Rigging the Plane (part 1)

Having looked into the rough mechanics by which a spitfire functions, I began rigging the spitfire model. Since a plane is a solid collection of rigid moving parts there was no need to consider skinning/binding or painting weights. I decided to create a collection of control curves positioned in the correct way to creatively fit around the plane. From here I would be able to do direct parenting of the geometry to the control curves. Since the function of the direct parent method takes the child and makes it move (translate and rotate and scale) according to the pivot of the parent, we need to only adjust the pivot of the control curve.

Note- When referencing, it can be problematic to have groups/parenting or any key frames in the reference file. If parents have been made in a reference file, you may encounter an error as I did reading: "Can not re-parent from reference file". This was an initial problem for us that was easily resolvedby editing the model ref file. Similarly if any keyframe remain latent from a rig ref- the animation file will have those controls/attributes locked until they too are manually delated from the original ref file.

It is my job as a rigger to create controls that are both appealing and functional without any ambiguity. I had a good idea from the research I had done to know where to place the relevant controls and the generic design required. Having been used to character rigs, I found that I was more focussed on functionality and simplicity. Here are a few snapshots of the spitfire early on.

The first model ref draft

My first basic rig designs

Having placed the controls, I still had to correctly rotate all pivot points into their correct rotation axis. Here you may identify that although the positioning of the controls are correct, the way in which all controls rotate are not aligned.






Note- Once you have aligned the rotation axis correctly, do not freeze transformations as this resets the alignment of the rotation.  You may, as I did, mysteriously find that your controls keep reseting after all of the efforts undergone to fix it! Keep this in mind for future reference.