Hello,
I was wondering, since the characteranimation tools in Blender are really good now, if it is possible to use some kind of pose space deformation?
I think Ton said something about this. It’d take a pretty hefty re-write to make things work in blender ‘crazy space’
has there been anything done in this direction until now for blender?
there was an exhibition this weekend in vienna where this technique was presented. they showed examples of the film hancock. i’ve never seen such believable deformations of shoulder, arms, etc before. though i didn’t quiet get how this works in detail it seems that they use corrective shapes for the deformations but not linearly. there is some more special, different routine that makes the corrective shapes blend in.
michael comet made once a script for maya:
http://www.comet-cartoons.com/maya.html
have a look at the plugins section
It would be nice to have the pose reader as well , as it permits to do the pose deformer but it can be used for other nice things…having just the pose deformer would be a shame 
If I’m not mistaken, the big feature of Comet’s corrective shape plugin is that it can fire off a blend shape based on the rotation of several joints together, not just one, making it ideal for complex joints like shoulders.
Having a feature like this in blender would require a rewrite…?
As far as modeling in “crazy space” is concerned, blender already has a good workflow for that, it’s the “multi-joint” deformation constraint that I think we need the most.