each spline ring bone along the control spline could be independently adjusted along with the diameter of the corresponding ring so you could have contaction and thickening in one portion of the tentacle and stretching and thinning in another portion.

Holy cow! An image popped into my head of using an expression to control that "thickening" in portions of the mesh. Imagine if you used a bone rotation or translation to control scale of each bone in the "tentacle". Each bone's scale would be matched to a range of rotation or translation. As you change the control bone the "bulge" travels along the tentacle or "body" mesh. This could be COOOL as heck.

This could be similar to the expression I used for my original folding curtain rig. The expression was based on a change in position relative to the bone that moved. When a bone got with a certain distance the other bone started to follow it. the same could be done for scaling. Just change it to a range and PERCENT of scale. The bulge would gradually enlarge and travel along the mesh. This would be like a snake swallowing something... or a big evil alien swallowing a mutilated cow or something....

... I'm all giddy and excited now. When I get a chance I might do a simple proof of concept.

-vern

This is showing some real promise. The "thigh" and "shin" bones work like normal leg bones. These control a three-CP spline (the "control path"). The bones of the leg mesh each control a ring of the mesh and each are constrained to the control path, with "store roll" off, and with appropriate amounts of ease set for each bone along the path. Works pretty well even with this very simple setup. the three attached picture show how well it works so far. At extremes angles, though, the control path spline does not keep it's nice gradual curve. I'm guessing this could easily be fixed by a relationship that adjusts the gamma of the middle CP of the control path as the angle between the thigh and shin gets smaller. With this setup you can now independently modulate the diameter of each ring and its bone's ease along the path to get all kinds of creepy pulsating width and stretching effects beyond a simple squash and stretch.

This should work well with the complex arms, too.

Stay tuned!

Click to view attachment Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

Pretty exciting idea, isn't it! I used this in the tree growth animation, where I move the bone of each spline ring using ease and adjusted the diameter at the same time.

Tree Growth Animation WIP

Before that, I did the undulation to make a more simple "Tube Monster" swallow an airplane.

Pseudopod Swallows an Airplane

I used pose sliders to control the ease and spline ring diameters in both of these (a very complicated nesting of pose sliders above this basic control layer in the case of the tree animation). Expressions could make for some really interesting controls for this sort of thing!

I can imagine using this to animate a gigantic, slimy, earthworm oozing down your street, while the possums harass your neighbors.

Look forward to seeing what you come up with.

I think a Smartskin controlling the gamma of the control path spline is going to work just fine. I just need to learn to set it up properly. I added the Smartskin to the "shin" bone in the same action as everything else and now the IK has really gone wacky. Basically I just want the angle between the "thigh" bone and the "shin" bone to modulate the gamma of the control path spline.

I'll need to find a turorial on Smartskins and other relationships and how to mix and match them without weird interactions.

So here is basically what I want to achieve:

1) A three CP spline (the control path) forms a simple guide path that the "thigh" bone and "shin" bone of a "conventional" leg will control.
2) The rings of the tentacle mesh each get a bone asigned.
3) Each of the "ring" bones is constrained to the "control path" with each set to the proper ease along the path. Turn off the "store roll". The ease of each "ring" bone and the scale of the ring can then be independently controlled with pose sliders, without having to worry about the bending of the tentacle. Then Vern can think up cool expressions for some really creepy worm like action!
4) As the angle of between the "thigh" and the "shin" gets small, the control path sort of kinks, so a Smartskin should be used to adjust the gamma so the curvature stays nice and smooth at all angles. The really cool thing is that only the simple control path spline needs the Smartskin!

I need to learn how to do this so it all works with the TSM2 leg rig.

Oops, almost forgot to attach the picture showing the tentacle with the gamma controlled by a Smartskin relationship.

I'm wondering if setting up a pose slider for the middle control point's gamma magnitude, then using a smartskin on the shin bone to control the pose would be easier to set up. I notice that the spline likes to squirm around quite a bit if I try to manipulate the gamma directly in the smartskin.

