[MarkR]

Spine1 bone is rotated -58 H, 0 P, -90 B, all the other spine bones are at zero. I tried making the bones inactive, but it still deformes the character when I try to zero out spine1.

Anybody know why?

[philip]

have you recorded the pivot rotation as I have said in the tutorial?

[MarkR]

I'm 99.1% sure I did that in every place you mentioned, but I guess I did something wrong.
I was looking for an easy fix to get out of it, but it would probably do me more good to start over.

This set up is very cool and complex to me at the same time and
I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.
It smokes all the rig examples I've seen in any books or tutorials out there.

[philip]

wow, thanks for the comments MarkR.

You don't have to start over; just select that bone, go to the items tab, click pivot, and in the drop down menu select "Record Pivot Rotation". Make sure you do this at frame 0 and immediately keyframe it there.

[philip]

BTW, I love your signature

[MarkR]

That was to easy, thanks a million my friend.

Yeah, most examples show you how to set up the basic rigs and controls that get you started. If you're a beginner at bones and IK, it's a little intimidating because all the work that goes into it and you don't want to mess something up trying to experiment.
It makes me wonder how the people at Pixar set up controls to get that amazing level of detail in their animation.
I know they’re not using Lightwave, but it must be the same concept.

... anyway, can't wait to apply it to my own character!

[SplineGod]

The reason you can turn off a bone and it SEEMS to still effect the character is because ALL bones effect ALL vertices in lightwave.
When you set the falloff on a bone it just determines how fast its "force field" falls off with respect to other bones. The greater the falloff the more localized the control becomes. This is what allows you to throw bones into an object and they simply work.
Use weight maps and you can refine that control even more.
When you setup bones and then rest them (r key) lightwave determines which vertices are closest to that bone and give that bone more control over them. So in your spine situation the spine bones before and after that bone STILL effect the mesh.