This last month I've been working on creating a rig for the Centaur character (created by Dean Paupe) as part of the game project that I have the privilege of working on  - Project Echoes.

Creating a rig for such a character was no easy task, effectively being two characters fused together. Yet the greatest difficulty was surprisingly in the spine, where trying to create a flexible spine that could deform appropriately and effectively connect the horse and human bodies together took much longer than anticipated . But after many hours (and several flipped tables) I got there in the end using an IK driven spine that (mostly) acts a center of gravity and control for the rig and the spine.

 In the end, most of the features that were planned are present and it can perform most animations that are needed. There are still plenty of improvements I would love to make (adding full FK controls to both arms and controls for the quiver are just a few) but I needed to get it out asap so me and the other animators could start working on it - there a lot of animations for this game!

So within the next couples weeks expect a lot of animations using this and the other characters and rigs made by my fellow students and hopefully in the next month or two we should have elements of our work in engine and playing.