Alien Skeleton

Now that I have the model completed I can work on the rig of the Alien. This will allow the alien to move.

I first started with the legs; creating joint chains going along the shape of the leg and stopping at points that it will move. After that I created the spine, arms and head, joining them all up. I had to make sure the hierarchy of all these joints made sense so that limbs could move naturally.

After the skeleton was made I started building controllers for the alien. These would the manipulators that the animator would use to make the character move. I used NURB circles and curves to create simple shapes that represented each part that moved. I then colour coded the controllers so that right limbs were red and left limbs were blue.

After that, it was a case of constraining the joints to the controllers. IK handles were used for the legs, orient constraints were used for the spine, arms and head, and aim constraints were used for the eyes. By attaching these joints to controllers, I can just move the controller and the joint will move with it.