Minghao Zhou
Rigging / Tool Technical Artist
Procedural Tentacle Rig System
A procedural rigging system focusing on tentacles for an octopus model
Complete Octopus Rig
Complete Rig Demo
Auto Tentacle Demo
Description: This rig is built for a semester-long 3D animtion project.
In the creation process of the tentacle rig, I tried multiple methods:
FK, Simple IK, several short IK driven by a longer IK, spline IK, and the ribbon spline IK.
In the end I decide to use the ribbon spline IK method based on it's flexibility to rotate and accuracy to controll the deformation.
Considering the need of the animation creation, I also add three blend shapes on to it based on the real movement of octopus movement.
I wrote a python script to automative the repetitive work of creating the rigging system for all the tentacles, the result comes out pretty good.