Lydiah Moon
Community Manager
Hayo Zookeepers!
Let's get excited for the The Planet Zoo: Eurasia Animal Pack coming out tomorrow by learning about how the incredibly talented Rigging Team bring the wonderful animals from this pack to life!
Shall we dive into another Developer Journal? Let's go!
Hayo! We're so thrilled to have you participate in this Developer Journal! Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do on Planet Zoo?
Hayo! I’m Oliver, I joined Frontier as a rigger about a year and a half ago, and I’ve been working on Planet Zoo ever since! I’ve been responsible for a good few animals since the Grasslands Animal Pack, including (but not limited to) the Maned Wolf, Tasmanian Devil and the lovely Mute Swan.
Hi , I’m Dave and I have been a rigger at frontier since 2009, where I worked on rigs for Kinectimals. Since then, I have rigged models for a load of different games, most recently Planet Zoo
Rigging is such an important role in the animation process, can you tell us what Rigging is and why it's such a crucial step in bringing to life the animals?
Oliver: It’s a crucial step because without Rigging, the animals can’t move! Our wonderful artists are responsible for creating the animal’s model, its 3D shape, but those models are statues that can’t move on their own. Rigging is where we take that model and turn it into a digital puppet that can be posed and moved. With that rig, our animators are able to animate the animal to bring it to life!
Dave: I like to think of a rig as the strings on a marionette. Without the strings, you have a nice stuffed toy, but combined with the strings and a good puppeteer – or in this example, animators, you can get a character that creates a memorable role.
So, Rigging is part of a wider process which begins from the Character Artists, then onto you, can you tell us how the process goes in more detail?
Oliver: Once a rigger receives an animal’s model, we start creating the rig by giving the model a digital skeleton made up of lots of joints. In rigging, these joints are like our real skeletons; they determine where and how the model can move, so we try to match the joints in the digital skeleton closely with the real animal’s skeleton, to bring it to life. These joints must also control things that would not be moved by a skeleton in real life, so things like ears, tongues, lips, and eyes are all also given joints!
With the digital skeleton all ready, we then build the controls and systems that power our rig! These controls are what we use to select and manipulate the joints, because the joints themselves are hidden inside the model, so they’re hard to select! The systems we then build determine how these controls react to each other, and adds more power and functionality to them to streamline animation. A nice example would be adding a feature to the paw control so that it can spread out the toe controls or bring them back together. Adding this feature means the animators can achieve this effect without having to manually manipulate each toe control to get the same result. It’s all about optimizing things like this to make things more efficient for the animators!
And lastly, we have the skinning process. This is when the model is finally connected (“skinned”) to the joints. Moving a joint finally moves the model too! During skinning, we dictate what parts of the model are affected by which joints. So this is how we ensure that moving a knee joint doesn’t make the animal’s jaw move, and it’s our opportunity to make everything form together as accurately as possible. When skinning is finished, the rig is ready to be sent off and reviewed by Animation, we then act on any feedback we get to ensure the rig is in tip-top shape! Hopefully that explained the process (somewhat) understandably!
With each animal having specific movements , what sort of research is needed to be done prior and do you use references as well?
Oliver: For the rigging side of things, we like to dig around and find as many references as we can get. Anatomical diagrams of an animal’s skeleton are great references for creating our digital skeletons. Videos of the animal are also amazing for helping us see just how the animal moves, so we can make note of any distinct features we’ll need to tackle in the rig. A great example is the Mute Swan’s neck. Reference footage showed what a wide range of movement and flexibility the neck had, that the rig had to be able to replicate. As a result, the Mute Swan has the most neck joints of all animals in Planet Zoo to give it that flexibility! (Yes, even more than the Reticulated Giraffe!)
Dave: For every animal on Planet Zoo, once we start making the rig, we look for as for as much reference material as possible such as; anatomical drawings, photographs and videos of the animal in motion. Sometimes watching the animal move will suggest a rigging technique that the animators can use to recreate the movement.
It's really interesting to hear the granular details of how Rigging works! Did you find any of the animals from the Eurasia Animal Pack difficult to mimic accurately in terms of their movement?
