3d Printed And Ctrlrigged Hen

I was planning to start personal project of “Asymmetric Competitive Game”. One of characters is a hen.

Blender

The modelling and skinning was done in Blender. It was a fun experience but I quickly find it’s data communication with Unreal Engine is a mess (like the joint axis). So I take it into Maya for further editing.

3D Print

Since I had gone this far, I couldn’t helping thinking that maybe I can 3d print it to make it more interesting. And turned out it’s a big succuss! I really like it!

It’s worth noting that I painted the hen’s beak and eyes with clear coat, which makes big difference on their roughness. It’s the first time that I use clear coat in reality.

Using it in UE

I decided to rig it totally with UE.

UE was an Engine but right now Epic is mixing the boundary of it with DCC.

Here are couples of test:

• ControlRig Test
• Chicken head stabilization This is my favourate! It really distinguishes ControlRig from traditionall DCC rig like Maya.
• My PartyAnimals-like implementation

I and managed to make several tutorials(in Manderian) for Controlrig.

ControlRig is very efficient - both in developing stage and runtime stage. Although I’ve been using maya for 15 years, I am really not a fan of Maya rig, due to Autodesk’s subpar upgrades. In some aspects, UE now offers a superior user experience in rigging, surpassing Maya’s historical strengths.