Any suggestions on how I might improve the procedure? I've described what I want to accomplish in earlier posts. What I've described so far should work well for the legs and should facilitate using the normal TSM2 leg controls.

I would also like suggestions on manipulators for more general bending of the control path spline, as in a tentacle that can bend in any direction. "Control the path and you control the world!...er...the tentacle." The key here is to get nice smooth bends in the control path spline with a relatively simple control rig.

Thanks!
Bill Gaylord

Could you post a short animation that shows the problem in action? I'm not sure I follow it yet from just the description.

First (TrunkWithoutSmartskin01.mov) shows wire-mesh and bones for the use of the control spline without modulating the spline CP biases to keep the shape nice and rounded. It kinks in a pronounced way at an acute angle between the "thigh" and "shin" bones. Second (TrunkWithSmartskin03.mov) show the control spline CP biases modulated with a smartskin to keep it nice and round even at an acute angle between the "thigh" and "shin" bones. Note that I did not get the Smartskin set up so that the biases were smoothly adjusted throughout the range of angles between the "thigh" and "shin" bones. I have not gotten the hang of selecting the bias for each key in the Smartskin. Perhaps my original idea of creating pose sliders for the bias parameters might make things easier. Third (TrunkWithoutSmartskin02.mov) and forth (TrunkWithSmartskin04.mov) show the corresponding shaded views. At least from these you might get an idea of what I have in mind.

About the wacky behavior in the action--I had tried to ad the Smartskin inside the action. It worked much better when I created the Smartskin in the model and a separate action to constrain the "ring" spline bones to the control path spline. I need to better understand how poses and actions work.

I'm not sure you need bias adjustment.

Here's my attempt using smartskin to adjust the rotation and placement of the bones. There's no bias keying. I haven't quite maintained the volume of the tube, that would take further refinement, but the curve is always smooth.

Click to view attachment

Click to view attachment



However, I think an all-constraints solution to float and turn the bones would be more successful, with smoother interpolation and... one could write a TSM2 script* to automate the rigging of that structure over multiple instances of it.

*One would have to be quite well-versed in TSM scripting

That looks much smoother than what I assembled, and the length and volume stays more constant. Perfect for the legs I would say.

Still I want to be able to do the tricks that are possible through adjusting the ease and size of the spline ring bones along a path. This worked quite well with "pseudopod" and the tree growth animation. I think worm like action along the tentacles will add a significant "creepiness" to the movement of the arms and "hands". With the "pseudopod" I did a nesting of "translate to" and "orient like constraints so I could move a target at the end and have the rest follow, and by rotating the target bone I would get a nice (though limited) arc. Then I would animate the size of each spline ring bone to animate the diameter of each ring--which is how I did the "grab" and "swallow" in the "Pseudopod" animation.

If we could control the location of the tip, the arc, and twist using a single target bone, similar to the "pseudopod" rig, but with a much greater range of arc, that would be really cool! And very natural to animate.

There's no reason you couldn't scale the ring bones in my SS version, I just didn't pursue that. But I think SS is very tricky to set up for this so if you're doing it non-SS I think that will get you "easier" results.

The following project file is the one for the "pseudopod". The great thing about this one is the simplicity of control. You just move the target and the rest follows as though the base were rooted and the tentacle were reaching for it. Tilt the target and the ring bones tilt in response, creating a bit of arc (not much). If this could be developed to produce a more pronounced arc when tilting the target, I think it could make for a nice tentacle rig. In fact, the ring size could be controlled to make the tentacle bunch when it is short and thin when it is stretched out long.

The control path spline idea though would make it easier to control size and ease along the path to produce rippling effects along the tentacle--ones that move longitudinally (think textures/patterns) as well as transverse (thickening/thinning). Watch a few octopus and squid videos to see what I mean. I'll make a one tentacle model to demonstrate a bit later.

