Vitruvian bones for bodies

[SaintMikey]

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. The character I am working on has an asymmetrically-shaped body profile while its front is symmetrical. After trying unsuccessfully to do a full-body turn with a smart bone transforming points, I want to try using a Vitruvian group. Before I attempt it, I need to ask: will a Viruvian body bone group create a lot of extra work, such as frequent bone-re-parenting for the limbs during animation, to make it work?

[SimplSam]

There is the 'Broccoli' character that shipped with Moho 13.5.2 which uses Vitruvian for body swaps.

Having said that - I am not sure that technique is widely used as it can complicate your character design.

Discussed: Swap full body rigs with Vitruvian Bones? and
https://youtu.be/OMTZ-27dGeU?t=200

(3:20 minutes in)

[Greenlaw]

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.

[SaintMikey]

Thanks for the excellent advice. Yes, the Switch Layer seems most feasible for my character's body- I can use the same bone structure and not deal with so much re-parenting. Now, to practice Vitruvian bones on my character's limbs...

[TheMinahBird]

Yes! Do switch layers for the body.

What you're asking can technically be done, I do it here:
https://www.instagram.com/chantielmckei ... XLq9mxQEp/

Where the green girl has a Vitruvian body BUT the issue I ran into is that the body is the core/anchor of all the other limbs and so her head, legs, arms etc. were all duplicated along with the Vitruvian body turn.

This was not ideal because there were other Switches and Vitruvian bones and stuff within the Front facing body so when I wanted to switch between heads or different limbs it got confusing really fast and tedious.

And so ideally you wanna rig the body in a way where it can be Switch layered between positions and turns.

I do that here:

https://www.instagram.com/chantielmckei ... CeRRxROO3/

These character's all have Switch layer bodies that are really straight/ line up with the torso of the skeleton really good BUT this doesn't mean that they can't have bend to them or unsterile poses later on! Is what I'm saying making sense?

The rest of their features like arms, legs and even Heads/Hair are all Vitruvian bones! This is easier to do since they're not central to the base of the rig but extended areas that branch off it.