rokket opened this issue on Jan 03, 2018 ยท 6 posts
Cage posted Mon, 08 January 2018 at 8:36 AM
I think Anton once suggested that the most realistic way to rig wings would be to assign a separate bone to each feather, then use complex ERC to define how the feathers move, relative to one another. This was a long time ago, well before Poser had weight-mapped joints, but it seems like his point still holds. If feathers aren't rigged independently like that, then they will scrunch and stretch to varying degrees as the wing is posed.
Which is a blatherous way of saying, how much realism of bending do you want from these wings? If you can accept a lot of Scrunch 'n' Stretch, your rig could be very simple, and you could treat it like robe arm, say, with a long, flowing sleeve.
You probably don't want a robe-sleeve of a wing, nor do you want to dedicate hours and hours to ERC experiments intended to generate realistic motion of individual feathers. If so, you'll want to consider the best way to group your feathers into clusters that can be moved relative to one another in clumps. Now that we have weight-mapping, you might be able to use artful weighting to approximate realistic feather motion without much (or any?) ERC at all.
I hope all of that wasn't completely unhelpful. It sort of feels like I've just stated the obvious all over the place. "Draw like a pro! A face! First... an oval! Then a few lines, here, here, and... here! Then, add the details! Easy!" But the instructions have omitted any useful breakdown of how to approach that detail work.
Quite possibly none of the rigging experts left in Poserdom are regulars at 'Rosity these days. Have you tried asking the question at the Smith Micro Poser forum?
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Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.