general character rig workflow -
exoside quad remesh
labs 3d straight skeleton, fuse, delete half (for mirroring), resample.
use cgwiki matt estela's edge transport distance attrib propogate trick to reorder vert numbers
(edge transport "(distance)", promote to primitive (don't delete origintal), sort by distance, polypath)
rig doctor
mirror rig
joint capture biharmonic for mesh capture. joint capture paint to tweak any specific weights
stash captured geo and skele, externally(!)
plug all into joint deform.
rig wrangle to use curl noise vector attrib to mess with joint rotation/scale/pos.
he sets poses with multiple rig pose nodes. Then switch-nodes between them using a $F and modulo expression. This is nice for stepped anim style, but if you want to inbetween them,
Use a "smooth motion" node. It's used for fixing jittery mocap - but it also provides a nice tween between the different rig poses.
Another novel blending approach is to put the step anim through a solver. Inside the solver use a skeleton blend with the previous frame, using a blend value of less-than-one, for an interesting ramped blend between poses.
This can also be used with stepped blend shapes(eg for a stepped mountain sop anim). Smooth motion seems to have some nice secondary motion built in.
There is a secondary motion sop node which lets you specify a driver joint & the group to affect. Typically these will be joints down the hierarchy, eg in a tail/whip/arm. Also has some effect features - lag/overshoot, jiggle and gravity.
