How to create realistic skin that slides over the muscles of a character?

Support Animation and Rigging
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Hey guys, I’m making a life reconstruction of the dinosaur Deinonychus Anthropus, and before I go about adding the feathers I would like to create realistic, elastic skin that stretches over the musculature as the dinosaur rotates its extremities. I might end up purchasing x muscle for the muscle flexion effects but I’m not sure if that’d give me the exact effect I’m looking for. I also tried using shrinkwrap but that didn’t go well at all either.

I’m basically looking for a way for the skin to more or less maintain its surface area, so rotating one area will stretch skin from another part over to the action, as well as for skin around the hips/thighs to maintain its general position while all the muscle, fat, and bones slide under it.

This can best be shown here:

See how the thighs slide under the skin as they rotate forwards?

Anyone know of a good way to achieve this effect?

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The only way will be some sort of cloth simulation for skin layer. I am not sure Blender’s cloth sim is stable enough for that

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For it you probably need an underlaying muscles and bone system and then use the cloth to physically simulate it. Thats how other programs are doing it too but with specific simulations for it. (if i am not wrong)

An easy version of it is here:

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shrinkwrap modifier maybe?

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The issue with Shrinkwrap is that Nearest Surface mode will stick inside every crevice formed by muscles, while Project mode isnt stable while used in all 3 dimensions (not constrained to a single axis)

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Thanks for the replies guys but I think I have an idea on how i’d do it now.

  1. Going to make a duplicate of the skin mesh, with identical weight rigging, but also with a shrinkwrap modifier to the skin its duplicated from.

  2. Then make corrective shapekeys to manually generate the effect.

  3. Since it has a shrinkwrap modifier it should preserve volume and “vacuum seal” to the mesh while it slides over it due to said shape keys.

That or just with a complex rig with skin bones with animation constraints to get the exact effect I’m looking for.

I’ll make a reply/post if this either works!

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