RIGGING AND ANIMATION

Model Featured: Cindy The Centaur - by Manuela Reis.

Complex Creature Rig

This Character was a pleasure to bring to life. I have always been charmed by the centaur creature. 
the challenge in this Rig was blending a horse skeletons bottom half with a humans skeleton top half, without having the controls conflict in un intended ways. the best way I found was to have the human cut off completely at the waist. 
I had seen references that bring the human features all the way down to the front legs, and model the horse behind it. However I found that treating the character as a horse first, and then rigging the human on top of that base was a more intuitive way to animate the character. 
had so much fun with this I just had to create an animation for it!

Complex Humanoid Rig

This rig was created using AS5 and various python commands to automate the process. The most interesting part of this mesh is certainly the very large wing like claws. I decided that a 2 joint IK while treating the end joint as a hand was the best approach to this. This allows for much needed simplicity in the claw like motions expected from this character. 

Model Featured: Horror Angel - by Manuela Reis.