Hi Erika!
Thanks for your response. I really appreciate the effort. I humbly think, however, that we're diverting from the main issue, but I'll bite for the sake of interesting brainstorming. 🙂
In my experience, I need to use four separate bones plus the nipple one, at a minimum, to have full control in every (character) angle. Sorry for being so crude, but boobs don't move like cartoon hats. 😛 I usually give less range of movement to the lower bones, to simulate that area is "more attached" to the torso than the upper/front ones. Also, I need multiple bones to offset them, so the secondary motion is more believable (and fan-serviceable).
I'd show you my work to illustrate what I mean, but I don't think you guys would appreciate that... :giggle:
That said... yes, I actually was doing good enough without paths in my previous game. I only used those five bones, without the extra path constrained bones, and nobody complained.
Then I saw a colleague using them, and although I agree with you it's unnecessary to just animate the breast, what I've found is that they excel in maintaining perfect alignment with the underlying layer (the torso in this case) because both ends of the path are fixed in their torso positions.
This means I can downscale and upscale with complete guarantee the upper part of the breast will follow the chest line (torso and breast are different images). So, I switched to this just because of that. I know I could create a torso-parented bone for just that, not a whole chain, and then fine-tune weights so I get the same alignment... but that takes me to the real reason I'm doing this...: I don't want to fine-tune weights.
And that's because of the impossibility of linking meshes outside their original slots, which I ranted about in another post for a long time. Nate said it might be a feature before this year's fall, and I'm really hyped at hearing that! But, in the meantime, if I want to add tight-fitting clothes on top of "flesh" parts, it's a nightmare to re-duplicate and re-assign all of them, just because I decide to re-tune some vertices a bit on the original mesh (the breast in this case).
The thing is, the breast you're seeing in my example is actually two images: the breast proper and the bra covering it. They both need to be weighted exactly the same to avoid texture popping. Now add the rest of the wardrobe and you'll have your personal Hell served.
"So, why don't you merge them?" Because I'll have multiple skin tones, and just imagine the combinations of dozens of clothing type+colors, plus five planned (if not more) skin tones.
No, I definitely need to avoid tuning meshes. At least in this critical area.
I know this is expensive performance-wise but I'm just an amateur making adult 2D games for a living and I also code myself, so I don't expect the programmer complaining. :bigeye: My main focus is avoiding micro-management, well over performance.
Now, returning to my real question... :p
I was actually asking about the bra on the torso. It's a different image and my issue is that it's not following the torso line accurately when I downscale the whole thing.
That's why I made a path parented to the torso. In my mind is the most straightforward way to make sure the bra front is always where it should be: the limit of the torso image.
But if the position of a bone in a path can't be influenced (or offset) by a transform constraint (which is my wish), then I won't be able to do what I intend, which is the bra follows the breast along the torso when the former is scaled, without me doing anything more rigging-wise. The main goal is that I later make animations that look well in any breast size.
I know we could debate endlessly about what road to take to go to Rome, and I'm not claiming I know everything there is to know. You'll probably do a better job with my setup, even with these technical requirements.
But now I'm really curious about my question because I humbly think it would be very useful from a generic standpoint, don't you think? :think:
If you guys don't think is a viable and/or desirable feature, no problem, but I'd need to clear this up now.
Thanks for reading the wall of text. :grinteeth:
Edit: Just to clarify (much) better what is my final goal, what I'd like is this happening...:
That the lower bone moves with the upper bone locally.
However, I can't make that work with a transform constraint, for the life of me.
Then I've searched the forum and found some posts mentioning how useful it would be to have X and Y separated, so we could make constraints that only affect one axis...
Is this what Spine needs to be added so I can do that? Is there no other way to do it in the current version? :rolleyes:
