Star Wars Rigging

This summer I mainly want to focus my work on Rigging and Lighting, I think these are the two big focus areas I want to study, but often as part of my course I am not able to.

I started out by downloading the Star Wars model pack from this link and I plan to rig most of them in Maya.

I have started with R2-D2, which I have got to a working state down below, but it is not something I am totally happy with, there is definitely room for improvement with it in the way it animates.

I haven't yet figured out the best way to rotate him, as ideally the rotation pivot needs to be in the middle of the 3 legs. That's what is causing the most difficulty at the moment. I think starting from scratch with this in mind might be the best way to achieve this.



I am quite pleased with the middle leg control, it only appears when the leg is lowered via another controller, I used a condition node for this. It makes the rig look a lot cleaner as the control is only there when it's needed.

I hope to get a lot done this summer, mainly aiming to improve my scripting, rigging and lighting. I'm going to take a step back from the R2-D2 model for a bit and try one of the others then come back to this with a more clear mind.

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