Wolfdog Rig - Free Animation Rig

Wolfdog

We're liking this Wolfdog rig, available for free download from highend3d.com. Wolfdog is loosely based on the character Balto from the movie, and has a good range of controls and even facial expressions.

The rig does have some limitations, especially in the way the wrists and feet have been rigged, but you can get some really nice character work out of Wolf dog.

Find Wolfdog
Wolf dog can be downloaded free from highend3D.com

Wrist Limitations
The wrist/paw has some limitations. When you rotate the front paw forward, the wrist bends in a way that doesn't necessarily make animating a walk cycle easy.  That said, it's a fairly cartoony rig so the motion doesn't have to be 100% naturalistic.

License type - MIT

The rig is made available on an MIT License, meaning that you can do pretty much whatever you want with it as long as you give credit to its creator.

Facial expressions
Wolfdog comes with a facial interface next to his head. We recommend creating a new camera, naming it faceCam, parenting that to the facial controls, locking it off, and then tearing the camera off the Maya interface. Now you have a FaceCamera that you can pull up anytime you need it.

Examples of animation 

Below is a very stylish shot of the wolf dog catching a frisbee by Animation Apprentice student Giuseppe Candido.

And below is a shot of the wolf dog walking, also by Giuseppe Candido.




Have fun with Wolfdog!

---Alex