Minimal Rig test: Some Split-Same 1:3 Flowers.
733 views · Published 5 January 2013 · 0:30 · Indexed 9 October 2026
Channel: Alien Jon · 2013 · Howto & Style
In order to remove the distracting cartoon Cookie Rig character during development I've created a minimal poi spinner rig from the ground up. It only displays what the arms and shoulder-girdle are dong, which is the bare minimum of body info needed beyond just the props moving through space. Charlie Cushing, myself, and others have been calling this an "articulating armature loop" (since it can make a closed loop for things like barrelrolls). This has given me a chance to learn my way around Blender's character rigging system, and it's sweet new iTaSC robotics-based Inverse Kinematics system. I've developed a radial grid system roughly based on 9-Square. This grid stream lines creating poses for the character pose library. This is a library of key transition points, ala Vulcan Tech Gospel and QFT. I literally was able to string together this animation QFT-style for body movement, then set the poi's T&D once.... then use Blender's DopeSheet editor to quickly copy and move keyframes around (reversing them where needed) to make all these variations, much like non-linear video editing. Next to explore: Now that I can easily generate poses (ala VTG transition points), it's time to explore saving animation chunks for quick reuse and modification (this will be like sequences of QFT code). Also time to play with more weaves and barrelrolls... and eventually atomics!
