Quadruped Animal

[jojop18658909]

How would I go about rigging a quadruped animal on charactor animator? I’ve only watched characters with two arms and two legs tutorials.

[alank99101739]

[The following is just suggestions - I have not tried to do it.]  Are you trying to use the automatic walk behaviors? Or just going to use draggers? If just draggers, I don't think it is any different than two legged - Character Animator will just move the draggers around as you ask - put one on each leg and start dragging! If you are trying to use the walk behavior, I think I recall reading somewhere suggesting putting two walk behaviors (one for front legs, one for rear).  Character Animator I don't think cares about the shape of the body - it just knows to move feet relative to the waist etc when walking. The actual shape of the puppet can be anything you like. That is, in the artwork maybe trying grouping the front legs under a common parent that you mark as a waist with a "walk" behavior added, then group the rear legs is a separate group doing the same thing. As long as both are armed at the same time, I think they will both get keyboard commands etc when you want them to move.  (But I have never tried it.)  The other thing you could try is one walk behavior, but mark multiple handles with the same tag - so there are two left feet, to right feet, etc. Hopefully it will move both feet in sync then without having two walk behaviors.

[jojop18658909]

Thank you, I will try your suggestions!

[KJerryK · Accepted solution]

I've done some animal puppets. It takes a lot of playing around with the rigging to get something useful. Here are a couple examples, that can still use more work

For the horse and steers, I used a separate rear body and front body. For the ostrich, to get the backward knee bend of birds, I tagged the legs with elbows instead of knees.

[alank99101739]

I especially love the ostrich!

[jojop18658909]

Awesome! I will try that. Thank you!

[tiffanyl14655871]

Hi KJerryK,

Just tried to do this last night but haven't been as successful as you yet.

Question, when you said you used a separate rear and front body, do you mean you had 2 bodies in the same Puppet?

Sorry I'm a little confused.

Thanks

so far this is my attempt, 

https://youtu.be/GLtIUTnB5yg