SaintMikey wrote: ↑Thu Dec 28, 2023 5:00 am
I'm about to take the plunge into Vitruvian bone groups. Every tutorial I have seen and read on the subject deals with limbs, but not bodies...
Vitruvian Bones are generally meant for creating alternative limb structures for a character. For example, between a jointed arm and a noodle arm, or a sideway arm and a foreshortened arm. That doesn't mean it's limited to that because a Vitruvian Bones setup can be used anywhere you can branch off these 'sub-rigs', including the character's root bone.
That said, I'm not sure there's a huge advantage in doing it this way for an entire body rig swap. Traditionally, many users will use a Switch layer and switch between Bone Groups.
I agree with SimplSam here: trying to do it all with Vitruvian Bones could get impractical. Nesting Vitruvian Bones within Vitruvian Bone might make a rig too complicated to animate efficiently. But, to be fair, I've never attempted rigging an entire character with V Bones, so if you manage to make it work for you, please share what you learn here.
FYI, many of the Moho character rigs I create for the TV shows I work on use a Switch layer to individually switch the body and head groups between 4 views: 1.) Front to 3Qtr, 2.) Side, 3.) 3Qtr to Rear to 3Qtr, 4.) Side, and 1.) return to 3Qtr to Front. This setup allows for reasonably smooth transitions between views, and it's easy to animate and update when necessary. The limbs are kept outside of the body and are not involved with the turns...this keeps the limbs easy to animate as the body turns, and prevents any pops that might otherwise occur in a turn. You can see many examples of this setup on either of
my two DWA demo reels.
I have yet to use a Vitruvian Bones setup in a work production, but if this feature had been available in the past, it would have been used wherever I used Victor's old 'rig-swap' technique, like in the dinosaur's hind legs and head as seen in the
Boss Baby clips on my 2019 DWA reel.
Hope this is helpful.
