WIP #21: Meat packing (Patreon)

Alright, what have I been working on recently? I'm going to try and do these updates more often, focusing on what I've actually been working on, you know, works in progress. I might re-classify some of the other wip updates as "R&D" and "Tutorials" or "Writeups" since they don't really qualify as works in progress... ah well.

The past few weeks I've been working on getting big mac's big schlong down places it has frankly no right fitting. This has really been testing the mouths of my rigs, and the deformation tools I have to their limits. Something particularly interesting came up in the fluttershy scene (From poll #18), animating a bone chain kind of winding its way through a restriction like this is actually pretty non-trivial, here's the solution I came up with:

I'm using a path! It's kind of a complex setup, the path is constrained to hooks, which are parented to fluttershy's mouth and throat, and big mac's base - then the bone chain follows the curve with a spline IK constraint (a real diva of a constraint, very fussy), and is then offset by a quick mini rig. This means the length bends along the path it has to follow, regardless of where it is in the stroke or which bone has to be where along the path. It's a bit annoying, but actually I think this is the best result for a really tough movement I've come up with so far!