Here is a "tentacle grab" (albeit a slow one) that shows how animating the ease and scale of bones along a spline path can give you a nice tentacle motion. Animating the path as well would make it look even more natural. The path itself could be controlled by bones in various actions or poses you could develop. I did not put a lot of time into adjusting the scale, but with tweaking you can control a lot with just one percentage pose and the shape of the path and probably get a very natural looking tentacle motion--especially with texture to make it easier to see the stretching and bunching.

Because real tentacles are not limited by bones, it's a challenge to animate something approximating its flexibility. An octopus can "sratch its left elbow with its left hand" so to speak. Can't do that if you have bones.

Not very well animated, but given the short amount of time I had I hope this gets the ideas across. I've created a simple control for the spline path using three nulls and translate to constraints on each path bone to all three nulls. The percentage of enforcement is set to adjust the relative hold each null has on each bone.

Next I created a cone with a bone attached to each spline ring and then constrained these bones to the path controlled by the nulls. I control the ease of these bones with a percentage slider.

So if you can control the shape of the control path in clever ways and combine this with ease and scaling of spline rings, I think this could provide a very natural looking tentacle motion that would also be easy to manipulate. Or worm motion...Or snake motion...Or Warp Drive Plazma motion...

Having a guide spline path with a spiral at one end would probably be the simplest way to have both a wrap-around grasp (extended along full spiral), a partial grip (extended through just an small arc of the spiral), or a "touch" (extended up to, but not into the spiral). A bone could control the angle of the plane of the spiral relative to the rest of the arm and the scale of the spiral. The rest of the arm could be controlled with null targets to put more gradual bends in the non spiral portion of the guide path. This is basically a combination of the two demonstrations in the previous two posts.

Another idea that might make the whole branch of tentacles easier to manipulate: What about making the null targets children of a 'pointer bone' (for lack of a better name for it). The 'pointer' bones could be related in or to a more conventional skeletal bone arrangement. The nulls would travel with the corresponding 'pointer' bone for gross movement, and then the nulls could be manipulated for the fine tentacle movement. The "spiral at the end of a control path" idea could be used for each of the "fingers" for wrap-around grasps.

Your sample movies looked effective, although animating all those control bones for one tentacle will be a labor.

Hand rigs are pretty complex even in a conventional character model. I'm thinking the "hand" of tentacled monster still could be about the same overall complexity, but with more of a tentacle like behavior. The key I think will be nesting some of the controls.

Now I think I'm getting somewhere! This rig is one main bone to orient the tentacle. Two child bones: One used to control the smartskin. The other unused for now. The Smartskin is controlled by the roll of the child bone. The Smartskin controls the bending of a control path spline. 0 to -90 degrees curls it up and back. 0 to +90 curls it down and back. The spiral at the end of the control path is use for the "wrap-around grasp". The tentacle is a cone shaped tube, with a bone attached to each spline ring. These spline ring bones are constrained to the control path in a single percentage pose. The pose slider controls the ease of the spline ring bones of the tentacle along the control path.

So with just three controls you can get a wide range of smooth tentacle motion. With other relationships you could make it more natural (constant volume with stretch and squash, etc.) without making the animation controls any more complicated.

These two movies show it in action. Not very carefully done animation, but I think you'll get the sense of potential this approach may have.

Another project file to play with. This is the one used for the last two demo movies.

How do multiple smartskins on the same CPs combine? In the tentacle model most recently posted, I'd like to use the second child bone to change the size of the loop at the end, but I'm wonderdering if that is going to work in an odd manner with the first Smartskin that curls the overall control path. As I recall the Smartskin interpolates the motion from key to key in a linear fashion, which probably means two Smartskins applied to the same CPs might not behave as expected if one of them effectively causes a rotation relative to the displacement coordinates of the second one.

I'll experiment, but if someone already knows the answer, I'd appreciate hearing it.

Thanks!

I'll be curious to see comparitive results, if you get them.

Looking very good Bill.

You could probably add an expression to the geometry bones to scale according to the percentage set in the ease slider pose or the rotation of the control bone.

