Hi,

I'm looking for advice. I'm rigging a piece of clothing for V4. I've got two EP series of groups welded to the abdomen. When I bend the chest, they don't move with the abdomen as it bends forward. I've looked over the code to try to figure out what to do about this. Any ideas?

If I can't figure it out, I'm just going to go back and make these ep series part of the abdomen and do movement morphs. :/ 

What do you mean by "EP"?  I think understand how you have it rigged - a bone that is a child of the abomen - and I understand your problem with the chest, that moving it won't move children of the abdomen, but I don't understand why you're trying to rig something that way.  Can you show a picture or something?

EP = easypose.

And yes, after thinking about it, I realize that moving the chest will not move children of the abdomen.

I don't want to give too much information away, so consider it necessary to the design of the clothing item that there is a ribbon or tube-like piece of fabric hanging off of the abdomen group. 

Sorry, the pic would help. What I'm showing here is what happens with a 30 degree bend forward in the chest. The tube (pink) is attached to the abdomen (green). The uncoloured area is the stretching that occurs because the tube does not bend forward with the abdomen.

I don't think there is an easy way to rig this and get the movement that you want, you may be better off with doing this with morphs as you'd first thought.

:(

I think you're right ... maybe someday I can figure it out but ... I've spent enough time on this as it is. :/

Thanks for your input, it is always helpful to get others' opinions! 

Depending on how complex your rig is, maybe you can do this with JCM - when the chest bends, it calls a morph in each of the parts of the chain of whatever it is on the abdomen.  Be aware that this may not blend all that well with joint bends in the chain though.

Definitely an idea ... something else I'm considering is a set of ghost bones to make more fluid movements with the tubing. I'm working on the movements in the "new" abdomen group right now, and it's much more acceptable. 

You can use erc , to link the chest movement dial to the chain of the tube and abdomen. The tube should retain its positioning relative to its parent .

Really? I've never done something like that on my own before. Do I do something similar to the code used in easypose chains? 

I hit something like this on a different rigging project, maybe this will be helpful:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2768201

skip to the end of the thread for the final answer I went with.