Still developing my idea for the August 2022 Ragdoll Challenge, but started playing around with the rigs and made a quick anim using only pins for the hips, hands and feet to help woody try to figure out how to walk.
Nice one, first entry! 
Let me know if you’re happy just to post your work in progress or whether you’d also like some feedback and suggestions.
@marcus yes, I would appreciate any feedback and suggestions to help me improve my work using the ragdoll plugin
Thanks
I found it a bit challenging getting his knees and elbows to bend properly.
Should I be using limits?
I was mainly using the pins to animate the hands and feet as though they were in ik mode even though Im using the rig set to fk.
Ok, great. In that case, he’s moving way too fast. You’re likely having to use very high stiffness values to get him to follow, because the momentum of each of his limbs get really high and the come to a stop before changing direction almost immediately.
I would keep stiffnesses between 0-1 and try and find a way to make him walk; that way you’re forced to think about the mass and momentum of the character in a way that makes for a natural walk.
But it should also be noted that getting any character to walk is a huge and daunting task. 
With pins it would be even more challenging, because now he wouldn’t be using the muscles in his own legs to walk, but rather this external force pulling him in various directions.
The pins would be good for a Pinocchio-style walk, maybe that’s what you’re after? For a walk using his own muscles, have a look at this Rhino series.
Thanks @marcus that Rhino series helped me get a better grasp of working with spaces.
I’ve done an idle flying ragdoll anim test on the gargoyle, feels slow at the moment though, so I’ll work on speeding it up. I created a looping anim similar to how you did in that wasp video, but I gave the wings, arms, legs, neck and head 3 cycling keyframes with slight offsets. Though, it doesn’t feel like the wings are strong enough to lift him up in the air. I have the pose stiffness on the wings set to a value of 0.8. Also, on the first frame the head has too much of a bobble. I have the head pose stiffness set to a value of 0.2 which gives his hears that nice subtle secondary flapping motion, but this makes his horns currently feel too soft/flappy.
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Just playing around with an idea of the gargoyle swooping in for a meal. Mainly just getting more familiar with how spaces work following the rhino tutorial, thanks @Jason for putting that together. Now just gotta figure out how to improve upon the gargoyle gliding in anim and also make him grab his meal.
Great idea! Haha.
For the gargoyle, I expect you’ll get some more natural/dynamic motion if you:
- Turn anything (likely the hip) from Kinematic to Dynamic
- Instead, put a Pin Constraint at the base of both wings
That way, he’ll he held up not by the hip but by his wings; and the “pivot” around which he’ll be held up will also be around an appropriate place. Then you can adjust the translate stiffness of this constraint to control how strong this carrying force is. As it is dynamic, you can expect his hole body to react to the wings flapping, which tend to look pretty cool.
To grab his meal, try either a Distance Constraint or the newer Attach Constraint.
Here is my submission for the August 2022 Ragdoll Dynamics Competition. I focused on polishing a casually flying gargoyle that’s looking for something, I did use pin constraints at the base joints of his wings to make sure his wings are what’s keep him up in flight. I’m submitting a final render with motion blur, another render without motion blur, and a few playblast showing the input animation, the ragdoll result, and the baked animation.
Final render with motion blur
Final Render without motion blur
Playblast Input Animation
Playblast Ragdoll Result
Playblast Baked Animation
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