And the answer is... They appear to interact as the sum of linear displacements, so applying multiple Smartskins this way won't work as planned. The first Smartskin actually rotates the curl at the end, whereas the second Smartskin aparently displaces the CPs the same direction and distances as the scaling I did on it in the neutral position. So the Smartskin displacements for each CP are probably adding up like vectors.

What coordinate reference is used for the CP displacements in a Smartskin? Coordinates aligned to the Model bone (black bone)?

Here is an interesting possibility: Could you attach some of the CPs of a control path to a bone that is then constrained to the same path? Would that cause a failure or odd sort of feedback that would render it impractical?

Hah! It does work! Just make sure you position the bone "behind" the control points asigned to it in close to the point where you want it constrained to the same spline. Then set up the constraint in an on/off pose with the ease set to put the bone at the right point along the spline making sure the "store roll" is turned off.

However, scaling the curl at the end by scaling the bone would change the actual location of the ease, since the ease is a percentange of the path length rather than a particuar distance along it.

Interesting challenge these tentacles!

Last thought for the night (since I'm supposed to be on East Coast time): Maybe I could do a sort of telescoping set of control spline curves, each with a main bone that is constrained the the earlier control spline. Each control spline could have a switchable set of Smartskins (one at a time) controlled by the roll of a child bone of the "main" bone of that control spline. Then groups of adjacent spline rings would each be assigned to one of the control splines in the telescoping arrangement.

If we could rotate a bent control spline, but have the roll handle of the spline ring bones point to a target, the skin would keep it's orientation without twisting. Each control spline segment bend could be controlled with Smartskin along one plane (2D motion) controlled by the roll of a child bone. But if you roll the "main" bone of the control spline the plane of the bend will rotate, around a tangent to the preceding control spline, based on the ease. Sort of like getting complicated 3D bends by gluing macaronis end to end at different rotations. Only in this case you control the arc of each macaroni and where along its arc you glue the next one. Basically two control bones for each segment, and a set of one or more pose sliders to control the ease of each control spline "main" bone and each ring bone. Then the twist of the skin could be controlled by the null targets the ring bone roll handles point to.

Why do I feel like James Dyson, going through thousands of prototypes? (He went through 5127 prototypes before he was happy. Maybe I won't be quite so obsessive. And maybe not so wealthy either.)

Something I just noticed. In just the constraint to path and ease slider part of the rig, I turned off store roll, so the bone should keep the original roll orientation. However, as they loop around the curve, the flip 180 degrees when the bone hits a 90 degree point. I guess this is because it is the original roll of the original position in a fixed coordinate reference?

There are probably several fixes for that problem, Bill. The one I came up with was to nest bones and never have them rotate to their flipping point. If you look at the fingers in the Squetch Rig, you'll see how I set it up. Each bone rotates a percentage, then the child bone rotates a percentage, and then further children rotate as necessary. The geometry bones in the Squetch Rig hands are sort of "floating", so they would be prone to flipping in the fingers otherwise.

I like what you've done so far!

Hope that helps.

Thanks for the suggestion! And the encouragement! I haven't tried the Squetch Rig yet, but from what I've read it's a joy to use and a wonderful example of rig engineering. I know I'll enjoy using it as well as learning from it. I'm glad to hear from you as I know your depth and breadth of experience could really add a lot to this little enterprise.

I'm hoping some unconventional thinking will lead to better ways to animate tentacle-like limbs/appendages. I'm thinking the legs could take fairly conventional leg rigging, as Robert H has already demonstrated, but for the arms I'm thinking less conventional rigging is in order--at least for the "fingers".

Tomorrow (later today, that is) I'll give the "telescoping" control path idea a whirl. I've also thought of how to set up null targets to keep the spline ring bones oriented the right way. However, I need to work my way back to East Coast time, so I'm going to sleep on it and hopefully "dream" up some nifty solutions.

