Wednesday 3 May 2017

Meet Rhett!

Rhett The Clydesdale. Free at StockCG.com
Rhett The Clydesdale is one of a handful of excellent free rigs we recommend for learning quadruped locomotion.

Created by Noxlabs and available for free download at StockCG.com, Rhett is perfect for equine animation.

One of Rhett's great features is what he doesn't have - a tail. Not having to deal with overlapping action frees you to concentrate on the main event - quadruped locomotion. However, like most rigs, he does have some odd quirks.  So how can our students get the most out of Rhett?

Rhett's display looks weird - the surface topology is broken up.
Select the main move control (Rhett bCNTRL) and go to the display options, and set these to high, so that the surface topography is displaying clearly.

It's hard to straighten out his leg, and his knees are wobbling when he walks.
There is no knee control as such, but you can still stop the knees from popping as he walks. On the foot control, look for the Compress Fetlock slider in the Channel Box. To get a nice straight leg when you are refining your shot, adjust the Compress Fetlock value frame by frame to ensure that Rhett's knees don't wobble.

I can't find his jaw control
Rhett's jaw control is actually a locator.  So you need to switch on show locators in the viewports in order to be able to select the jaw control.

I can't find Rhett online! Where is he?
http://stockcg.com/assets/rigging/animals-rigging/rhett_v5/

What is the license type?
Creative Commons. Just don't use Rhett for commercial use - his license is strictly for education and personal learning.



Other free horse rigs
You might try this excellent horse rig, modelled loosely on the horse in Disney's classic: Sleeping Beauty. He has a long tail so you will also need to animate the overlapping action. To see some nice animation with it, check out this shot by Escapee Giuseppe Candido below.



Another very good horse rig is this one here, available for free download from MothmanTD. Some of our students are reporting better results than with Rhett.

---Alex

The Escape Studios Animation Blog offers a personal view on the art of animation and visual effects. To find out more about our new BA/MArt, now recruiting for September 2017, follow this link.   To apply, visit the official page here.   


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