Good evening,

I have a 3D model of a horse, with bones and Skin. The bones were put carefully so that I have to make the least amount of adjustments to the Skin modifier. I have put bones in all the mesh and two bones in every joint so that bendings are smooth, as suggested in replies to a previous post sent by me.
The movements seem good.
But, when lowering the horse’s head so that it reaches the ground, something undesirable happens: when the first bone of the neck goes too low, the upper part of the leg doesn’t follow the bending, since it’s already controlled by its own bone. It is difficult to explain in words, so I attached some images.
From the image, you can see that, lowering the selected (white) bone to a certain point, the neck bends fine. But, if the selected bone goes lower than this point, the shoulder region doesn’t follow the bending.
What is the usual workaround for this?
NOTE: This also happens with a goat model. Look at the image.
I hope I’m being clear.
Thank you in advance.
EDIT: Images attached. For some reason, the images I had added before were not uploaded. I have just noticed it now.

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There is no work around, you just don’t have your rig setup correctly. First the spine of a quad character should not run from the back forward. Start at the center of mass that is in the middle of the chest of the horse and carry one chain back to the tail and one forward to the front of the chest. One bone in the front will do and two or three in the back. Then to correct your problem just link the front legs to the one bone that goes forward to the front of the chest. The neck gets linked to that as well.

Paul Neale
PEN Productions Inc.
penproductions.ca / paulneale.com
Master Classes for Max, Mudbox and Composite
DotNet Tutorials

MX Driver Car and Trailer Rig On Sale!

Thank you for the response.
I have corrected the bones as you said; have a look at the attached images. Is that what you meant?
Still, I don’t know how to proceed to correct that problem. I have changed all the bones of the neck of the horse and put fins in them, but it is still strange. Linking the legs to that front bone, as you said, makes the legs rotate together with that bone (even if I put HI Solvers in the front legs so that they stay in place, they bend too much when that front bone rotates).
I don’t know if I’m being clear in this description.
The goat’s neck is stranger than the horse’s. See attached images.
I appreciate any help. Thank you for your patience.

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Then either don’t rotate that bone that much or done link it to that bone.

Also you need to do some research on how the bones of a horse are set up as you don’t have it right.

Paul Neale
PEN Productions Inc.
penproductions.ca / paulneale.com
Master Classes for Max, Mudbox and Composite
DotNet Tutorials

MX Driver Car and Trailer Rig On Sale!

I thought this thread seemed familiar, I remember this thread from last year where we discussed the horse skeleton and neck.
It looks like you are starting the neck rotation before/behind the shoulder, which is making the legs bend, rather than starting the rotation after/in front of the shoulder.
Also, you may be doing all the rotation at once, on that one spine joint. A real spine or neck works with a number of bones that each rotate a little. You may not need as many bones as a real spine, but spreading the rotation between them may smooth the bending effect.

Thank you for the answers.
Yes, I referred to that thread at the beginning of this one. It is similar, but I’m using another model and I learned more since that thread, so I considered it better to start another thread.
The attached image shows what I got from some more testing. It still doesn’t look right.
Samab: As you can see, I still had to rotate the bone behind the shoulder a little. Every bone in the neck also rotates a little.
penn: I have looked at many reference images, but I don’t see what is wrong with this setup.
This is certainly because my experience on this is very limited. This is practically one of my first trials on rigging. Maybe, instead of proceeding with this question, I should ask if there is any free 3ds max tutorial on how to correctly rig such animals (not using biped), so that I can first have the basic knowledge and then be able to make more consistent questions. I can’t find any free tutorials (or example files, or anything) on this.
Anyway, if any of you have any more ideas on how to fix this horse, I would appreciate it.
Thank you in advance.

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