Technical Journal ( Rigging- part 01)

In our TVC project, I am the one who do rigging for our character. Before I continue, I would like to talk about our TVC. Roughly, we are selling mattress and targeted to overweight people. So, we are using a CG Dragon to represent overweight people.

In this journal, I will talk about more on how I tried to make better on my rigging instead of talking step by step. As you know, it is a dragon instead of humans like characters. And then it's my first time to rig a dragon. However, our character is cartoonist style and quite close to normal human rig except the wings and the tail.

Firstly, I used IK_spline_handle_tool to rig the tail as I rig for the body. In figure-01, I used only six joints for it. And I connected the base joint of the tail to the pelvis.

figure-01

And I find out that if I place the base joint of the tail on that much close to pelvis, I will have to face difficulties when I do paint weight on it. So, I made it move a bit further from pelvis joint as you see in figure-02. So, I can make it easier when I do paint weight.

figure-02

And another thing here is that I tried to use only six joints for the tail. However, I find out that it's not smooth enough to animate which mean I need more joints. So, I put more joints(total 9 joints) for the tail to make it smoother for a better result in animation.

figure-03

Finally, I adjust the influence of joints on each vertex by using component editor to get a smoother curvy look for the tail. (figure-04)

figure-04