baby Dragon rigged

for a successful rig which will be easy to animate; baby dragons rig has been created using three steps. Firstly, the skeleton was added; each join named specific to its area. Second, Baby dragons controllers were created. This including the tail, neck, lower jaw and limbs; eyes and eyelids. Each joint has been parented, and finally a direction controller was created; allowing the dragon to be dragged back and forth as a whole. Finally, Baby dragon was given a smooth bind, However upon the binding, much needed fixing. Baby dragons joints were assigned to multiple areas at once; rather than just the one joint. Eg; lower jaw was not assigned to the lower jaw joints area; but instead spread around the head. This causes the head to move with the joint; as it's chosen to assign itself with it and follow the control. To fix this, the final step consisted of 8 hours weight painting. This was a method chosen to assign each rig area to its joint, black removing all movement for each joint; white assigning the rigs movement to the joint. the weight painting took 8 hours alone, rigging the fastest process being under ten minutes; and step two taking a shared amount of 8 hours as the weight painting had taken.

Rigging took up to three attempts, as the first time no controllers were assigned to the joints. The second attempt the controllers hadn't constrained properly after the save, causing the rig to break. Too many controllers were also assigned to each joint, IK handles being assigned to all four legs with separate joint controllers. Every joint had a controller, and as the root joint was constrained incorrectly the joint disconnected itself from the others. This created problems with parenting joints and controllers to one another, as well as the rig not being able to be selected and moved as a whole. The lower jaw joint was also broken, so the rig itself was broken. Though multiple saves allowed me to go back until I found a save which was not broken, I felt it was necessary to keep a clean rig and start from the beginning once more.

The rig before paint weights were added

Adding paint weights to Baby dragon

The rig after paint weights had been added

First rig; messy controller setup; too many controllers and controllers became unconstrained after save.

Final successful rig, less controllers; all controllers remained constrained.

Root joint remained connected. Eyes with eyelid controls also added, though so far have been left uncoloured.