Oliver: The Mute Swan gave us a few challenges with its behaviours. Getting the neck nice and flexible to get that Swan-like movement took a few iterations of feedback to get just right. Also finding an intuitive way of dealing with all the feathers in the wings was a decent challenge, since the Mute Swan had a LOT of feathers to deal with! In the end I created a setup where the feathers would try to be arranged together, so there wouldn’t be large gaps between them when they moved.
Dave: When working on the Saiga, I spent a bit of time examining how to set up the soft, floppy nose. So I investigated setting up a soft body simulation. It proved somewhat tricky to implement, as we were iterating on the model and joints a lot, it also meant the animators found it challenging to tailor the nose animation to a specific animation. In the end we went with a solution where the the animators had much more control over the overall animation.
It's really incredible how much detail goes into these animals! Can you tell us which animal you specifically had the most enjoyment working on for this pack?
Oliver: I worked on just the one animal, so by default it goes to the Mute Swan! Tackling the wings was an entirely new experience for me!
Dave: Saiga of course! The soft long nose looks brilliant when it is flopping about while the Saiga is walking around, it really adds to the character of the species
Of course we have to ask, do you have a favourite animal from the Eurasia Animal Pack?
Oliver: While I do love Wolverines and their big paws, I have to go with the Mute Swan, don’t I? It’s the most unique rig I’ve been responsible for on Planet Zoo, and we hope all the time and care that went in to the Mute Swan shines through!
Dave: There are some great animals in the Eurasia Animal Pack. The Mute Swan is a particular stunning. Wings are not easy to rig and Oliver did a great job on them. The Takin is an impressive chunky boy (as the kids say). I think it’s great all-rounder pack – it would be a toss-up between the Swan and the Saiga , leaning slightly towards the Saiga (sorry Oliver!)
And that wraps up another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our talented Rigging Team who gave us their time for this, it was so fun learning about all they do!
The new Planet Zoo: Eurasia Animal Pack will be launching 13 Dec, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 4pm GMT tomorrow, 13 December for a special launch livestream where there will be giveaways, exclusive animal footage and more! You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
Let's get excited for the The Planet Zoo: Eurasia Animal Pack coming out tomorrow by learning about how the incredibly talented Rigging Team bring the wonderful animals from this pack to life!
Shall we dive into another Developer Journal? Let's go!
Hayo! We're so thrilled to have you participate in this Developer Journal! Can you introduce yourself and tell us what you do on Planet Zoo?
Hayo! I’m Oliver, I joined Frontier as a rigger about a year and a half ago, and I’ve been working on Planet Zoo ever since! I’ve been responsible for a good few animals since the Grasslands Animal Pack, including (but not limited to) the Maned Wolf, Tasmanian Devil and the lovely Mute Swan.
Hi , I’m Dave and I have been a rigger at frontier since 2009, where I worked on rigs for Kinectimals. Since then, I have rigged models for a load of different games, most recently Planet Zoo
Rigging is such an important role in the animation process, can you tell us what Rigging is and why it's such a crucial step in bringing to life the animals?
Oliver: It’s a crucial step because without Rigging, the animals can’t move! Our wonderful artists are responsible for creating the animal’s model, its 3D shape, but those models are statues that can’t move on their own. Rigging is where we take that model and turn it into a digital puppet that can be posed and moved. With that rig, our animators are able to animate the animal to bring it to life!
Dave: I like to think of a rig as the strings on a marionette. Without the strings, you have a nice stuffed toy, but combined with the strings and a good puppeteer – or in this example, animators, you can get a character that creates a memorable role.
So, Rigging is part of a wider process which begins from the Character Artists, then onto you, can you tell us how the process goes in more detail?
Oliver: Once a rigger receives an animal’s model, we start creating the rig by giving the model a digital skeleton made up of lots of joints. In rigging, these joints are like our real skeletons; they determine where and how the model can move, so we try to match the joints in the digital skeleton closely with the real animal’s skeleton, to bring it to life. These joints must also control things that would not be moved by a skeleton in real life, so things like ears, tongues, lips, and eyes are all also given joints!
