Dynamic Tail

Introduction

A dynamic tail is a special rig that moves freely during animation, with no need to animate it. This rig can also be used with hair.

Pre-rig

We start this rig like our basic setup, placing clusters in the area of our tail. They will be used as guides for our joints.

We will also be making a curve that follows the cluster path. Go to Create  > CV Curve Tool and draw a curve following the clusters.

Joints

We now hide the mesh and place joints at each cluster holding down “v.”

Hair Dynamics

We will now make our curve dynamic. We start by switching our file tabs to “Dynamics.” From there we select our curve and go to Hair > Make Selected Curves Dynamic. This will duplicated the curve and make the new one dynamic (the one we want).

We will now switch the file tabs back to “Animation” and a special IK Spline Handle. Go to Skeleton > IK Spline Handle Tool > Options Box. We will disable the Auto Create Curve box because we want to select our own dynamic one. Now select the first joint, then the last joint, and finally the dynamic curve (in our Outliner under hairSystemOutputCurves group).

You will end up with a IK Handle running through the joint chain with the dynamic curve as the base.

We now need to select the dynamic curve and open its Attribute Editor. In here we need to go to the follicleShape tab and switch “Point Lock” to “Base.” This will give our curve one base point and allow the other end to flow freely.

Now parent the joint chain and the hairSystemFollicles group to a joint in the main skeleton and it the play button. The tail should flow freely.