Moho Forum

Is this the correct way to bone a tail so that it will wiggle playfully and smoothly or needs more bones? (Note that I don't animate with vectors)

That's really enough.

A tip here: try to make the initial position of the tail not in an S-curve but more like a J or ). Then, in animation, you could select all bones with cmd-A, then use the rotate bones tool (R) to get a very smooth transition to the opposite side. Same can be done with just a portion of the tail, when you need that S curve: select all bones, then de-select unwanted ones with the selevt bones (B) tool.

Another thing I do is to create another set of control bones for easier animation.

You create another chain of bones but with half as many. Constrain each bone in the tail to a corresponding bone in the smaller chain but alternate a 50% constraint for each. So if you had 10 bones in the tail and 5 in the control, tail bones 1-2 would constrain to control bone 1 but tail bone 2 would only be a 50% constraint. Tail bone 3 would constrain 100% to control bone 2... and so on... I think I have that right. I have a sample file somewhere I will track it down.

By rotating one control bone you can "curl" the tail very smoothly in half the time and effort because you only have to animate half the number of bones.

-vern