I’ve been really wondering. Is there any way to make bendybone segments follow curve shape instead of curve in/out properties? My coding skills equals 0 so i dont really know if its even possible.
Hi. I don’t think ‘by default’, this is possible in Blender UI.
Because each Bendy Bone Spline has already got its 2 ‘Control Points’ on the extremities, working just like the Interpolation of a Bezier curve. Having immediate spacial-manual control to the Segments’ portion of the Bendy Bone would be analogue to creating an extra 1 Control Point somewhere in the middle of the Curve, which I would conceive in the 3D Viewport as something like Subdividing the Bendy Bone actually. But maybe I’m wrong and there is some other way around (without Scripting).
This documentation about Bendy Bones is a bit too theoretical, but it sounds a valuable source of information if you want to learn a bit more deeper about how Bendy Bones work.
If my memory does not fail me, last year I’ve seen an artist trying to get different Segments of a Bendy Bone spine, from some sort of reptilian/dinosaur Model, to be mapped in some way in 3D space so that they would sort of lead the Positioning of some vertical plates protruding from that spine, in coordination with their respective Segment. Even if that Rig was successful, it probably would still not be the same case as what you’d be looking for: I believe the Segments’ mapping purpose wasn’t to turn themselves manually controllable from direct input in the 3D Viewport, but just to have their changing Positions used as Targets (or something like that) for external, secondary Rig features.
Thinking about this subject, if you can create one or more “Driver” Bones, place in the Armature at somewhere that could make logical sense near the Bendy Bone Segmentation, and then make such Driver Bones affect, through Driver(s), on more adequate setting(s) at the Bendy Bones Panel for the Selected Bendy Bone, although probably a very unusual and complicated approach and probably quite limited for spacial controls, it still might be possible to have some meaningful controlling features regarding the Segments. I think only direct experimentation would tell if this would be a good idea or not.
Though, if you explained what you are concretely trying to achieve in Blender with Bendy Bone Splines, besides a technical feature, maybe someone out there would know a handy Rig solution for that.
PS: However, I’m not sure if you are aware of this or not; some of the more advanced techniques involving Bendy Bones Rig work with the prolongation of Bendy Bone Sets/Splines into whole Bendy Bone Sets Sequences; and this usually substitute the need of direct controls on the Segments, since one could get as many ‘Control Points’ (Control Handle Bones) as desired (as it would mostly be a question of adding more and more Bendy Bone Sets/Splines to the Sequence). For such approach, this would be way to go:
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I thunk i saw blender studio using this method in the video.
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¿Do you mean the Slug tutorial method or the dinosaur spine-plates thing?
For the Bendy Bone Sets Sequence approach, I believe there exist a few technical variations, since I wasn’t able to reproduce all that I’ve seen; I’ve just learned the method from the Slug tutorial —which I think is the simplest one and probably as effective.
They’ve used this method on Rain’s face rig I think.