BIG BOT

Game production rig developed for Disney Research

Features:
-Bendy/Ribbon arms and legs
-Spline twisting for arms and legs
-Volume preservation for squash and stretch 
-Dynamic reverse foot setup with space switching
-Face texture switch 
-Blendshapes for limb compression 
-Latch and inner mechanism controls 
​-Character settings
​-Global move controls
-Fully scalable
-Quick playback speed 

BIG BOT is a robot rig I built originally for a Disney Research augemented reality experience in Unity. The character, however, ended up being used for a user-decision animation instead. In the animation, Big Bot interacts primarily with Zoey, another character I rigged, and has a special moment where its limbs compress into itself. At this moment, Big Bot is just a ball and can be rolled around the scene.

To accomplish these movements, I placed a lot of consideration on the design of the bot and how it was expected to move. The arms are essentially these noodles that can be stretched, squashed, and waved around in many ways. Rather than using a ribbon, I set up my own spline techneque with volume preservation that allows for standard FK rotation and "ribbon-stlye" translation. I did the legs similarly, but also incorporated a reverse foot system to help with locomotion animation. The limbs also contain a custom twist attribute to give the animator the ability to spin them around. 

For the limb retraction, I connected a set of blendshapes to custom attributes that allow for each limb to compress into the bot, which turn it into a ball. At this point, a set of body controls allow for the full rotation. Additional features for this character include a latch and power unit that can each be animated, as we as an attribute for animating big bot's face texture. For this, I used the blend colors node to create the texture toggling.