Group Based Rigging of Realistically Feathered Wings

Heather V. Howard

Texas A&M University

 Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................ 2
Motivation ................. ...................................................................................... 2
Background and Prior Work ............................................................................. 4
1.1 Movies .................................................................................................. 5
1.2 Papers .................................................................................................... 7
1.3 Bird Anatomy ........................................................................................ 8
Methodology/Approach ................................................................................... 10
Implementation ................................................................................................. 11
Evaluation ......................................................................................................... 15
Expected Outcomes .......................................................................................... 16
References ........................................................................................................ 17
 Abstract
Creating photo-real bird wings for avian and avian based creatures in computer
graphics is often a challenge. A large part of this challenge is because feathers are often
difficult to represent accurately in a CG and tend to lose believability when folded up at
rest, or when extended in flight. The loss of believability stems from the form and motion
of the feathers themselves- feathers on a bird are laid out in specific visible groups that
interact and stack when folding up or flapping. There is also little body of work done in
this subject or work that has vague or conflicting information, making it difficult for
anyone trying to create a photo-real birds wing.
This work will focus on the creation of a rigging method based on the groupings
of feathers in a real birds wing. The method I propose will have groups of feathers laid
out over a wing (primary, secondary, coverlet feathers, etc.) which interact with one
another believably, allowing the movement of the wing to be more realistic, intuitive to
animate, and allow for correct movement of the wings in flight and at rest. This rig,
method and details will be freely available for access from my personal website, as well
as submitted to CreativeCrash.org in order to add to the body of knowledge for bird wing
rigging.

Motivation
Creating photo-real digital avian characters in movies is an interesting challenge
due to their complex anatomy. To make these characters life like, the anatomy has to be
accurate, the movements realistic, and the feathers believable. The primary focus of this
thesis project will be on the look and motion of feathered wings because those are a large
part of making a digital photo-real bird look realistic. One of the biggest problems is
when wings fold. Creating wings with non-intersecting feathers that fold up correctly is a
surprisingly difficult task and one that has largely been avoided in film (Heibert, 2004, p.
47). When a wing flaps, bends or folds the feathers stack atop one another. When trying
to make realistic looking avian characters, the methodology for rigging and feather
creation can look good in one action (flying) but look odd in others (folded). Often visual
effects and animation studios will try and avoid the issue entirely. Many visual tricks and
cheats are employed ranging from not showing the entire wing in frame, to strategically
placed cuts and even render tricks that try to account for feather interpenetration
(Heibert, 2004, p. 47).
Creating feathers that themselves look realistic is only part of the challenge of
making photo-real avian wings. The other part of it is to make the motion and interaction
of the feathers believable. Most published work has focused on feather generation,
placement and rendering. However, very little has been done on the interactions and life-
like movement of feathers. This lack of available and sometimes conflicting information
can make it difficult for anyone attempting to build a photo-real CG bird wing, regardless
of their proficiency at rigging.
The intent of this project is to expand the knowledge base of rigging photo-real
bird wings by offering a process grounded in a deep understanding of the actions of rreal
wings. These efforts will focus on the most common areas where digital wings tend to
falter in believability. These areas are:
-Folding: Folding refers to the wings folded partially or fully back against the
body. The wing's feathers fold up so that each section of feathers slides over the others
into one compact unit. Folded wings can have a flat look to them or the feathers fold in
unrealistic ways, losing the believability of the character. One example of this is seen in
Buckbeak from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban where the inner secondary
feathers and alula feathers angle over the other feathers unnaturally. (Figure 01)

Figure 01. Buckbeak the Hippogriff from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. © 2004
Warner Bros. Pictures.

-Overlapping: Naturally feathers overlap one another to make an airfoil shape.

