#rig showcase

He moves!! Holy wow, this was a LOT of work. I've been attempting things that I am 80% capable of doing; familiar enough that I'm not struggling the whole time, but with a good amount of challenge along the way. I'd say I had a solid handle on maybe 30% of what it took to pull this off. I haven't used Rigify much on account of the complexity, but that complexity is exactly what's needed to ease some of the manual effort of animating. Further, I have not once set up a face rig. Not only did I have to get into the mechanics of Rigify (those airplane ears? Those are a custom setup), but I had to learn how to use it too.

It is with great misfortune that I realized my mesh doesn't have the right topology for good deformations. Here I was all worried about the face when it was those quadruped shoulder and hip joints where my topology falls short. I have two options: press ahead with corrective shape keys and counter-animation, or take 8 steps backward and retopologize. Honestly, I will probably animate a few sequences and see how the model moves--especially with a fur particle system to cover some flaws.

By the way, check out this rig! It come with so many neat features like IK/FK switching on the limbs and a full bendy-bone network on the face. I added dilating eyes and retractable claws