With the digital skeleton all ready, we then build the controls and systems that power our rig! These controls are what we use to select and manipulate the joints, because the joints themselves are hidden inside the model, so they’re hard to select! The systems we then build determine how these controls react to each other, and adds more power and functionality to them to streamline animation. A nice example would be adding a feature to the paw control so that it can spread out the toe controls or bring them back together. Adding this feature means the animators can achieve this effect without having to manually manipulate each toe control to get the same result. It’s all about optimizing things like this to make things more efficient for the animators!
And lastly, we have the skinning process. This is when the model is finally connected (“skinned”) to the joints. Moving a joint finally moves the model too! During skinning, we dictate what parts of the model are affected by which joints. So this is how we ensure that moving a knee joint doesn’t make the animal’s jaw move, and it’s our opportunity to make everything form together as accurately as possible. When skinning is finished, the rig is ready to be sent off and reviewed by Animation, we then act on any feedback we get to ensure the rig is in tip-top shape! Hopefully that explained the process (somewhat) understandably!
With each animal having specific movements , what sort of research is needed to be done prior and do you use references as well?
Oliver: For the rigging side of things, we like to dig around and find as many references as we can get. Anatomical diagrams of an animal’s skeleton are great references for creating our digital skeletons. Videos of the animal are also amazing for helping us see just how the animal moves, so we can make note of any distinct features we’ll need to tackle in the rig. A great example is the Mute Swan’s neck. Reference footage showed what a wide range of movement and flexibility the neck had, that the rig had to be able to replicate. As a result, the Mute Swan has the most neck joints of all animals in Planet Zoo to give it that flexibility! (Yes, even more than the Reticulated Giraffe!)
Dave: For every animal on Planet Zoo, once we start making the rig, we look for as for as much reference material as possible such as; anatomical drawings, photographs and videos of the animal in motion. Sometimes watching the animal move will suggest a rigging technique that the animators can use to recreate the movement.
It's really interesting to hear the granular details of how Rigging works! Did you find any of the animals from the Eurasia Animal Pack difficult to mimic accurately in terms of their movement?
Oliver: The Mute Swan gave us a few challenges with its behaviours. Getting the neck nice and flexible to get that Swan-like movement took a few iterations of feedback to get just right. Also finding an intuitive way of dealing with all the feathers in the wings was a decent challenge, since the Mute Swan had a LOT of feathers to deal with! In the end I created a setup where the feathers would try to be arranged together, so there wouldn’t be large gaps between them when they moved.
Dave: When working on the Saiga, I spent a bit of time examining how to set up the soft, floppy nose. So I investigated setting up a soft body simulation. It proved somewhat tricky to implement, as we were iterating on the model and joints a lot, it also meant the animators found it challenging to tailor the nose animation to a specific animation. In the end we went with a solution where the the animators had much more control over the overall animation.
It's really incredible how much detail goes into these animals! Can you tell us which animal you specifically had the most enjoyment working on for this pack?
Oliver: I worked on just the one animal, so by default it goes to the Mute Swan! Tackling the wings was an entirely new experience for me!
Dave: Saiga of course! The soft long nose looks brilliant when it is flopping about while the Saiga is walking around, it really adds to the character of the species
Of course we have to ask, do you have a favourite animal from the Eurasia Animal Pack?
Oliver: While I do love Wolverines and their big paws, I have to go with the Mute Swan, don’t I? It’s the most unique rig I’ve been responsible for on Planet Zoo, and we hope all the time and care that went in to the Mute Swan shines through!
Dave: There are some great animals in the Eurasia Animal Pack. The Mute Swan is a particular stunning. Wings are not easy to rig and Oliver did a great job on them. The Takin is an impressive chunky boy (as the kids say). I think it’s great all-rounder pack – it would be a toss-up between the Swan and the Saiga , leaning slightly towards the Saiga (sorry Oliver!)
And that wraps up another Developer Journal! Everyone give a huge thanks below to all of our talented Rigging Team who gave us their time for this, it was so fun learning about all they do!
The new Planet Zoo: Eurasia Animal Pack will be launching 13 Dec, and you can wishlist it now on Steam. Remember to also join us at 4pm GMT tomorrow, 13 December for a special launch livestream where there will be giveaways, exclusive animal footage and more! You can tune in at Twitch or Youtube. See you there!
