Dev Log #1: Re-rigging Rowdy from Scratch

By Jason Rayner: Lead Animator for Rowdy Rascals https://jasonrayner.com/

Let me set the stage. We’re halfway into the development of Rowdy Rascals' demo build, and we decide to take a deep look at our rigging. For those out of development circles, rigging refers to the “bones” of characters in animation and video games. It’s what makes the joints move and gives structure to our cast of Rowdy kids (and any character from any video game). I’m the lead animator, so it’s my job to make sure that rigging exists for others to easily contribute to animation tasks.

A year in, and we decided to completely re-rig the main character. Here’s why that didn’t suck.

(Lever Pull animation with visible control rig handles)

Where It All Began

Originally, the Rowdy Rascals character was modeled in Blender and rigged in Maya. This got us as far as the core animations needed for the game: an idle, a run cycle, a jump state, a push, a wave, and a cheer. Though soon enough, we realized we’d be creating new animations for each mini-game, and our lead game designer was itching to get going on some movement essentials for our work-in-progress games at the time, Rock Blocker and Shootout.

(Original animation set via Blender + Maya)

Around the same time, the studio I work at ditched Maya and switched to animating entirely within Unreal Engine using Control Rigs. We saw first-hand that it was easier to develop the rigs, easier to share the work with the team, and ultimately, it was easier to animate.

It was time for our Rowdy Rascal to get an upgrade.

Teamwork Makes the Team Twerk

It was maybe 2 hours after I submitted the first version of the control rig that our lead developer posted a new “stunned” animation they made!

(First Control Rig animation created by team)

For an indie-developed game, creating these animations in Maya just didn’t make sense. If the rest of the team can grab the rig, knock out an animation in Sequencer, and not have to learn Maya to do so (or pay for it!), then that’s a huge boost to what our little team can do.

OK ‘Nough Talking; More Animating!

There is a lot more we could tap into with Control Rig—automatic FK/IK matching, proxy controls, wiggle bones (ok, maybe we need to look into wiggle bones…)

(Design team exploring some goofs with the new Control Rig)

But besides being a powerful way to make character rigs, switching to an Animation-In-Editor setup has been clutch for our small dev team. It’s easy to iterate on the rig itself, share animation tasks, and whipout test animations to quickly dev new minigames!

(Maybe giving the lead developer Control Rig was a mistake hehe)

After the completed Control Rig was handed off to the team, our minigames were suddenly filled with lots of new unique animations. In a matter of minutes, anybody can now create one-off animations as needed. And whether you call it “collaboration” or you call it “sharing silly stretchy poses you semi-accidentally made with the rig,” it all feels a bit more fun as well.

Thanks for reading and being along with us for this adventure! Next week, we’ll share a bit more of a technical write-up on exactly HOW we used Control Rig, so keep an eye out for that!

(Peek at the below image for just how technical we’ll get…)

Bye bye!