Day 163

Now I have to rig the scooter for animation. It was different when I had to rig characters since for the most part, they were a single geometric shape so I needed to create a skeleton to govern now each part will move. Since the scooter is mechanical where parts move independently of each other, rigging is a little simpler. It becomes more of an issue of organization of all the components that make up the scooter. The scooter doesn't have a lot of moving parts so I just need to group things that should logically go together. So above, I've grouped the main frame with all the parts that should move together as a unit. Then a separate group is the steering handles and the front wheel which should turn together. The last group is the back wheel assembly. I can also put groups within groups so each set of tires and hubcaps are grouped together so they can rotate as the scooter goes.

Here's showing the handles turning together with the front wheel. Next, I put in a deformer that will squash the tires when the scooter as a whole gets moved down towards the ground. I also created a connection between the position of the scooter and the rotation of the tires so now as the scooter moves forward, the tires will rotate automatically.