Well so far in my exploration of the arm/hand setup to get a decent amount of control it will be fairly complex. It will work as follows.

A ELBOW control will control the bending and moving of the arm when bent and to a degree the arms rotation. I might set this up to control the elbows orientation.
A WRIST control will control the bending of the wrist through its movements.
A ARM control will control the bending of the shoulder and elbow. This control will allow movement without the elbow bending if desired.
A FINGERS control will control the bending of the fingers as a group.
A THUMB control will control the bending of the thumb.
And then their will be four individual controls for each of the fingers. These will be hidden until more precise movement is needed.

Thats a total of 9 target helper controls.
I can't see any other way of setting it up that allows the range of motion and control I'm looking for. EECK!

The head/neck controls are fairly simple.

A HEAD control to control the rotating of the head.
A NECK control that gives control similar to the SPINE control.

Well these are my thoughts on my setup. Anyone think its to complex or have a more elegant solution let me know. I'll post up the next version soon.

In total there will be 18 target helper controls. Though you should be able to do most basic animation using just 6 of them.

Message edited on: 08/25/2005 01:26