However, in CG sometimes the feathers are treated in such a way that they lie close
together, but don't actually overlap. When the wings extend the feathers parallel to each
other with gaps that are visually unappealing and spoil the believability of the character,
such as seen in the first model for Gwahir from Lord of the Rings. (Figure 02)

Figure 02. Gwaihir the eagle from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of
the Ring © 2001 New Line Cinema. (Aitken, 2004)

A bird's wing is very complex. Simplifying it too far results in wings that are not
quite life-like. Previous work has simplified wings so that there are only two or three
different groups of feathers. What I am proposing is to not simplify the wings as far as
has been done previously. Instead, the wing should be simplified down to resemble a real
birds wing with many different groups of feathers instead of only two or three.
 Background
Previous work in the area of rigging photo-real bird wings is scarce. Most
published work has focused on procedural techniques for feather generation, placement
and rendering. Very little has been done on the controls and interactions of feathers
specific to believable motion. What research exists is obscure and often vague in terms of
details that would contribute to accurate replication of the work. For example, the
information from feature films, such as Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban which
featured a significant contribution to the depiction of photo-real avian creatures, is often
not available to the public or is intrinsically vague because proprietary methods and tools
were used. Where information is not available one can only try to infer as to what was
done from the resulting look of the creatures wings. This lack of information and
methods makes it difficult to advance the state of the art in realistic avian characters.
Another problem is that sometimes the information and terminology is
conflicting. In The Visual Effects of the Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and
the Wardrobe Dean Wright describes how the secondary and downy feathers are
generated by fur tools (Wright, 2006, p. 6). However, what the authors likely are referring
to are secondary and covert feathers, not downy since the feathers described by Wright
conflict with the biological definition of downy feathers. Downy feathers on a bird are
fluffy feathers that lie close to the skin and help keep a bird insulated, they are rarely ever
seen during normal bird movement. As such they would likely never be modeled or put
on a rig, but covert feathers are the feathers that cover the main body of the wing. This
lack of information and conflicting information or terminology further complicate efforts
to build a photo-real bird wing.

Prior works- Movies

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
In The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe there are gryphons: half-
lion half-eagle creatures. The gryphons have a small role overall but they are featured in
shots, both flying and with wings folded, close up and full frame. This required that the
gryphons be highly detailed and as anatomically accurate as a mythical creature can be. A
big challenge to this was the look and actions of the feathers (Hiebert, 2004, p.46).
The feathers on the gryphons (coverts, and body feathers) were generated
procedurally using Rhythm & Hues' in house fur software, except for two rows of flight
feathers (Hiebert, 2004, p. 47). The implementation of feathers this way looked realistic
for the gryphon when flying. However, the gryphon's performance required that he fold
his wings and it could not be cheated for this film. MPC's default set of tools worked
well in general, with few interpenetrations perceptible; the problem came with the flight
feathers.
In Rhythm & Hues avian rig designs previous to the one used in Narnia, a spline
along the trailing edge of the wing that the feathers pointed at was used to control the
wing; this allowed the animator to have a lot of control with a minimum amount of
control objects and worked well for flight motion. However, for wing folding, it caused
an unrealistic look as the feathers stacked up incorrectly. To solve this, the flight feathers
were broken up into two separate groups of primary and secondary feathers with a
separate spline to control each. It allowed the primaries and secondaries to stack up
believably and an additional layer of control was added to allow the animator to control
each feather individually and to clean up any odd feathers or interpenetration (Hiebert,
2004, p. 47). It works well for wing folding on the two main groups and something
similar could be applied further to the separate feather groups in the wing for a more
photo-real bird wing.

Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban: Buckbeak

In the third Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Moving
Picture Company (MPC) developed highly detailed wings for the hippogriff, a mythical
creature that is half horse half eagle, Buckbeak. Every feather on Buckbeak was modeled
and specific feathers were used depending on camera distance, totaling to 16,500 feathers
applied to the hippogriff (Fordham, 2004, p. 57). The feathers were driven by MPCs
proprietary muscle system enabling skin jiggle. This allowed the feathers to move with
the underlying musculature and skin for a more realistic look. The motion of the wings
caused problems with the interaction of muscles and feathers. They needed a way for the
feathers to stack up correctly when folding and to prevent intersection. The resulting rig
prevented penetrations of the flight feathers when folding: “'Felix Balbas, our character
rigging supervisor, came up with a way of ensuring that primary and secondary wing
feathers didn't intersect as the wings went from fully open to fully closed. After feather
shaping, a 'splat' program resolved intersections and compressed feathers against one
another in the closed wing.”
While a bit vague on the specifics done to the wing, Buckbeak is a good example
of a wing looking nearly photo-real when opened, but looking unrealistic when closed.
When closed it loses believability because of the way the feathers are overlapping; the
different types of feathers make angles to one another not found in a real birds wing or
overlap incorrectly, causing the wings to look flat.

Lord of the Rings trilogy: Gwaihir

For the Lord of The Rings: Fellowship of the Rings a large eagle named Gwaihir
was scripted. He was a background character and the scenes he was in were short and
from a distance or at night so little detail was required since it was not going to be visible
in those conditions (See figure 02). “The fill eagle used for The Fellowship Of The Ring
was a cheat – the bare minimum to final the shots (Aitken, 2004).” For The Return Of
The King a much more detailed model was built. The new feather setup was done with
layers differentiated types of feathers between “hero” feathers, feather code, and fur
feathers. The hero feathers were nurbs patches and the animators could control them
through the rig. The hair feathers were generated over a separate subdivision skin that
was “like a sock around the original surface of the bird and was cleverly rigged not to
interpenetrate the hero feathers when they moved (Aitken, 2004).”
 Figure 03. Gwaihir the eagle from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of
the Ring © 2001 New Line Cinema. (Aitken, 2004)

Clash of the Titans: Pegasus

A sophisticated feather system was created for Clash of the Titans' Pegasus. Each
feather was procedurally created as curves in three dimensions. The feathers were
generated at rendertime and used Moving Picture Company's “Furtility” fur/hair utility.
This gave the feathers a fluffy look to them, as well as allowing the groom artist to use
the same tools they already had for hair grooming. Feathers were both automatically
distributed across the wing, as well as individually placed and sculpted. Twist and stretch
of feathers was accomplished using control texture maps. Since the actual feathers were
created during render time a rig using simple NURBS planes was substituted as proxy
feathers in the wings for use by the animators. With this rig additional animation and
tweaks on the feathers could be done (Leaning, 2010).
Much of the work on the feathers for Pegasus focuses on the look and generation
of the feathers. The major focus was on the look of individual feathers. Like other films,
the treatment of the wing and feather interaction overall was to placing them as two main
rows of feathers and procedurally generated the rest of the feathers in the wing.
Therefore when folding the wings tend stack up in an accordion fashion, very evenly.
This gives the wings a very fluffy look, but also a slightly unrealistic look overall.

Prior works- Bird Anatomy

Bird wings are very diverse because of the various modes of flight seen in birds.
There are, in general, four wing shapes attributed to flying birds: long and narrow
(soaring birds, like albatrosses), short and round (like in grouses which are good for
quick takeoff and maneuvering), slim and unslotted (like in falcons for speed), and
intermediate dimension slotted wings (like in hawks for gliding ability and lift) (Gill,
1995, p, 103). Despite the great diversity in birds and their wings, they still have a
common overall bone and feather structure that can be seen in most flighted birds.
Bones: Bird wings are a modified forelimb, similar to the human arm: Scapula,
humerus, radius and ulna, carpus and metacarpus, and the phalanges fused together
forming the “hand”. The shoulder consists of the scapula (shoulder blade), coracoid
(projecting part of the shoulder blade), and humerus (upper arm). The humerus joins the
radius and ulna (forearm) to form the elbow. The wrist bones, carpus and metacarpus are
fused together forming the carpometacarpals and the digits (fingers) are fused together in
three digits. The alula (thumb) is also known as the “bastard wing” and moves
independently of the rest of the wing (Gill, 1995, p. 95). The bones in the wing are
extremely light so that the bird can fly more easily.

