# The Update
I am this close to getting this rig going. I have been rather mellow with the way work has been the past few months, but I have been using it as fuel to move forward and make a plan – a sale campaign. This character is part of it, and also useful for the portfolio. I have been recording my work with this guy and will release some videos on him. Check back and maybe I’ll have it published!
I feel I need to build rigging body parts to join together later for future characters, build rigs like Lego blocks. This is taking too long – and Autoriggers never do what I want them to really do. I imagine myself so frustrated one day that I will practically write my own autoriggers.
# The Progress
- – Mouth is now fully deformable Jaw Ik is working like a charm, works with head Squash/stretch/bend and shape free *(meaning it’s non-destructive on the mesh).*
- – Lips are now SplineIK and also squash and stretch relatively al right. *Still missing Zip locks and Curl.*
- – Cheeks inflate and have controls that work nicely Eyes have SplineIK
- – Mouth has asymmetrical offset too
- – Eyes can blink and right now squash and stretch relatively ok. *Offset on the eyes is still missing though.*
- – Eyeballs now squash and flatten, also has auto lookat eyelid offset.
- – Face now has proper squash and stretch ribs for volume preservation through bones.
# The Roadblocks
I forgot how Blender doesn’t give clear definition or control of “Global” and “Local” transforms of bone constraints and hierarchy. So I had to work around many constraints setup incorrectly with “World” to new “Local” proxy constraint bones. That took some time to do – I had the whole head working; but when rotating the neck, it all broke spectacularly.
I have a dependency loop that has undo and reset lagging – with the curves controlled by the bones then bones constrained by SplineIK to the curve. This isn’t a technical loop, but Blender is thinking that it is. Hopefully in 2.8 this won’t be a thing.
The eye had a lot of troubles when I tried to get it squashing and stretching. Ultimately I had to try mimic the mouth.
:dance: