c. reno - dog rig

A quadruped (dog) rig made in Maya v8.5 for my short film "Learning to Play."
www.chrisrenoart.com

Details on the rig:
-Global xForm control with scale and level-of-detail views of model: off, low and high
-FK and IK stretchy spine
-IK legs with appropriate foot/hawk/toe rolls/twists and pole vectors
-IK shoulder positioning/adjustment
-FK and IK stretchy neck with switch control
-independent hip control movement
-FK jaw, ears, tail and collar
-eyelid and brow controls: open, close, tilt, 3 brow sections
-eye tracking: together and independent

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• chris
• reno
• art
• animation
• rigging
• dog
• quadruped
• learning
• play
• character
• td
• technical
• director

[TheZipstorm]

What software/program did you use?

[Lucky008aau]

@TheZipstorm Autodesk's Maya v8.5 for everything.

[digimonworld123]

hey how do you get the ears to move like that

[Lucky008aau]

It's a fairly simple setup, same as the tail. Create about 9-10 joints for each ear. Create a control object, group it to itself. Snap it to the first joint. Repeat for all the joints. Parent constrain each joint to its control. Then, PC each child control's group to the control object above it; ie, Select earCTRL1, sel. earCTRL_grp2, Parent Constrain. To animate, simply select all, or some of the controls and rotate. Simple, but it made smooth animations and met my needs.

[aikijeet]

hi! I'm really impressed on your rig. Can you suggest some advanced tutorial on how to rig like that using splines/curves and controllers? thanks!

[Lucky008aau]

Check out Jason Schleifer's "Animator Friendly Rigging" books. I got a *.pdf version of book 2 that he made for Siggraph 06 (I think) from a professor at my school.

[bydesigneralexramos]

bakana

[stoob1969]

no toes?

[Lucky008aau]

Unfortunately, I am currently too busy working on my film (animating this character) to create a how-to tutorial about Carson (dog's name). This rig is a result of a year of trial and error (this being the third rig I made for this model), with knowledge from 2 animation rigging classes at the Academy of Art university in San Francisco, and countless meetings with professors. Besides the help from school, Jason Schliefer's books/tutorials have also been helpful. I recommend those at this time.

[chops185]

tutorial plzzz!!!