Figure04. Bird wing anatomy (Lucas, 1972)

Feathers: There are two main types of feathers: vaned feathers and down feathers.
Down feathers have rachis (or central shaft) and provide insulation to the bird. Down
feathers lie under the vaned feathers and thus are usually not visible, except on baby birds
whose vaned feathers have yet to grow in. Because of this, down feathers are not seen in
computer graphics except for rare instances (like baby birds) and will not be the focus of
this project.
There two different types of vaned feathers found in the wings: remiges and
coverts. The remiges are the flight feathers and consist of the primaries, or outermost
remiges, and secondaries, the innermost remiges. Coverts are, as their name suggests,
feathers that cover the wings (Gill, 1995, p. 65-74). These feathers can visually be broken
up into several groups. The arrangement of these feather groups are similar across all
species of flighted birds even though the shape of individual feathers varies (Sibley,
2005, p. 15). Often when trying to identify a bird by appearance, birdwatchers will use
these feather groups to tell one bird from another. Within each group, feathers grow in
orderly rows, overlapping like shingles on a roof, and plumage patters tend to follow the
contours of these feather groups (Sibley, 2000, p. 15). These feather groups are primaries,
secondaries, greater primary coverts, greater secondary coverts, median secondary
coverts, lesser secondary coverts, and alula (Sibley, 2000, p. 15-18). (See Figure 05)
 Figure 05. Bird Feather Groups (Sibley, 2000, p. 18)

Feathers as a general rule tend to move in groups. These feather groups move
based on their functions during flight and their different attachment points on the wing.
Primaries are attached to the metacarpus and serve aerodynamic functions (Gill, 1995, p.
69-71). They flex and twist depending on the movement of the wing. During steady
flight they will curve upward from the air pressure and during landing they will twist and
curl as the bird manipulates the air. Secondaries are attached to the ulna and form much
of the wing surface. Their primary movement is fanning as the wing opens and closes,
and pivoting at their attachment point as the wing is pulled in and back on the upstroke of
a flap. Alula feathers are attached to the alula bone and help manipulate air flow when
flying and keep the bird from stalling out at low speeds. These few small feathers have a
surprising amount of movement and flexibility causing them to look like a second wing at
the wrist of the bird. They seem to act independently of the rest of the wing at times;
curling, twisting and splaying in order to keep the bird aloft.
Covert feathers overlap the bases of the remiges and cover the gaps between them.
These feathers smooth the wing and cover the caps so that air can pass over it cleanly.
They also serve a lesser known function in the way they interact with the air that affects
their movement. These groups of covert feathers not only cover the wing and make it
smooth but serve as eddy-flaps as well (Ritchison, 2010). Air passing over a wing when
the wing is parallel to the angle of the moving air is fairly smooth and trails off the back
end of the remiges with barely a ripple. When the angle of the wing changes however, it
causes an eddy, or vortex, in the air to propagate from the trailing edge toward the leading
edge of the wing. This causes airflow over the top of the wing to separate and the bird to
loose lift. The coverts acting as eddy-flaps are lifted upward by the eddy, preventing it
from spreading and helping it to maintain lift (Ritchison, 2010). This is often seen during
landing or take off and can be witnessed in figure 06 of a bird called a brown skua. Here,
the greater secondary and lesser secondary covert feathers are being pulled upward from
the wing to keep the bird from stalling out.

Figure 06. Covert feather movement and function during flight (Patone, 1997).

