Can I parent a bone to 2 other bones?

[ZV1LLE]

So, I'm working on a rig that doesn't have a neck and uses the top body as its neck. I tried made an action for this, but the arm doesn't follow the body. and even if I adjusted that, the bone wouldn't follow the actual arm making it much harder to control.

Re-parenting the bone to the head seems like a viable option, but then it wouldn't follow the top bone of the body. Is it possible to parent the Arm bone to the head and body bone, or is there any other alternative to fix this?

[slowtiger]

I'm not sure I understand what you're doing, so I'm just guessing here:

Sometimes I have more bones than visible body parts, like when a head is just flowing in the air, without a neck. Also I usally have clavicula bones attached to the upper body bone, and the upper arm bone attached to that, so I get shoulder movement (even if there's no shoulder parts visible in the design).

[ZV1LLE]

Thanks for responding . Here's what I actually mean:

I'm trying to achieve this so that the head can move the arm, and so can the body (if that's even possible)

[slowtiger]

Hm. For me that looks like tilting the head should move the shoulder and thus the arm. I'd do this:
- create a clavicula (collarbone) bone attached to the body, right under the head and horizontally outside
- bind the arm bone to that (I'd place the anchor point deeper and more outside)
- and let the collarbone be angle controlled by the head bone.

[Greenlaw]

I would just move the head bone up so its base is at the shoulder line. It doesn't need to be visibly connected to the body to rotate from there, and it will still move with the upper body bone. A lot of the characters I've animated in Moho don't have necks, and this is pretty much how they were set up.

Hope this helps.



Update: oh, wait...I just re-read your post and see I misunderstood the request. Let me think about it. BRB.

[Greenlaw]

If I understand what you're trying to do, then I agree with slowtiger's suggestion. I often have bones that have no strength and exist solely as movers and pivot offsets for another bone or groups of bones.

The clavicle bone he describes is a good one, but many of my 'offset' bones are functional for what I need for the character and may not resemble the bones in a biological human skeleton. I would experiment with these thoughts in mind.

[ZV1LLE]

How would this, clavicula bone look like? I just wanna be sure that what I'm thinking is how it should actually be. Maybe an image/demonstration could help me visualize this better and help me know what to actually do?

[ZV1LLE]

And just for more context for the demonstration, would It be possible for you to show me how it should look and function on a rig as well?

[Maestral]

[ZV1LLE]

So those bones on the bottom of the head bone will stick out for each arm? Do I just bind the top vector points to them or the entire arm? Quite hard to really know exactly what to do without any explanation. I think I know what to do, but I'm just not sure. Sorry

[synthsin75]

If you want to post a file, people could show you directly.

[ZV1LLE]

I'm not that comfortable with sharing this file since this isn't a test project and will actually be used for future stuff. but is there some tutorial that can tell me what I should do, or should I just create the bones and bind them to the arm?

[synthsin75]

Then why not try out different approaches on a copy of the file?
Of post a simplified file, and people can show you.

[ZV1LLE]

I could try making the bone adjustments myself and if I make a mistake I can Command/Control + Z the errors. Other than that, I can probably ask a few questions on what should be done and what shouldn't be done, and then that should be it!

[Maestral]

Perhaps you could try this Clavical rig on a stickman? To see what goes where and how

I'm genuinely interested in understanding your hesitation to try something.
Could it be that you're making animations from the first take? No corrections, additional adjustments... you just set everything right from the first take?

Do you have more of what you're on?