Rigging an elephant

In this part of behind the scenes of Wild Animal Racing we look at rigging an elephant. We created our elephant using the 3D tool Blender.

The elephant is anthropomorphic (that is to say it is human-like) so basically it is rigged like a human being with an extra few bones for it's nose. Yes, I know elephants don't really have bones in their noses but it gives a good approximation if we model it with a lot of bones like a spine.

Once we have rigged the elephant, we can make animate it. We create a set of basic animations such as walking and for the purpose of this game driving.