FVR: Rigging

Rigging:

Rigging was divded into Skeleton and Morph Targets. All tasks done done using 3d Studio Max 7.

Fox uses a huge range of skeletal controls to bring him to life. Everything that can move, does. Including: Body, tail, wings, ears, face, nose, tongue, and even scaling of the eyes when necessary.

Character Rigging by: Eric Ronay

Eric used a combination of character studio and bones, to create the skeleton system that makes Fox comes to life.

Fox:

Character Studio for the body and ears (ponytail bones used for the ears) and bones for the wings and extra links in the tail. A simple setup by nature, that works flawlessly when executed. Fox's wings are the crown jewel here. They move with perfect precision and form perfect graphic shapes that do more than enhance the character, they complete him.

The genius of Eric's setup is that he modeled it low poly, and only applies a tubosmooth modifier over the top when it's ready for render. Until then, setup and animation use the perfectly flexable and easy to work with, low poly model.

Eric finished skeletal setup on Fox in less than 3 days time.

Morph targets (For facial animation) are finished.

Morph Targets:

Rigging was divded into Skeleton and Morph Targets. All tasks done done using 3d Studio Max 7.

Facial Expression Morph Targets by: Nate Horsfall

Nate created a wide range of morph targets to give Fox the expressions that match his drawings. Combining his own knowledge with Eric's spot on model of the dragon, this created a 3d Fox that looks directly taken from the paper.

Fox:

Fox is mainly done with morph targets, but his ears are are not. They use biped's "ponytails" to give a full range of movement and expression. This was key because Fox's ears are very expressive, and require full control to animate right.

The top row is a few of the targets specifically (and some slightly combined to create an expresion), and the bottom row is a full on expression, including the ears and head movement. Fox uses around 30 different targets for a wide range of facial expressions.