Modelling/Boning technique...I am lacking

[brockgs]

I'm struggling with how to actually contstruct some basic models and where to put the bones to best effect. As an example, see the attached caterpillar...a VERY basic character, yet, when I take the bone ending right in the middle of his back, pull straight up to create a tall hump in the middle as he's crawling, the skin deforms horrible and creates very nastly flaps of skin overlapping and going inside of one another. I've applied smart skin and tried to clean up the kinks, but based on the amount of time it's taking to try and deal with this, I'm wondering if inherently I've approached construction and adding bones from a very inneficient angle.

 

The character's primarmy means of movement it through just a single squeezing together and up in the middle, then expanding out and forward. Based on the images below, do you have general comments on wether I've added too many ribs, or not enough skin detail, or if the bones in the back should intuitively be done a different way to better effect....

 

...sorry I'm so vague, I haven't used the product in almost 10 years, it's changed a bit and my already meagre skills are being testing sorely by only being able to work on the project in between my primary work. ...be gentle. :-)

[lazz]

Alright so, what I've done is( I hope you don't mind ) I recreated your catepillar and rigged it so I could fiddle with it to figure out your problem with it. What I realized is that you need a bone for every time you extruded the circle for the body. Instead, you've put a bone for every five times (approximately). So you get chuncks of it bending. ( I think). Here's a picture with it rigged and with it in a pose. Hope this helps.

 

-robert

 

(note: I didn't rig the antennae so they aren't attached to the catepillar)

[brockgs]

Yes, definitely a hugh improvement. I wouldn't have thought I would need such detail, but it is significantly better than I was able to get. thanks!