Griffin's Nest

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.

Download the Maya file.

I always have several personal projects going at once. To be honest I usually want to do more than I can actually handle. I am modeling this elephant with the idea of rigging him for animation. I will continue to update this image as I progress.

All the details about this rig can be found on my scripts and rigs page.  Check it out and send me your feedback.