Simple Rig Problem

Thunderent

Hi,Polycount!

I've never done too much rigging before,just a few tests,and I'm facing a problem with rigging this battering ram.

I have no idea how to rig it(how I would approach this rig),does it even need a rig?I need to do a few animations for it like(hit,destroyed and so on).




Help will be greatly appreciated!

--Thunder'

Mark Dygert

Are you restricted by a game engine or can you do anything you want?

It really depends on the motions and the animations needed.

• Do the wheels need to roll realistically where the wheel rotation is driven by the forward/back motion of the main model?
• Do you need the ground plane orientation to drive the overall rotation? Or do you plan to animate each wheel by hand?
• How many parts are going to break apart and where will they be? Typically games will have some kind of event like a small explosion and then a model swap.
• Do you want some kind of hang and sway physics on the hanging piece or are you going to hand animate the the secondary motion?

Rigging is really all about helping the animators do what they need with as little fuss as possible.

Thunderent

I'm sorry I didn't make myself clear on the first post.

The model will be built specifically for the Unity Game Engine...

I only need to rig the parts in red,the battering ram itself.I don't need a rig for the rest of the model,I'm planning a rig as simple as possible.



1)No.
2)I'm planning to animate each wheel by hand.
3)The parts that will brake apart are the 4 wheels,the battering ram and one of the supports,so that counts as 6.Do you think it would be better to model the broken battering ram instead of animating it?(I don't have any restrictions).
4)I'm going to hand animate.

Thunderent

Up we go.

Mark Dygert

1-2) Seems like a fairly straight forward job then, a few bones and off you go.

3) It depends on the game and what you can pull off. I'm not that familiar with Unity on the programing side to say one way or the other, they both seem possible.
A model swap would probably be the easiest but it would not be too hard to carve up the mesh and animate the damage. Whatever had the smallest foot print and is the easiest to implement normally wins but that's a conversation I would have with a programer. In the unlikely event that is you... I would do some research.

Based on that I would probably do:
2 bones for the wheels one for each axel, unless you want each wheel to roll independently, then use 4.
1 bone for the main body, root node.
1 bone for the battering ram.
The verts on the rope are a blend between the root and the battering ram.
Any other pieces that fall off probably need their own bones also.

You might want to do a little research and see if Unity allows bone scaling, it will allow you to reposition certain parts without breaking the child/parent bond. It might allow you to reposition children bones without a problem and without scaling so that depends on the engine also.