Methodology/Approach
Avian characters in movies and film range from real to fantastic, from existing
birds to dragons and gryphons. This work will focus on realistic CG avian creatures.
Birds such as Kevin in Pixar's Up, Vlad from Blue Sky's Horton Hears a Who, and the
birds in Pixar's short For The Birds are interesting characters, but they are also very
heavily stylized. For example: Vlad has teeth where no real bird would. As such heavily
stylized or cartoon creatures fall out of the scope of this project and thus these birds will
not be further discussed.
This project is focused on the movement and interaction of feathers in a wing as a
whole, not on the look or rendering of the feathers. Textures and colors are outside the
scope and are not considered. Also not considered are characters that resemble birds in
look but not in movement. An example of this would be the dragon Saphira from the
movie Eragon. Her wings are realistically feathered like a birds, however, their form and
movement is that of a bats wing not a birds so their movement as a whole is different
from the scope of this project.
Scope is further limited by the need for simplicity. As mentioned before, birds
have a very wide range of styles of wings. A seagulls wing is very different from a
hawks wing even if the general structures are the same. This project will be limited to one
specific type of wing. In cinema, hawks and eagles (also known as raptors, or birds of
prey) are portrayed or used as the base for an avian character. Examples of such are the
Gryphons in Narnia, Pegasus in Clash of the Titans, and the Hippogriff in Harry Potter.
There are other birds in cinematography, but raptors most often take front stage. For this
reason the wings will be based off of the proportions and look of a raptors wings. For
bird wing movement raptors offer the bonus of also having quite a lot of reference
footage. The Discovery Channel, Youtube.com, and ARKive.org to name a few all
contain good reference footage of real birds. Parrots will also be used as a reference
because their wings are similar in raptor wings in build and structure, and there is a
dearth of reference footage for parrots. Parrots are also much easier to personally obtain
for live reference and the feather groups are also bolder and easier to distinguish on
parrots than on most raptors.
The feather movement and interaction will be based on the visual grouping of
different feathers in a real wing: primaries, secondaries, tertials, greater secondaries,
greater primaries, alula, and lesser coverts. Each of these groups of feathers is treated as a
fan. Each fan of feathers has an origin point that they pivot about.
For the computer aspect, I will be making the wings using Autodesk Maya. Maya
is a software application used for 3D modeling, animation, simulation, effects, rendering,
and more. It is an industry standard used by professional animation and visual effects
studios. Maya also has it's own scripting language called MEL (Maya Embedded
Scripting Language) and supports the Python scripting language. This will allow the
automation of tasks (such as feather generation) and allow more control over the feathers
themselves. It's functionality and wide usage in the industry make it ideal for this
project.

