Squash And Stretch Character Rig

[chunkified]

Hello,

I've created a rig in Houdini for character and I require some of the bones to squash and stretch.

Could someone point me in the right direction of how to achieve this please?

Preferably in a highly detailed direction...

Thanks

[old school]

Three ways:

- animate the bone length

- scale the bone(s)

- adjust the capture pill directly

The first is quite simple. Just find the bone length parameter and adjust it. Any bones parented to this bone will be pushed along as well. This channel is in the Bone folder.

The second involves scaling the bone object or any parent nodes' scale parameters.

When using object/null/bone scales at the object level, you always have to be careful of shears and such. If you just want to scale a part of the chain, say the two arm bones and you don't want the wrist/hand to scale, then you have to insert a null to counter the scale above. Usually negated channel references to the scale channels modified above is all that is required.

The third is to manipulate the capture region associated with a particular bone. You want to modify the parameters in the Capture/Deform Region folder and NOT the Capture Region folder.

This method allows you to deform the skin but not affect any down-stream nodes. These capture region channels are referenced by a Capture Region SOP. This means that you are deforming the capture region. No object level transforms.

Not as straight forward as the first two methods.