This is the third specialization project I made during my time at TGA, which I spent four weeks working on. After making quadrupedal machinery I decided I needed to challenge myself even further which is where creatures came to mind. It was not an easy decision because I needed a quadrupedal creature but it still did not feel as much of a challenge as I wanted. It was this point another of my childhood fascinations came to mind, I wanted to rig a dragon, not the bat-like wyvern type of dragon but the traditional European type, a hexapodal creature no less. That was when I found this model by RaGe_3D and sprung to action.

Up until this point, this was the toughest rigging challenges I had done but it was really fun to do from start to finish. The structure of the skeleton was done analyzing fictional skeletal diagrams of dragons, carefully placing and orienting every joint to make it move like I wanted it to. A lot of research needed to be made since in order to rig it properly I needed to implement rigging techniques which I had not done prior. One such instance would be how to make the spine, whereas I decided a ribbon spine would be best suited for this creature. After learning how to make a ribbon spine I created a Python tool script for making it, which eliminated a lot of tedious work. I even ended up making ribbons for the neck, throat, stomach. nostrils and wing membrane, which could also be controlled by FK controls. For a while I thought about using a ribbon for the tail as well, but the result was not what I expected so I made an IK spline for that part, with an advanced twist, deformation controls and a stretch attribute.

I was highly considering doing both IK and FK for the wings but found it unnecessary therefore I settled for FK wings and using set driven keys to fold and unfold the wings.

Since there was not much of a support for eyelids in the model I had to come up with another solution, which is why I came up with the solution of using a nictating membrane for the eyes which is both used by birds and some species of reptiles.