I have been experimenting a lot with spine lately as part of a Master's thesis.
The focus of my thesis is traditional animation vs digital animation. So I'm trying to push the boundaries of spine a bit and I believe I have succeeded in doing so!

Nate might remember my post about the curves in the editor forum, right now you'll see the effect of that update

I made this as a test. As usual with my experiments, it's more about the technique used and less emphasis on the actual animation. I tried to add some basic traditional animation principles. They are entirely possible in spine (pro) !

With bones:

The major part of the rig is being driven by curves. The belly part is even driven by IK's to make it more easy.
The eyes are just curves. But I can also add IK's to them. Here's an example below:

It's a bunch of bones constrained by a path, constrained by an IK. To make the IK stretchy it's in turn also constrained by the path

Here's both next to eachother:

And a better view of the rig:

Hope you guys like it Planning on more experiments! And if you have any questions, don't hesitate to ask!

PS: Loving the new Icons

Nate wrote

Damn, that is really cool! Would be great to check out your paper when it's ready.

Thank you I'd share it but I have to write it in Dutch sadly. If something cool comes out of it I might put some effort translating it into English!

Arnissan wrote

Love it! Reminds me of Big Hero 6 balloon robo guy.

Haha yes, unintentionally though but I made a baymax inspired walk cycle for him for fun a little while ago:

Arnissan wrote

Could you please explain how do you combine a path with IK constraint? I can't seem to figure out.

EDIT: Nevermind, I found the stretchman example and youtube video.

Haha, it's a tricky set of order to make it work well. I need to keep my head with it while I do it or I lose track of all the little steps I usually make the IK stretch along the path too, the rest is relatively simple.

The stretchman was a great resource I use that principle/method for meshes too when I want them to be squashy and stretchy.

https://twitter.com/Nyenna_Pix/status/823605895896637440
Here's the same rig-principle but on like.. every part of the body to make it fluid
Once you get the hang of it, you can rig everything like that in no time at all!

If there's enough interest I might consider making a tutorial about it at some time

hwoolery wrote

It's a bunch of bones constrained by a path, constrained by an IK. To make the IK stretchy it's in turn also constrained by the path

Can somebody elaborate a little more on this? I've got a path and IK constraint setup just like the stretchyman project, and it works as expected, but when I translate the IK constraint past the maximum length of the IK bones, the path does not stretch to where I've dragged the IK. I'm not sure exactly how to "constrain the the ik to the path" to make it stretch.

Yeah that's the tricky part I talked about exactly. I plan on making a short tutorial for it soon enough if you haven't figured it out by then! It's kind of difficult to explain it in text and to be frank, I keep messing it up constantly too since it's confusing because it breaks the rig a little bit in one step!

trinee wrote

Hey guys! I recently worked on something similar for a cute slime animation, here it is:

Image removed due to the lack of support for HTTPS. | Show Anyway

This is how I did:

Looks awesome did you base it on my seaslug or figured it out by yourself?

trinee wrote

I used this tutorial as reference
then I created 4 bones (top/down & right/left) and weighed all of them to the path.
Did the same with aaaaaaaall the little bones attached to this path which follows the body shape of the slime.
And well that's it. I think it's pretty much all I did ^^"

Hope someone finds this information useful, I have seen the thread and I found it pretty interesting so I decided to contribute a bit

Yeah the stretchyman was also a base/inspiration for me Used the same approach afterwards. Thank you for contributing

RemDust wrote

Really cool stuff here !

A tutorial would be really great

badlogic wrote

+1 for tutorial!

I am terribly sorry for the late reply! In the meantime I have repainted my original character and will be creating a new rig for it. I will be recording the process so that I can make a tutorial out of it So stay tuned I guess?

hwoolery wrote

Can somebody elaborate a little more on this? I've got a path and IK constraint setup just like the stretchyman project, and it works as expected, but when I translate the IK constraint past the maximum length of the IK bones, the path does not stretch to where I've dragged the IK. I'm not sure exactly how to "constrain the the ik to the path" to make it stretch.

It's normal that it doesn't stretch along, but you can make it that it does. I will show this as well in the video / tutorial mentioned above in this post It's the part where things get tricky so it's difficult to explain in text without visuals. Pretty sure the rig breaks for a step while you do it, it's been a while. But it will be there soon!

I actually plan on recording/stream (maybe?) the rigging process today!