Adding the IK Spline

Once the controllers were all in place, I needed to add an IK Spline t the tail to enable it to move how I wanted it to. Once again I did this by clicking on the IK Spline Handle Tool and I then inserted the curve by clicking on the root joint of the geometry and the joint on the top of the fin.

I had originally clicked right to the end of the tail, however my tutor suggested just clicking it to the top of the fin, because it would still follow through the movements because it would be influenced by the movement of the upper tail.

 Once the curve was in place, it was a matter of creating a cluster for each of the verts. I clustered the top and bottom two into pair, and the verts in-between were clustered individually. Before reaching this stage I was quite apprehensive because I didn't have a full idea of how to go about it, but once it was demonstrated for me, I was able to understand what I needed to do!


Something that I needed to remember for the orienting stage, was not to parent the Root Control to the back control because I wanted the tail to be able to flow independently from the upper body.