CAGD 493 Week 2 Reflection - Christopher Coombs


    Welcome back, everyone! This is my Week 2 update for Senior Portfolio (CAGD 495). As noted in the previous week, I'm very fascinated with learning how to animate quadrupeds. Given the large abundance of awesome-looking creature rigs online, I've had the opportunity to break away from my comfort zone of animating only humans. Many of these rigs have themes rooted in fiction, but for my first attempt, I decided to choose a rig based on a real animal. Initially, it was going to be CGSpectrum's free tiger rig, as I thought it looked pretty cool. I was also quite fortunate to find plenty of reference footage for the tiger and some really cool animation diagrams for animating big cats, as shown below:



    However, despite my preparedness, I encountered a myriad of issues along the way that had impeded my progress too many times to count. CGSpectrum's download link for the tiger rig no longer worked, but I still had access to the rig from my previous class with Mark. I'd just have to accept that I wouldn't be able to have the texture files to go with it. Another huge issue was the rig's lack of compatibility with current versions of Maya, likely due to how old it was. I'd get pretty far into animating the walk cycle, and then suddenly the torso of the rig would completely stretch to the moon or flip upside down between the frames without explanation. After a few days, I got tired of these constant issues, so I decided to search for a similar rig. Fortunately for me, it did not take long.

    This rig was made by Truong, a CG Artist who had worked on the dragon I was showing off in my first post. Suffice to say, I've encountered no issues with this regularly updated rig, so far.  Not only that, but the leopard rig, in my opinion, has a nicer set of controls to work with, especially in the shoulders. Also, leopards may look a little different than tigers, but they do behave quite similarly when they move and have just as plentiful reference images and footage to study.


    Below is a blockout and spline of the progress I've made so far with this new rig:





    As you can tell, there are a few issues that I need to iron out with the timing of the legs to make them flow smoothly. I've learned from further research that leopards, similar to tigers, tuck their front paws in sideways, but only a little bit, so I plan on animating that. I also animated the paws to match the typical walking pattern of most cats in the wild, reducing noise by stepping over previous footsteps. The tail I added a bit of offset for the back-and-forth sway, but I still need to reduce its overall movement. Once I finish the legs and tail, I'll be moving onto the head, shoulders, and torso, to give the leopard some bounce. I'll be done refining this animation by the start of next week, then I will be moving on to the run cycle. That's all for now, I'll keep you updated on the progress of my first quadruped animation.

                                                                                                                - Christopher Coombs


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