I'm working on a job for Spike TV and the client wants me to add a pair of head phones to the character in the image. That's not a problem. But I want to have a cord hanging down from the head phones. I want it to move appropriately as the character moves. The first thing that came to mind was to create the cord and bind it to an Independent Angle Bone. I was wondering if there was a way to give the cord a little more life, or should I just stick with my initial idea?
I would make a bone chain from bottom up using Sketch Bones, and then use two targets. One target to 'soft pin' the cord to the shoulder, and the second to point it to the headphones. The upper target should be parented to the head bone and positioned to where they come out of the headphones.
I would make a bone chain from bottom up using Sketch Bones, and then use two targets. One target to 'soft pin' the cord to the shoulder, and the second to point it to the headphones. The upper target should be parented to the head bone and positioned to where they come out of the headphones.
That sounds great! What would be your recommendation for how to create the cable? Should I just go with a stroke and if so how many points (a few or many)?
Also I'm assuming I would just use the bone influence/strength for binding?
You probably don't need a lot of bones--I just used the defaults with Sketch Bones. It really depends on your animation and how detailed you want the bends, but in this case, I'm guessing you don't need too many. You'll probably want the points in the cord to be somewhat evenly spaced.
For binding, I would use Use Selected Bones for Flexi-binding. This will isolate the influence of the bone chain to the cord. (Assuming you've explicitly bound everything else, which you really should have anyway.)
You don't need any bone strength on the targets of course.
The best thing to do is to experiment in a scene containing just the cord and see what will work best for you. Once you have what you like, copy it to or otherwise replicate it in your main scene.
Greenlaw wrote:You probably don't need a lot of bones--I just used the defaults with Sketch Bones. It really depends on your animation and how detailed you want the bends, but in this case, I'm guessing you don't need too many. You'll probably want the points in the cord to be somewhat evenly spaced.
For binding, I would use Use Selected Bones for Flexi-binding. This will isolate the influence of the bone chain to the cord. (Assuming you've explicitly bound everything else, which you really should have anyway.)
You don't need any bone strength on the targets of course.
The best thing to do is to experiment in a scene containing just the cord and see what will work best for you. Once you have what you like, copy it to or otherwise replicate it in your main scene.
Sounds Great! I'll will let you know how it turns out. Big thanks again!
I had the same problem with a lasso swinging over a cowboys head. I got rid of the string of bones and just used pin bones to move it. Each bone had about twice bone strength and move each segment of the rope that was in it's bone influence.
Greenlaw wrote:You probably don't need a lot of bones--I just used the defaults with Sketch Bones. It really depends on your animation and how detailed you want the bends, but in this case, I'm guessing you don't need too many. You'll probably want the points in the cord to be somewhat evenly spaced.
For binding, I would use Use Selected Bones for Flexi-binding. This will isolate the influence of the bone chain to the cord. (Assuming you've explicitly bound everything else, which you really should have anyway.)
You don't need any bone strength on the targets of course.
The best thing to do is to experiment in a scene containing just the cord and see what will work best for you. Once you have what you like, copy it to or otherwise replicate it in your main scene.
Well, I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong, but I've pm'd you a link to the file if you get the chance to look it over. I'd post the file here but it might not be smart since it's for a big client.
