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CHRISTOPHER PANG
Rigging Technical Artist
Tank
Intro
One of my main objectives with this rig was to provide controls and a setup that made the turret aiming and tread rotation animation easy for the animator, so that they could focus their time on other areas.
Main rig features:
- FK and IK controls for both the turret and the machine gun.
- Switchable manual and automatic rotation for the tank treads.
- pitch and yaw controls for the body of the tank.
Automatic treads
The automatic rotation of the treads is calculated using the Z-axis translation of the tank, as well as it's rotation. A tank's treads move in opposite directions when rotating, and this was factored into the automatic tread mode as well. Because of this, the inner tread of the tank also moves at a slower speed when the tank is moving and turning at the same time.
This was set up using the node network. Depending on the enumeration selected on the control, the main driving wheel of each of the tanks treads would either follow the rotation of the FK control, or rotate according to the position and rotation of the tank.
Model: Military Tank, Vaaho Animators
FK and IK swapping for the main gun and machine gun
Both the main gun and machine gun have the ability to swap between FK and IK controls. The main purpose of this was to give the animator the option of having the tank move independently while it focused on a target.
Issues and areas to improve on
The main issue that I faced for this rig was the amount of joints required for the treads of the tank. Each individual tread had a joint, which meant that the rig was not well set up for a game environment. Moving forward, I aim to find less expensive methods of creating believable treads.