Yeah, I can’t seem to figure out how to get proper bendy arms though. It seems like it’s only the elbows that will become rounded. What I want is an arch like curve. Anyone know how to get the bones surrounding the elbow to link up with the wrist and bicep bones so they will continue the curvature?
Weight painting. Just like the previous arm rig, you have to smoothly blend the weighting across the split arm segments. This is necessary for correct deformations even with just normal arm movement, without using the rubber hose controls.
Hey Nathan,
Thanks for the reply. I’ve read it over and over and I have to confess, I don’t really get what you are saying. I mean, of course you need to properly blend the weights. But that couldn’t be what you are saying is it? It seems like either you think I don’t understand what weighting is (which is understandable since you don’t know me) or I am a complete idiot and just don’t “Get” what you’re saying. What I get when I blend between the twist bones is a curve at the elbow and then a straight section just before the shoulder or wrist. Maybe what I think of as proper weighting and what you are expecting me to do are two different things? Are you saying that I need to blend between the elbow joints and the shoulder/wrist joints and ignore the twist bones all together? Or some other method that I’m not aware of?
Secondarily, I don’t think I understand why there are twist bones anyway? If you just use B-Bones, they should handle the twisting for you without having to mess with weighting right? Do they not work or cause some bad situation or something? Maybe the twist bones are there to make the rig compatible with game engines? At any rate I would like to remove them but I can’t figure out how to do so without destroying the rig in the process. All I really want is bendy arms like the character from Adventure time. What am I missing?
Thanks for any help you can give me.
having separate twist bones allows you to control the twisting effect through weighting.
for what you are after (just a single rubbery elbow, not rest of arm?) it would be nice having more options on the meta rig (e.g. have the twist helpers as a separate option, rather than just part of the advanced arm rig option).
Also, Cessen, there appears to be a problem with how you have set up the twist bones in the new version, if you bend the elbow so the forearm is right up near the upper arm, you get weird twisting of any mesh around the elbow/knee. It appears to be because the twist bones are constrained rather than parented in the new version (don’t ask me why this happens, the bones themselves end up in the same positions).
I look forward to trying this out soon. Looks pretty awesome! Thanks.
I agree, i think that the version of rigify that didnt have the bendy arms worked much better
are there any updates on the rigify addon that fix the twisting problems in the arms?.
thanks for doing great work!
cheers!,
Please give a new and correct link of Rigify addon …
Plz put new download link … I need it
Woooooow Awesome Cessen !!! Thank you so much !!!
Hey Nathan, Not sure if you’re still around here but I have a quick question. It’s regarding using shape keys for the joints and such.
I’m trying to get shape keys driven by rotations, but so far I’m having success in the foot, and thats because I made a driver for the IK and FK controls. I’m having trouble in the other areas though, because IK doesn’t really have a rotation at the joints. How would I get the rotations from the joints without going through the FK and IK bones?
What if you set your driver to rotational difference ? It is supposed to handle this kind of cases.
Keen, what you should do is look for the bone that drives the deformation. In rigify those bones are the ones with the ORG prefix. So, for the arm you have ORG-forearm, and for the leg ORG-shin. By adding a driver with those bones as targets you’ll always get the proper angle, in FK and IK.
note: currently these aren’t the bones that actually deform the mesh, as you should do the weight painting with the bones called DEF-forearm.01 and .01 if you want the Hose mechanism to work.
But anyway, for the drivers you should do it with the ORG bones.
@Hadriscus Maybe I’m not using it correctly, but I tried rotational difference. It doesn’t quite give the X,Y,Z rotations I need for particular drivers. Unless there’s another way?
jpbouza Yep I tried ORG as well, it doesn’t seem to have any rotations or translations, unless I’m blind haha.
EDIT: Turns out I am blind after all haha, ORG works nicely =D I must’ve been put off by the transformation values in the N panel =o
Don’t use the ORG bones, use the DEF bones.
Rotational difference drivers is indeed the way to go, but setting it up to get useful per-axis information is a little non-trivial. I cover some of that in the Mammoth rigging training series. But the gist of it is that you want to create separate bones that represent target rotations.
For example, if you want a shape key to be fully triggered when the elbow is bent 90 degrees on the X axis, create a bone in the same position as when the elbow is bent 90 degrees on the X axis, and create the rotation difference driver between that bone and the rotating elbow bone. Then if you have another shape key that you want to be triggered when the elbow is rotated 90 degrees on the Y axis, you create a bone in that position and create a rotational difference driver with that.
Hope that makes sense. Eventually I hope to cover this stuff in freely licensed training material about rig deformations, but I just haven’t had the time/energy yet. :-/ In the mean time, you can check out part two of the mammoth rigging series: http://cmivfx.com/store/303-Blender+Massive+Mammoth+Masterclass:+Rigging+V2
hehe, nice trick!
Not to derail this thread from autorigging. But Jpbouza, are you still working/upgrading Blenrig? Some time back, I thought there were talks of combining elements of Blenrig and the autorig.
Hi FXR, yep, all last year I worked on BlenRig 5 for a feature film, and I’m planning to release it some time this year. For now, you can also see a beta of the quadruped version if you get your hands on Caminandes 2 files 
Now Nathan should create a super X-Rig to rigify converter, to be able to have modularity with any rig you make! 
Jbouza, thanks for the response. sounds very, very promising for Blenrig. Looking forward to the film. As well as looking at the quadraped rig.
Nathan’s Rigify is very good. I used a variation of Nathan’s rig in Lee Salvemini’s Ninja’s course It was a really solid functional rig. Rigify has made strides.
Cool! The movie is called Kiribati by the way, it has a thread somewhere around here.