Similar to the hulk in industry a simplified shape based system has been set here.

Shapes provide accurate results and are often used as part of all other systems implemented at a later stage to make corrective deformations to envelopes. They can be used ontop of even the most complex systems.

Shapes are fast and as part of the standard XSi package making them stable and reliable and easy to use with lots of documentation and tutorials.

Shapes are non destructive and can be implemented in multiple position in the operation stack to either sit above the animation or beneath effecting the envelope.Shapes can also be pulled off the mesh and stored in the animation mixer, making them extremely versitile and even transferable from character to character.

This makes the system fast and acurate. There is no limit to the number of shapes that can be set on the objct, mkaing systems as complex or simple as needs require.

This however makes the process of setting up shapes tedious. Meshes also need to have good toplolgy to allow for the components needed to control the mesh.

Shapes can be linked as in example to expressions that allow the actions to be automated. This particular system references the rotation in the z-axis. As the lower arm bone increases its angle in z controlled by the defrom control sliders, the muscle contracts, scaling in Z with volume preservation turned on.

There are three shape muscle used within the the example. One controls the deformation of the major bicep muscle. A second the tricep situated next to the head of he bicep while a third correctes the geometry from distorting on the forearm.

This was quick and simple to set up. Based on top of an envelope the weighting was made with only very small weight reassignment values altered. The results have produced very acurate muscle deformation.