Implementation
For the purposes of this thesis I have adopted the following terminology from
Digital Character Development by Rob O'Neill for clarity:
Motion System: The collection of joints, constraints and controls which provide a
control structure and interface for the animator to manipulate the character.
Joint: The transformable hierarchical matrix which forms the foundation for the
motion system.
Constraint: A small program that defines a non-hierarchical relationship between
joints. These may include solvers to procedurally place joints.
Control: The object, attribute, or interface that an animator manipulates the
character motion system through.
Solver: a constrain that procedurally determines the relationship of joints through
calculation and/or simulation.
Deformation system: the collection of methods used to attach and modify the
character model via the changing motion system.
Surface: an element of the overall geometric character model which is deformed
by the deformation system. (p. 64)
 Wing Control
A birds wing is very flexible. The bones are similar to a human arm and as such it
has a range of movement similar to a human arm only with much more flexibility. Like a
human arm it has a shoulder and wrist that pivot and an elbow that can only bend in one
axis. The motion of a birds wing during flight consists of twisting of the bones in a wide
range of directions. To control the movement and range of motion for the wing as a
whole, a Motion System similar to that of a typical human arm rig will be implemented.
The joints are laid out based on a real birds bone structure: one for the humerus, one for
the radius/ulna, and one for the “hand” (or metacarpals and digits). The bones are then
connected by an IK solver. IK stands for inverse kinematics and “controls a hierarchy of
joints by solving for the position of the middle joints and determining the angles required
based on the position of the root joint and the end effector. The term inverse comes from
the joints rotation being solved for from the end joint, up the chain and back to the root
node (O'Niel, 2008, p. 110).” An IK solver will be rooted at the shoulder with the end
effector at the wrist joint. This setup is similar to a human arm and allows the animator to
drag the wrist into any position and the joints above it in the hierarchy (radius/ulna and
humerus) will re-orient to follow it. This IK solver will be constrained a controller curve
placed on top of the wrist joint so that the animator can grab the controller and move the
wing without having to interact with the joints or IK directly and potentially changing the
rig unintentionally. The wrist will be orient constrained to that controller so that when the
controller is rotated, the hand will be rotated as well. Lastly, when this kind of setup is
implemented for an arm in a human, the elbow can sometimes rotate in unintended
directions. This is due to the fact that joints controlled by IK can reach an unlimited
number of solutions for the rotations in a circle along the axis. To correct this, the pole
vector (which defines the reference plane for solving the IK) is constrained to a controller
behind the wing. This controller will keep the wing from flipping in odd directions and
can be adjusted by the animator.
Setting up the wing base Motion System in this way allows for believability, since
it is based on the anatomy of a real bird. It will constrain the wing to the movements that
a real birds wing can physically make. Connecting the wrist and the shoulder with an IK
solver will keep the elbow bending only one direction and will limit the rotation it can do
to that similar to a real birds bones.
Sometimes the IK setup is insufficient for a certain movement or shot. The
animator may need direct control over the joint position instead of letting the solver
choose the positions. For this an IK/FK switch will be implemented. Where IK controls
the hierarchy of joints and solves for the positions of the joints based on the root, FK is
the opposite. FK, or Forward Kinematics, allows for direct manipulation of the joints.
Each joint in the chain must be moved into position one by one. Each joint will be
constrained to FK controls so that the animator can animate each joint as needed. An
IK/FK switch is a control that allows the animator to change from IK mode to FK mode
as needed.
Lastly, a base mesh will cover the area where a real wing would have bone and
flesh- similar to looking at a real wing, sans feathers. This will provide the basis for
where the feathers are placed. It also provides an underlying surface so that when the
feathers move the surface will be seen and the wing will not have holes in it as a result of
movement.
This setup is simple and allows the animator full control over the wing as well as
maintaining the realism since it is based on the anatomy of a real bird. It gives a wide
range of motion for it with a few simple overall controls. Figure 07 below lays out the
bones, controls and geometry of the main wing structure based on a real birds anatomy.

Figure 07. Motion System- IK mode.

Feather Controls
For the control of each group of feathers a mixture of procedural controls and
joints will be used. The series of joints will be the main driver for the motion of each
group and the feathers will be procedurally controlled based on those joints position.
This will allow for a lighter rig than if the feathers were controlled by bones and allows
for greater control over the feathers.
Feather controls- The remiges
For the feather groups, all the groups can be described as a fan. The primaries are
actually two fans. If a line were drawn from tip to base on all the feathers and then
extended till they crossed, they would make a fan. Feathers in groups can be estimated as
having a fan shape and thus a single origin for each group. This allows them to spread
and close or fold much the way a fan does. (See Figure 08 & 09)
 Figure 08. Fan Layout for Primary feathers.

Figure 09. Fan Layout for Secondary feathers.

