Alien_workshop02|Machinima

Last step I had to do in order to get my alien moving was to create a rig and bind it to the mesh. I had played with joint tool and IK handles before and was fairly familiar with the tools, but still learnt a lot in a process.
First, I've created a joint chains that served a skeleton.Leg rigs are using IK (inverse kinematics) and arm are FK (foward kinematics). I've added extra joint in forearm in order to make more natural looking movement when twisting arm (we don't have this joint, but in 3D software you sometimes have to change few things). Next step was creating custom controllers (eg. feet, hands) with Nurbs and CVs.

Attaching joints to mesh - binding. Fairly straigthfoward, used smooth bind option. Painting weights and taking influence off from end joints was next (except for brow joints) and was time consuming but necessary.

After that I was finally able to keyframe my animations. I did 3 different idles, a walk and a jump animation, which I exported as FBX file. Used Unity to cut footage and a script made by Anabeth to put my alien model on a nice mirror pedestal.