How to rig a snake-like character

Development Character & Animation
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1

Hello! I’m looking for advice and ideas to rig a monster that resembles a flying snake. What I’d really like is to somehow have my skeletal mesh flow behind the actor as it moves. Imagine a ribbon particle, but with a mesh (and not as a particle).

So far I’ve tried using a ragdoll with no gravity applied, but it’s very difficult to get it to properly (re)attach to my actor. It either doesn’t ragdoll (stays completely stiff) or all of the joints stretch/snap to 0,0,0.

I’ve also tried using ‘Apply Physical Animation Profile Below’ and ‘Set All Bodies Below Simulated Physics’ with the same result: all the bones ‘below’ the one I pick just move to 0,0,0, causing the mesh to stretch across the whole world.

Perhaps there is some way I can use a spline?

2

For anyone looking at this problem, there is some high-level discussion of a process in this Unreal Livestream, but it doesn’t go into enough depth to be useful in my case. I’m not looking for something nearly this complex (Essentially exactly how this snake looks when under water, simply flowing as if along a path)


Still searching for an answer.