Creating New Deformation Chains (Transformation Chains)

The process of creating multiple deformation chains on the same character is divided in four steps: creating the main chain, creating additional chains, renaming the chains, and associating additional drawings to the chains.

The drawings are associated with deformation chains. For example, if you want to rig the puppet's arm, you will need to add a deformation chain to the arm drawing. If the arm has multiple pieces such as upper arm, forearm and hand, you will create the deformation chain on the upper arm and afterward link the forearm and hand to that same chain. When creating the additional transformation chains on the other views of your rig, you will create them on the upper arm. The forearm and hand will not influence which chain is used. They will follow the upper arm chain. If the drawing exposure is changed on the upper arm, the deformation chain will change to the associated one. If the forearm or hand exposure is changed, the same deformation chain will remain. You must create the deformation chain on the drawing that will have the most influence when changing the puppet's view.

After creating your deformation rig, you may want to convert an animated character's pose to a new deformation chain. This can be useful when you want to add a pose to a turn-around deformation rig you have already spent time creating and manipulating. You can take the pose at the current frame and the state of the deformations and create a new drawing set along with a new deformation chain using the current position.