Bobby Rigging Update

Hi, guys! Here's a quick update on the bobcat rig.

I've finished rigging his legs and torso. It took a lot longer than I had expected, but that's because I rigged him with some good, advanced tools. He has IK/FK functionality, and little important extras like foot roll and tumble controls, and knee pole vectors. Having used professional/semi-professional rigs in my animation class, I knew that I wanted those to be in his rig, to make animation easiest.

I really think that using other rigs is a great way to figure out what you'd like to include in your rigs, and what you wouldn't like. For example, I currently like facial rigs best if there are bones actually on the face for me to use, so I'm rigging Bobby's face in that way. I don't like having some big panel of sliders next to the face. It's not like that method is any less effective, I just don't enjoy animating with those rigs as much. Of course, this preference is just based off of one rig that had that sort of setup, so maybe other such rigs are better.

Here's a shot of the foot rig, without the tumble bones or custom shapes. It's pretty complicated (for me, anyway, since I didn't know how to rig extra controls before).

Here's a shot of the rig as it is right now, with x-ray on for the bones. Those extra shapes outside of the rig control the knees, foot tumble, foot role, and leg IK/FK. The spine's IK/FK does not have a control. Instead, you just switch visibility layers (you do this with the legs as well, the IK/FK control just helps switch the deformation bones around). I'm color-coding the bones into groups, which is why some of them are red.

And here's the rig with x-ray turned off. The controls are big enough for the rig to be animated in this way.

I'm currently working on giving him some gums (for some odd reason I never made him any, which I know from experience can lead to problems). Once I make those, I'm going to rig his face. When I'm all done rigging, I'll post a list of all the tutorials I used. There are a number of awesome people who recorded tutorials that helped me tons, and I want to give them credit.

Until next time!