neck rigging
 

is there a way to setup the neck of my T. rex so that I don't have to position him joint by joint or cv by cv? for instance, can I just place something like a cube at the top of the neck, move that and the rest moves accordingly? any help would be much appreciated

Heck,l I'd like to know more about controling a lot bones in a curve.

One option is to setup a spline IK control to move the neck joints. That would allow you to move the head and then have the neck follow. Another option is to use expressions to transform the neck joints with a single control object. That is more akin to animating via FK, but it can be easier to manage than a spline IK setup.

You can use the connection editor to.

ok, I used the same technique as the salty the seal spine setup in the learning maya book, in which you cluster the curve and set the weights for each of the cvs, only problem is, is that when my t. rex moves the cluster doesn't move with it, it stays behind, but when I make it the child of one of the joints, his neck juts out in front when the joint moves forward and recedes when the joint moves backwards, is there a way to solve this? thanks in advance

never mind I figured it out, just click on relative in the attribute editor