I. INTRODUCTION Rigging is a fundamental part of the animation process. Animation begins with a framework called a rig. By connecting a rig to a model in a process called binding the model mimics the motions of the rig like a puppet. The foundation of scripted rig building is definition of the number and location of joints. Throughout the 3D animation industry a simple standard indisputable rule exists, that a 3D character cannot be animated without a proper control rig to manipulate the various body parts [1]. Moreover animating with a substandard rig can be very tricky, monotonous and can drive an animator insane as described by Jason Schleifer [1] that “it’s like trying to run a marathon backwards in flip-flops while tossing jellybeans into your mouth”. These controllers and manipulators usually consist of simple joints, locators, selection handles, spline curves, or even an independent graphical user interface (GUI) for control selection [2]. The process of manually rigging a quadruped character is extremely tedious for each and every character in a project, which makes the pipeline of character animation more time-consuming, difficult and
problematic [3] [4]. The major benefits of using procedural technique to automatically create quadruped rig is that the time spent to build a system for dynamic motion control and deformation system is decreased by scripting the entire process and generating the rig through the single click.
This research work implements a template based skeletal generation mechanism called widgets, for quadruped character based on the actual animal anatomy. Then this skeleton is automatically rigged according to the various standards and criteria researched and discussed with custom controls and manipulators. This system of automation will provide a practical solution to the real life problem of character rigging and animation.
The proposed system of automated rigging of quadruped character with custom manipulators, removes this boredom from the character riggers. This is achieved by producing the quadruped character rig automatically with all custom selection controls with inverse kinematics (IK) and forward kinematics (FK), thus making the process of rigging a stress free and timesaving. This system will facilitate the novice character rigger and animator greatly by simple clicking on few buttons and they will have their rig created and ready for animation.