What is the best way of setting your mesh up to do elbows, fingers and the like?
To start with i’m not wanting to look at using driven key shapes and constraints (but talk about those if you want), basically i’m mainly concerned about mesh design.
Here’s a video of some tests.
Many thanks!
If you are gonna animate a mesh, then while you are working on it, you have to keep in mind how you will later use shape keys, constraints, and other armature stuff to modify the mesh, right?
But when just looking at a simplish tube which will rotate along say 2 axis (both of shown, but at same time, i’ll redo video later), which is the best way for good deform. NB: Video materials show the underlying mesh! (+ subsurf) In those tests it seems that it’s best not to have a loop at the actual elbow!!!
There are ways to minimize collapse of the inside and rounding of the outside of an elbow joint in a tube but not to fully eliminate it, using only vertex weighting and a simple 2-bone armature. One I know of involves using loops angled in relation to the straight cross-section at the joint (experiment a little), but beyond that and careful weight distribution, there really is nothing that doesn’t require a more elaborate approach such as a corrective bone, shape keys, mesh deform modifier, or the like. Those remedies would not have been necessary if perfect deformations could have been accomplished in a simpler fashion.