Toshi's Rig

The first iteration of the character went with me to Dreamworks where I got some really great advice on his design. After his redesign, I had to rebuild him in 3D. This version of him is a far more sophisticated rig allowing several options for parent space switching on all limbs, stretchy IK on all limbs with adjustable setups and FK switches that automatically blend off stretching. A stretchy reverse and forward kinematic spine with average twisting. His tail is a similar setup to what I did with my Daxter rig in the spine a while back. I found that setup is very useful for lankey characters and limbs. His face is all point-based controlled with a few auto-activated blendshapes such as crinkling in the bridge of the nose when the nose control is pushed up. Also playing with hair dynamics to drive the hair that has been modelled out. Of course the animator will have the option of manually animating the hair pieces if prefered. Our developed story calls for a more "Indiana Jones packed into a ball of fur" type character and so his body and antics for acrobatics has very much come forward. Hoping to get some shading done on him using a few new techniques in the coming days and a bit of more rigorous test animation to break him in.