Dalek - I'll make no bones about it... (well, ok, a few bones then)

[Adam Bullock]

Sorry, TERRIBLE pun 

I thought it would be interesting to have a thread showing how we rig the Daleks.  Here's mine in (just for a change...) Anim8or.  It's a very simple set-up, with a different object for each moving part (that's the main body, the sucker, the gun, the eye and the dome)





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[Colonel Barker]

I cant post an image right now, but I make a locator, parent the Dalek too it.

Then make a series of CV curves, and make the various parts aim towards the curves, parent the cuves to the locator. Then lock all the Dalek itself.

Easy.

[denis3d]

i don't Rig mine at all
i just make sure the body, dome, eye stalk, gun and plunger all have pivot points placed correctly, very simple.
seems unnecessary to rig a dalek to me as all the motions are so simple ? maybe that's just me

[Marc Taylor]

Me too... when I have had a dalek that is. I've never made one my self, I used to use Mick Imrie's one.

But as long as all the bits are grouped properly you can place the pivot point somewhere good and the
animation is a piece of cake then.

-Marc

[Raven]

An old topic i know but thought id share my opinion

not rigging Daleks is fine and down to your own style of animation but it becomes a problem when youve got groups of 5 or more Daleks especially in battle as i have with Second Empire all i have to do to animate them is to select them and all the controls are available to me

opening them up and finding the bits that control the arms, claws and eye would get very irritating very fast i even have controls for the hover lights on and off

[Today]

I find that in general the way I rig a mesh depends heavily on the scene it's being used on, and that when I need to use it in a different context I usually wind up having to generate a completely new rig.  This is of course slightly less of a problem with a dalek since they don't exactly have that many moving parts, and the parts that do move don't have a ton of degrees of freedom motion-wise