I rigged three characters for Echoes; two bipeds and a winged dragon. Each rig gave me different challenges, and I learned a great deal from one to the next.
Fae
​Overview:
The Fae rig was an important rig to get right, as it was to control the player character for the game. This meant it needed to perform the largest variety of maneuvers and would have the highest total animation seconds of any character. The rig needed to be simple, robust, and easy to use to reflect this.

As the character fights with a staff, I created a system whereby the hands could be locked to the weapon, so the animators could animate the weapon and not worry about the hands. To support this, I made sure the arms were stretchable.

Rig Features:
- IK/FK switchable arms
- IK/FK arm pose snap
- Stretchy IK arms
- Staff snap
- Staff holster control with auto scale
- IK spine with twist control
- Local/global head rotation
- Bone driven facial controls
- SDKs for quick posing of detail areas

The Fae was modelled and textured by Dean Paupe
Dragon
​Overview:
The dragon design was a great challenge. Having never rigged wings before, I had to come up with a solution which provided maximum flexibility for the animators, whilst also working with Unity. This meant bone-driven deformations rather than cloth based membranes.

I loved the design of the dragon, the frills in particular were great fun to rig up, allowing me to play with linking viewport controls to driven keys on other objects. I learned a great deal about how the animators (myself included) tend to interact with the rig, which features were most appreciated, and which went unused most of the time.

Rig Features:
- IK/FK switchable wings and legs
- IK/FK wing/leg pose snap
- Stretchy IK wings/legs
- Variable parenting on IK limbs and spine
- Membrane control via SDKs and manual controllers
- Viewport driven controls for frill SDKs
- IK/FK switchable spine
- IK/FK switchable tail
- Bone driven facial controls
- SDKs for quick posing of detail areas
​
The dragon was modelled and textured by Ruth Beresford

Rigging
For the Mongols vs Ogres project, I rigged the Ogre, as well as the two Mongol characters. All the rigs had to be not only compliant with UDK, but also with the animation data already in the engine. For this project, we used 3ds Max.
Ogre
Genevieve
​Overview:
Genevieve was not only the first character I rigged for Echoes, but also the first character I rigged in Maya. The character gave me the opportunity to get to grips with how Maya rigging works, and I really came to love the package for its flexibility.

Though less feature intensive than my other rigs, the Genevieve rig gave me the knowledge base to build on in my future rigs. Its simplicity keeps it from becoming crowded or confusing, and I learned a good deal about designing controls for animators.


Rig Features:
- IK/FK switchable arms and legs
- Stretchy IK arms and legs
- IK spine
- Local/global head rotation
- SDKs for quick posing of detail areas

Genevieve was modelled and textured by Ruth Beresford
​Overview:
The ogre was an interesting challenge. The rig had to be functional and useable, with easy to use controls, but also compatible with everything in UDK. The main challenge was that we needed the deform skeleton to accept the pre-packaged animation already in UDK, as well as our own.

In terms of the character, the biggest obstacle was the sheer size of the ogre. The fat proportions mean I needed to use extra constraints and bones to get good deforms, but they also made the rig run slower, so I had to balance performance in Max and final quality.


Rig Features:
- IK/FK switchable arms
- Wired parameters for posing fingers
- Wrist twist control
- Foot roll
- Constraints for fat deform

The Ogre was modelled and textured by Dean Paupe