Connections for the Front Legs

Jacob mentioned a great option for our Ram's front legs.  Because the scapula is not an actual joint, but more of a shock absorber, we can macro in a different type of movement to give a nice subtle rotation to it.

Here is a screen of how we plugged in the Front Leg

Using a multiplyDivide node, we were able to take the value of the Z translation of the foot control and connect it to the Z rotation of the scapula joint.  This value in the MultDiv node can be easily adjusted to get the right amount of rotation in the scap as the foot is translating forward in front of him.

For our "all range mode" I orient constrained the scap to my shoulder control.  Now that the scapula had two influences affecting it's rotation, it automatically created a BlendNode to average the movement of both influences.  I was able to create an Avar that controls the value of this blend.  This avar has a value of 0 to 1, 0 being auto rotation is off, and 1 meaning the shoulder control has full reign over the rotation value of the scap.

The avar can be munged from 0 to 1 on purpose.  A switch will create jarring effects if keyframed, but a float value can blend, which will be better for the animators.

The reverse node that you see was for visual clarity in the controls.  I needed to reverse the 0 to 1 value that was being fed into the blend node so that when you look at the control "auto rotate" 0 means "off" and 1 means "on".

This setup is visually simple, but gives a great movement under the hood, and will be easy for the animators to use. Simplifying all four legs is really important, as too many controls and doo-dads can get confusing and frustrating really fast.  This will also allow for flexibility and good movement.