Examples of good Quadruped rigs?[Solved]

Could anybody suggest a tutorial or free asset with well working, and not overly complicated, quadruped rig? Ideally something that you yourself successfully animated. No need for anything fancy, like IK-FK switching or squash and stretch. Just basic controls for legs, spine and tail. Please do not suggest Rigify. I found it too overdesigned to try to understand

I used Pedro a long time ago…

It’s a really old file and would need to be updated to work with current versions of blender. The python script for the controls in the UI would need to be fixed, and maybe a couple of other things, not much work.

If you wanted me to fix this up to work in 3.6 LTS, let me know, we can talk about it.

Randy

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I just got an opportunity to test it. It should do, thank you. Can you remember what exactly attached scripts did? I haven’t managed to find the info myself. So not sure if I need them or not. The rig seems to work fine

IIRC, the scripts aren’t really needed at all. They handled bone layers (fk layer, ik layer, body/torso, tail, etc) and fk/ik switching, maybe hinges for joints, and probably not much else. It just embedded that stuff in the transforms panel for easy access. All that can be accessed elsewhere if you know where to look.

Fk/ik switches are controlled via a custom property on some bone, some place, like maybe a foot controller bone. Looking thru the script might clue you in as to what bones have the custom properties.

If I ever had to rig a dog leg, this is the rig I would use for reference, cause it uses a double IK setup to give you the 2 pole targets on the back legs.

Have fun with it!

Randy

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Forgot to mention this…

Rigs from blender 2.5 to 2.79, which was when this was created, sometimes used a driver on a foot roll bone. Basically, what the driver did was change how the bone acted. When the bone was rotated so the foot would pivot on the heel and raise the toes, that worked normally, but when the bone was rotated the other way, the bone would pivot at it’s tip, raising the heel, while the toe was flat on the ground.

Here’s what the driver looked like

This is from a different character, not the one I mentioned, but the principle is the same. This type of driver throws a cyclic dependency error on modern (2.8+) versions of blender. So if heel/foot roll seems glitchy, check the console for errors.

Randy

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Will try it soon, that’s smart