Zippy is the primary character the user interacts with in the Virtual Research Navigator application. Rigged in Maya and Unity.
Final rigged version of Zippy with control curves.
Different expressions are driven by morph targets.
A fair amount of iteration was expected on morph targets so some simple utilities are used by artists to build and test morph target networks then publish them into our Mrp file format.
Expressions are animated in Unity, so a script was added to character to easily allow them to be driven.
Shadow is simply a plane with alpha that has scale and opacity modified based on Zippy’s position; a nice simple solution that got us exactly what we wanted.
Animation: Robert Weaver
Modeling & Texturing: Peter Walters