Well reading from the first page, he says that with the Auto Simplify Curve option enabled it will change the shape of the spine a little. And you can lessen the effect on the oriented joints by simplifying the curve of the joint chain (straightening)..... read part 1 again so this is clear first of all. With rigging it does take a bit of a mindset to get round what is going on and why things do what they do. I'll have a look thru this stuff and see if I get any probs and get back to you later. It should be pretty straight forward but as you are doing a rig thats for back stretch there maybe an easier way Jay Thanks for quick response, Jay. Yes, I actually read that part you mentioned but I didn’t think it was “change the shape of the spine a little”. I thought the joint chain might get a little straighter or something. I didn’t consider “visibly missing one joint” as a little change. Anyway, I didn’t attach the next page but the picture in the book clearly shows seven joints, no joints overlapping. I also noticed something in the picture of the hypershade I attached. I noticed that there are plus-minus average nodes connected to each joint. In the tutorial instruction, they never mentioned those nodes (until few pages later). So, I started to think what they saying doesn’t really correspond to what they show. I know stuff like this happens all the time in any how-to books so I’m not upsetting or anything but it’s a bit frustrating. I have gone through “inspired 3D character set up” book long ago and there were so many mistakes in that book. (from just a minor typo to totally wrong naming, etc. It gave me such a hard time especially when it came to expressions… because spelling is almost everything there.) Anyway, I appreciate your response. If you have a time to go through it and could find something and tell me about it, it’d be great. Thanks again. -naoki