A few weeks ago I designed a unique character bone rig system that would, in theory, let the form of the character be controlled by animations, the physics engine, and additional scripted code all at the same time. It does all this while keeping a fairly low bone count. I have no idea if other developers have come up with similar rigs before, but I've never heard one spoken of (though I have not seen the inner workings of all that many character rigs outside of PC games). Anyhow, it all looked good on paper, but that didn't mean it would actually work. I could have easily overlooked some limitation.
Today, I finally integrated all the pieces of the concept for the first time. In this case, I was asking the character to snag itself like a rubber band on an object, dynamically deform as it pulled back from the object it was snagged on, and then release from the ground to shoot across the land. While airborne I asked it to pull itself back together. Much to my delight, the very first time I asked it to do its thing, everything worked perfectly to create a great visual effect! The full slingshot sequence still needs to be fine tuned and could do with a few more layers of prebuilt animations, but the fact that the system is working just as I had predicted is very encouraging. It doesn't get much better than seeing a new concept come together without a hitch.
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