Following on from the last blog post, I decided to at least attempt to model the Bear. It was important for me to at least try and modeling the characters, probably since the game has been very personal for me. Unfortunately, I got a little too focused during the modeling process and failed to take any screenshots during the build (continual documentation is a skill I’m still trying to master), however I thought I’d write another blog post about my experience learning to rig and animate the bear asset.

I began with my new bear model. I used many references online to try to achieve the low-poly aesthetic while it still being recognizable as a bear.  I received mostly positive feedback from my colleagues - some adjustments here or there (and one who said it looked like a big pig….) . I was fairly content with my first attempt at character modeling in Maya.

With no experience in rigging or modeling, I began the way I always do -  by watching a lot of video tutorials. I picked up some very useful tips, including the correct way to line up the skeleton. The other thing I learned was that rigging a quadrupedal was going to be significantly more difficult than a bipedal. 

I began with the front right leg, then the back right leg and mirrored these for the left side limbs. I then created the spine and the head.

After connecting the limbs, to the spine, the last step involved binding the skin to the skeleton rig. This was a fairly straight forward process, however I feel as though something went wrong in the rear half of the rigging process. I didn’t realize until after I bound the skin to the rig that the rear half was merged just above the hip (a problem I’d been specifically trying to avoid).

The next blog post will be my experience experimenting with both the Maya and Unity animation tools.