Just to add a few node setups used here, I've found interesting. Of course nothing new here, while I think these small tricks are still not so well known.
First one is sort of common reverse setup, but this one is 3d, let's say if someone wants a reverse spine setup. Second chain is driven by first one, rotations are just parallel multiply by -1, last joint of first chain is driver of first (or second) joint in driven chain, so on. I think anyone who tried 3d variance of this setup, already noticed that rotation does not match, due to additive nature Euler rotations. So, there's simple trick to get them to work properly - rotation order of driven chain has to be 'reversed', too. Here, XYZ order on driver chain is ZYX on driven one, and that's it.
Here is how this is looking in Maya Node Editor - it won't display hierarchy, but it is able to connect anything related to transforms, which makes it ideal for making any sort of additional connections. Also, whatever you do, using built in utilities, it seems to be blazing fast to evaluate.
Second is 'hand-made' point and orient constraint. They are simplifications, no offsets or such things, while is still possible to blend them with local transforms, Maya seems to create the PairBlend node in same way, just by setting the key on driven transform. However I believe they are always evaluating, making it easier to keep the basic structure of rig always on predictable state, even there is no any animation. Let's say in case of resetting the transforms of driven objects, on scene load and so. Used these setups frequently, whenever wanted to override translation or rotation. I think the pattern is pretty much the same as with Maya built-in constraints: transform of driver is firstly converted to local transform space, then there is override or blend.
This one is probably more interesting. I call it 'Half of Soft IK'. It tries to avoid a typical 'snap' at low angles when bones are driven by IK, by small change of bone length at low angles. It's not good for transition into plain bone stretch as Soft IK is. At maximum distance between first and last element of chain, it just stops with rotation, but, it is trying to provide as much linear change of angle between the bones, as it is noticeable from Graph Editor's snapshot.
How it works - distance between first and last element in chain is used for exponential blend between desired maximum and minimum bone length . "Bone stretch fraction" is a maximum negative stretch of bone, here it is 1/20 of bone length. For use in real world, perhaps is good idea to keep the maximum bone length value, by something more resistant to deleting than used AddDoubleLinear node, like custom attribute, of transform value of some locator. To make it simple, bone lenght is defined only by X distance, all 'joint orient' values are set to zero. It was preferred angle to tell how bone is rotated.
And, one not used here, but have plans about it. It's smooth Blend Shape blending. While smooth interpolation of relative Blend Shapes is added to latest Mayas, it seems it's possible to create it only as 'internal' shape, buried somewhere in BlendShape node, allowed to edit only through the new Shape Editor. Not so nice in case the targets are imported. If I want to use Shrink Wrap as editing operator, result is a sort of funny, but completely undesired effect.
So that's just a classic, not relative Blend Shape, where weights are driven by nodes. Sort of effect that looks easy to do manually with function curves, but in reality it is only machine who is able to do it properly. This one works only with two targets, no more or less. Blend will pass exactly through first target.
Finally, Shear. In Maya, that's easy to use transform option, nicely understood by skin operator, too. When it comes to skinning, I think everyone noticed that many deformations from reality are looking more like shearing, not really as plain rotation. Hand - arm, body - leg or head - neck interface and more. Caveat is, that not everyone else is able to perform Maya style of shearing, and that includes FBX. Shear is simply ignored FBX, and by a lot of game engines or 3d apps. Anyway it was a so strong helper with skinning, enough strong for me to take look, how to export a complete deformed mesh instead of skinned skeleton. In Maya LT bounds, that's old school, plain snapshot of all deformations, utilized as sequence of relative BlendShape targets.
However, how to get angles between bones to drive Maya shear, properly. Usually it is Tangens trig function, but no one of this kind that comes with Maya. So, 'workaround' is to build the function, like in screenshot. We want to split transform between arm and hand, here, that's reason for half of input angle. Rotation along Z axis, driving the along Y aligned vector is completely arbitrary (axis just needs to be orthogonal to vector), could be used anytime. Finally, divide of two vector components is exactly what tangens function is doing. On higher angles closer to 90 degree, thing can go into something really undesired, forcing an infinite shearing. If so, there should be some additional clamp (not added here). From my small experience, it's good to clamp the thing before, somewhere around input angle.
![Image](http://www.matkovic.com/anto/maya_skinback_shear.png)