How do you make secondary motion with bones. In 3ds max you do that with the so called flex modifier.
I want it to look like for example the antenna’s of maya the bee:
I want the top bones springy/bouncy but no squash/stretch.
“Slow parent” option (Properties Editor > Object tab > Relation Extra’s rollout > Slow Parent checkbox) comes close but it won’t give elastic/bouncy effect.
I’ll probably have to use physics but how do you do that with bones?
I saw this “Jiggle Bone Blender WIP” by Jim Morren which comes close to what I want but he didn’t reveal how he did that.
You can set up ‘Slow Parent’ with bones, if they are a separate Armature:
For example an antenna:
When you have set up an IK bone chain (i.e. two chain bones, one target bone), create two empties, one for the root bone, one for the IK target bone at their respective origins.
The Armature is parented to the root empty, the target bone has a ‘Copy Transforms’ constraint with the target empty as - Target (bingo).
Now, the target empty is parented to the Armature empty with ‘Slow Parent’ enabled.
Of course the antenna Armature needs to go with the head, so parent the root empty to the head bone…
This all said, I still would animate secondary motion manually in most cases, since it gives you total control over the look (just my two cents).
So, an FK or IK rig in the character’s Armature would do for that
An even easier setup with the advantage of having the antenna bone in the same armature:
Create one bone for the antenna, make sure the antenna geometry is weighted to that bone.
Create one empty at the tip of the antenna.
Create a new VertexGroup by weight-painting the tip of the antenna with a gradient towards its root.
Add a Hook modifier to the geometry with the empty as Object, and select the just created vertex group.
Parent the empty to the antenna bone, activate ‘Slow Parent’ for the empty.