sorry if my last post sounded all kinds of negative…as the time code suggests, it was really late in the night. anyway, i may have misunderstood.
let me carify, you want to:
- create a full human skeleton, and use python to turn that into a full functioning armaure rig.
- lay a muscle layer ontop but follow much the same path as the skeleton. possibly having it be the main deformer? like real human muscle. when it flexes, the skin follows sort of thing.
- put a mesh-based skin layer ontop as the child of the heirachy.
so bone instructs muscle > muscle deforms skin> skin behaves to a degree not usually seen without being the worlds best animator.
is that the sort of thing that you are talking about? if that is then it sounds amazing, if it can be done.
- this system means that you would have to have a complete idea of the character’s appearence from the get go, no? because no two human skeletons are the same (apart from twins) meaning you couldn’t construct a skull, for instance, and have it be in the same vein as the metarig. The facial features and the proportions of what makes us individual (asthetically, anyway) would be identical. and so how would you go about designing a character, given that more detail must be planned for the bones?
A possible solution would be to construct the skeleton leaving out the face. Also having each bone as scalabe as normal armature bones. Then for the facial features and any individually defining features on the body, you could possibly follow a similar process to that of UV, but in reverse. (if you understand me). That would go, contruct the skeleton (minus face) then use a script that unwraps your design of a characters head and you click on certain points of the unwrapped face, defining where certain features lie.
or for greater definition, use a bone topology painting system. This could be a script that, like the above suggestion, you point out where the facial feaures lie, like a cheek bone and use the paint (like weight paint) to define the the shape of that cheek bone. The darker the colour in one spot of the map, the higher the bone rises sort of thing. and it might work in reverse.
or a simpler option might be to maybe just sculpt the facial bones. and some how tell blender how to animate them.
these are just some bouncing balls but run with them if you think they might work.
another question is, having the muscle layer ontop of bone, does this make the need for FK/IK switching and all things in this constraint type unnecessary? given that the muscle on a human bone has limits to movement? meaning that only one type of kinnematic would control the movement?]
i dont know if any of this makes sense, but let me know if the ideas are a help.