OK! I think we have something to work with here! This is a "telescoping" spline path rig. Two control paths, each with a Smartskin that controls the curling along a particular plane. The Smartskin is controlled by the roll of a child bone to the "main" bone the control path is attached to. Each control path also has a null target also a child of the control path's main bone. The null associated with each control path is used as an "aim roll at" target for the tentacle spline ring bones that will be constrained to that path. Roughly half of the spline ring bones are constrained to each control path spline, both set in the same overall percentage pose. The "main" bone of the second control path is constrained to the first path and its ease is set to behave as the last "ring" bone of the first set, even though it isn't really a ring bone. Its roll handle is not constrained to aim at a null target, as the ring bones are. So the percentage pose controls the ease of all the ring bones, plus the ease of the main bone of the second control path. The two null targets are adjusted as necessary to make sure the roll handles of the tentacle spline ring bones point in the proper direction. The attached movies show how well it works. I've also created a "Tentacle Main Bone" that is parent to all the other bones. There is a third null target and an on/off pose that turns on an aim at constraint with scale to reach turned on applied to this "Tentacle Main Bone" so it will reach to the position of the third null target. This "Main" bone can be used to orient the whole tentacle and rig altogether.

The two movies show a test along a vertical plane (no side to side). Theoretically I should be able to roll each "main" bone to rotate the plane of each control path curl independently. This should approximate quite a large range of tentacle shapes, with a relatively simple set of controls. The null targets keep the ring bone roll handles roughly pointed in the direction you need them, however to really make this work I may need two targets for each control path, so the rolls progress gradually between two separate directions at the two ends of the control path. Otherwise you will get a sharp twist at the intersection of the two control paths. Work for another day...

Also note that I did not scale the ring bones to simulate the constant volume behavior of a real tentacle. Also work for another day...

Also note that I was not careful to make sure the curvature at the base of the second control path stayed tangent to the first control path. This can easily be done by tweaking the bias at that point.

Shows a lot of promise, but there is definitely more work to be done.

Yipeee!!! It works! The telescoping set of control paths is working quite well. With one percentage pose slider, and two control paths, each with a "main" bone that controls the "roll" of each control path, and a "child" bone whose roll determines the curl of the control path in a single plane. Since the two panes can now be rotated separately, short of the minor constraint that the second control path plane be tangent to the first path at the intersection, you can get a very wide range of very natural continuous curving of the tentacle in full 3D space, not just a single plane. That's just one slide and six control bones so far (including the two null targets)! Pretty manageable! And that is with just two telescoping control paths. Just two null targets kept the skin relatively wrinkle free, though 4 might make for smooth twisting contol over a very wide range of bends and twists of the two control paths. With 4 null targets you could even twist the mesh smoothly even with both control paths perfectly straight.

Again, the animation in the two movies is not at all refined, and there are no tweaks or refinements to speak of, and only two null targets (where really 4 are needed), but you can see the potential range of motion possible with a fairly simple set of contols.

Update: I redid the animation to show the flexibility better. The spline ring bones point to their targets like they are supposed to, but the mesh isn't behaving quite as I expected--probably because it is stretched too far near the end for the number of rings aroung the tight bend. Nevertheless it's working better than I expected and will probably lead to a very practical rig for tentacles, tails, worms, and other "vermiform" creatures/appendages.

Vernon Zehr was getting pretty excited about this. I wonder what "Vern-a-form" creation he will come up with.

Creepy looking tentacle. Very War of the Worlds.

The creepier the better! We are trying to rig up alien monsters here.

I won't get to it until this weekend, but I figure I could rig the entire Old One tentacle arm using this telescoping path idea. With just two splines per segment, you can get a nice "s" curve--or a twisted "s" curve, which should be plenty for a fairly realistic tentacle movement. The skin stays oriented to the null targets, allowing you to rotate the guide paths to bend along any plane you need them to. I think we'll get some seriously creepy, non-vertibrate animation going here. If I have time I'll also add relationships to control the diameter of the tentacle as it elongates or bunches.

Stay tuned!

Bill:

I'm modeling an octopus for my Nautilus and wanted to try your rig. Did you do any more work on it? If I can adapt it to my model, would you mind if I use it? I have very little experience (read practically none) with rigging and am amazed at what you did here.

Eric