Hi all,

It’s the first time I use CAT, I’m excited cos of its features but then I ran into a lot of troubles.
I’m making a hydra, the 1 head CS biped won’t fit so I try CAT. The rigging is cool and easy, I finish the skinning also (Attachment 1), but when I add a CATMotion layer the heads’s directions are weird (Attachment 2), if it was biped I just rotate the heads down, but when I do so with CAT the head and also the neck bend down (Attachment 2), I try to find (google, help files and clips) a way to bend the head itself alone but I just can’t.

So, then I save the envelopes and delete the skin modifier, add a new neck bone to the neck and use it as a head bone, I scale the original head bone down, re-position the jaw bone and reapply skin, load the skin file and edit the skin vertex again to have it works correctly (Attachment 3).

Then I have another problem, when I apply a CATMotion layer the jaw bone fly right out of the head (Attachment 4), or when I add a new Abs Layer the head bones and the jaw bones are slightly deformed (Attachment 5) so is the mesh. It’s ok in the figure mode. I google and find that CAT has a stretch bone feature, I try to turn it off in the Link info panel but that doesn’t work.

So in simple:

- Is there a way to bend the head alone without bending all the neck bones?
- How to keep the jaw bones from deforming or flying out when I turn on Animation mode? I want the starting pose is exactly like it is when the animation mode is off.

I go so far I don’t want to give up, but since the deadline is near maybe I have to switch back to Biped to make the animations. Please help! :D

its doing exactly what it should be doing bending. it would look quite ridiculous if it did not bend. the head and neck are the same as the ribcage and spine. you could make the neck a single bone. but I doubt it would read well.

if you want the head to rotate seperately from the neck. you will need a seperate object or bone for the head that isnt attached to the rig

I dont know whats going on with the jawbone when catmotion is applied. but if that isnt happening with an absolute layer. put catmotion underneath the absolute layer. turn the local weight down to 0 for the head in catmotion. it will still be controlled by the absolute layer.

thank you Tyree, you’re the man! I’ll try that :D