Hey Harris,
Stretchy limbs are so much easier to work with. And your reasoning is spot on. Sometimes you just need to stretch it that tiniest little bit even on a realistic character. Say you’re doing a walk cycle, and the leg needs to stretch like 5 more pixels – w/o stretching you would probably need to rework ALL the other poses in order to fix it. But if there’s stretching, no problem – and it still looks good. But without that stretching the leg could pop or slide, making the whole shot look weird.
Also it’s easy to avoid unintended stretching by not animating poorly.
This connects to what I was saying in one of your video reviews. I love how you were thinking how to make the rig ‘idiot proof’ (for lack of a better phrase).
But all that extra complication in the rigging isn’t necessary (in that instance) because it’s the animator’s job to make the animation work. If they animate it poorly – that ain’t your fault 😉
