Jelly Rigging

Trying to fill out my reel some more with a little rigging. Thought I'd start with my box jellyfish for something a bit different. Not finished, but the basic idea is there. Mostly ncloth tweaking, and testing with motion paths to do still. The movement isn't completely realistic, nor is the shape, as it is really hard to find good reference for them. The transparency makes it hard to make out in photos, and they are deadly, so I really can't find much footage of them. But from what I can tell, its fairly close, and definitely jelly looking.

Just a lattice, some clusters, and ncloth, hooked up to two simple controllers. The plus sign slider is hooked up with set driven keys to go through the different poses of  the jellyfish so you can control its speed and add in variation with its bursts. The top and bottom controller, are the same so the motion can be looped. I thought of trying to make the controller a circle dial of some sort, but I decided this way was quicker to make and wouldn't simplify animating much at all. I also just like the up and down with the jelly's up and down movements.

 The outer shell and tentacles are all ncloth. I really love the way jellyfish float around. It's beautiful. This rig is really just for a swimming jelly anyway, so with this rig there isn't much control over what the tentacles do. I did have to add a lot of nconstraints to make sure the shell kept its shape and make sure the tentacles didn't pop out of its shell in the wrong place or fall out completely. Its a bit over 70 constraints, and they do cause a bit of visible lag when simming, but nothing too horrible. The tentacles do stretch with motion like they do in reel life which looks rather nice, so now its mostly about painting maps and balancing that while making sure the bodies shell keeps its relative shape.