During the past lectures we analysed the differences between rigs for animations and visual effects and rigs for games. As expected, games have more limitations due to the performance requirements, but this also varies in different types of games: mobile games will have more restrictions than a console game; but even within the same game some characters might have more resources allocated to them which means that the artist will be able to build a more complex rig for them (to achieve a more realistic animation).
We've also been introduced to the concept of skinning which is very crucial in determining how the model should be structured in terms of topology to have a visually pleasing deformation.
Since we are required to build a rig as part of our coursework I was researching models that I could use and as I don't have very strong modelling skills I started looking into already rigged characters: this way I can just remove the rig from the model and start from scratch.
I've always been fascinated by animal characters, so I started exploring this model and its topology seems to be very nicely laid out so I will be experimenting with it in the next weeks to see what kind of rig I can build with it.
The model should be reasonably complex for a game rig, it only has 4k triangles in total, the only problem I would see is that it might require too many joints for the head to make it look expressive enough, but one could just assume that if there are no camera close ups on the creature then such detail might not be required.
I will also be exploring more the scripting side of Maya in the next weeks, so stay tuned for more updates!
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