15 of 25, Fixing Dynamic joint chain

Even though the animation process failed on the project. And the dynamic joint chains weren't playing fair with the skirt, I didn't want to give in, even though I've spent fare too much time trying to get the damn Dynamic joints to work with a skirt like object without it passing though the legs. The way I was shown how to make a Dynamic Joint chains (and the videos on you tube) all demonstrate a single item, like rope, a tie, a straight piece of cloth like a cape, all of witch would rest on or against something, and would have to wrap around the object or follow it fully. Non of the tutorials or advice provided an answer for applying a Dynamic Chain to a skirt like object. After a few hours of trying different methods. From

1,> parenting the Skirts Root bones to the Hip bone.

2, > parenting the left side of the Skirt Root joints to the Left leg and same for the right side..

3, > make a Controller and parent it to the leg joint then parent the Dynamic joint chains Folical to the Controller

till finally I found a way to make it work..slightly

in the examples (see X blog) I state you need to make a ‘Root joint’ for each Joint chain and start the dynamic chain below it (start joint). . but I found out when you do this and make the curve a hair dynamic, the follicle is/should be placed under the Root joint of the chain, this makes the dynamics work from that joint onward… but if you do everything the same but DON’T make a ‘Root bone’ when you create the hair system the hair follicle doesn't parent to anything. This I wound interesting. So like I did with test 2 and 3, I sight up parented the Follicles from the left side to the left leg, and right side to right leg. by doing this the joint chain followed the leg and maintained its dynamic nature, this meant that the leg was no longer passing though the skirt item…

but now they was a new problem since the skits joints follow the leg, from its rotation, and not from the hips rotation the skirt tend to pass though the characters backside…rather then staying put at the hips…simple-ish solution to this is to make a single root bone (not connected to anything) and skin it (with the Joint chain) to the skirt item. Now when the skirts dynamic chains move with the leg, this root bone stays put at the hips, maintaining some of the skirts shape..

(Note: i would have had some screenshots of this fix if not for my laptop battery dying and Maya crashing as a result)