In a real wing each feather for the primaries is different in shape in order to give
the bird more control over air movement. This makes it important that the primaries be
modeled individually. The point of rotation and movement for feathers 1-6 is the first fan.
7-10 are an exception to this generalization- they all generate from a point along the
bone, not quite parallel to on another making a modified fan shape compared to the first 6
feathers. The secondaries are more or less the same shape, but varying slightly in size
and thus can be copied from the same geometry. Like the primaries, the secondaries can
be generalized to be a fan shape, with the origin of the fan approximately higher than the
wing by twice the height of the wing.
The controls for the main feathers will be a spline that trails on the edge of the
feathers, one for the primaries and one for the secondaries. The feathers will orient to this
spline and follow it. This allows for twisting and splaying such as is seen on the down
and up stroke of flapping wings. The spline gives the main control over the feathers,
namely their position, but they will also have a secondary level with finer control. This
set of controls will allow the animator to curl and twist the feathers, or give them “noise”
or slight scattering such as would be seen in a high wind.
Inner feathers- the greater primary and secondary coverts
These covert feathers are nearly all the same and usually only vary slightly in size.
These can be copied from a single geometry. They also do not need the range of motion
that primary feathers do, therefore procedurally generating them as well as controlling
them would be much more efficient than using bones for each individual feather. Like the
remiges, these also form a fan shape and can be radiated out from a single point. The
controls for these groups would be less complex than the remiges- they would only need
a noise/scatter control and a control for the curling or lifting of the feathers from the body
of the wing, like when wind ripples them upward.
Bastard wing- the alula
The alula consists of three feathers and despite this it has a wide range of motion.
The three feathers, like the rest of the groups, also can be thought of as radiating from a
single point and be controlled in the same manner as the primaries. (See Figure 09)
Similarly it will have a spline to control the range of movements as well as a secondary
movement controls of curling and twisting.
Bulk feathers- the lesser secondary coverts
Unlike the rest of the feathers covering the wing, these feathers mainly just cover
the body and don't have the fan setup the others do. These feathers could be randomly
generated across the area of the wing that they appear on. Unlike the rest of the groups
they do not act in one major group and does not need as much control- simple scattering
control and avoiding interpenetrations is sufficient. I believe this can be achieved using a
hair system. Modified hair structures have been used to generate feathers along the body
of birds in previous instances, such as the gryphons in Narnia (Hiebert, 2006, p. 47), and
could work well for this section.

Evaluation
My rig shall be evaluated based on several criteria: visual appeal and use by
artists.
Visual appeal: The rig should look and move realistically to a variety of people ,
from rigging and ornithology experts to average movie goers. To test this several basic
animations will be created based off of real footage of birds. These animations will be
things like a bird opening its wings or a flap cycle. I will seek feedback on them from
people who are professionally in the entertainment industry, the field of ornithology, and
those who are average movie patrons. They will watch each animation and rate the
movement of the wing on believability and realism with a scale from 0-10, 0 being
unbelievable and 10 being realistic. My aim is to make a wing that is visually believable
and appealing for the entertainment industry, so a perfect 10 is not required; between 7-
10 on the realism and believability scale would be acceptable.
Use by riggers: The resulting program that generates the rig should be simple for
riggers to implement. To test this I will give my program to several riggers who have
done work on avian creatures before and ask them to try and use my program to create an
avian character. I will judge the success of my rig for use by riggers based on a survey of
their experience and if they were able to figure it out with minimal explanation and able
to incorporate it into their work.
Use by animators: The resulting rig should be clean and intuitive for animators to
use. I shall have different animators do some simple animations,a flap cycle, and survey
how easy or difficult they found the rig to be based on different factors. The factors will
include but are not limited to: ease of understanding and using the controls, could they
manipulate it into key poses and how easy or difficult was it, and did it have the range
and flexibility they wanted or expected.

Expected Outcomes
The result from this thesis will be the creation of a program that generates a wing
rig prototype with realistic feathering and movements. This rig can be used on different
types of creatures, from real birds to mythical avians like gryphons. It will be simple for
riggers to implement and intuitive for animators to use while still allowing for versatility
of movement and control of feathers. The controls will be easy to manipulate and
intuitive to understand for animators. The treatment of feathers will look more realistic
compared to previous methods, allowing for the correct folding of the wings and
overlapping of feathers.
It will also add to the body of knowledge for bird wing rigging. Both the rig and
the thesis paper describing how to implement it will be available for any person to freely
use as it will both be submitted to CreativeCrash.org (one of the largest repositories for
CG models, tutorials, scripts and more) and on my personal website for download.
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