Yea the animation is craptastic, but I got a nice overview of rigging in Max by doing this tutorial. The swim animation is just a wave deformer driving a custom spline IK. I will be back in a few days with a manual animation rig for this guy. Until then, cower before the terrifying visage of Shark!
In 2008 I did a test for the facial rig we would be using for Golden Axe. Time, lost files, and updated video codecs has left my original video without sound. I liked the animation a lot, so I decided to redo it this afternoon. Tyris Flare is the property of SEGA/Secret Level and was modeled by John Hayes. The auto rig for the face rig was designed by Rich Katz. I did the setup, poses, and skin weighting. I hope you enjoy.
For many years I have been playing with motion paths for rigging. Recently I started putting together an IK/FK spine that relies on a motion path. I will be posting my progress here so I can get some opinions as I develop this experimental method for rigging a spine. Eventually I will post a tutorial so you can build one for yourself. The rig is setup in Maya 9.0.
So why use a motion path to build a spine? The big advantage is that you get a nice stretch effect without the use if distance or math nodes. Setup is extremely simple, and FK rotations stick with IK translations. There is another big reason I prefer this type of setup, but you will have to wait until a later post to hear about that.