This model was created as part of animation expressing the theme of steam punk culture. The model is a clockwork mechanical horse that was created to allow the rider to fly. This model represented a challenge in terms of modelling and rigging. The horse was supposed to be shaped in a realistic way like statues of war horse you might see in the square of some large British cities, but it also had to move whilst keeping its body segments rigid. The horse is essentially a robot in a horse shape so I planned out how the horse would move and which segments would move to allow motion. I decided early on that the horses mouth wouldn't open and that it would acquire energy for movement from the winding handles dotted all over its body, which all must be turned once every week to keep the horse running an alive. I decided to place more than one of these on the horse because the clockwork inside the horse was so complicated to allow it to move like a natural horse would that it could not be wound from one point like a clock. If one of the winding point is not wound sufficiently then that part of the horse would become lame until it was wound enough times. I thought a mechanical flying horse was an appropriate subject to represent steam punk and victoriana because I remember hearing that victorians viewed themselves and the British empire as the new Rome or the new great empire, and this retrospective attitude would lead an inventor to try and recreate a flying machine in the shape of a flying horse like the hero Perseus rode in classical mythology.
I modelled the horse following the organic shapes of a real horse and once it was complete I created breaks in the polygons for gaps to allow the body segements to bend and move. It was difficult to chop up the body of the horse with creating irregular geometry that would lead to artifacting and specular errors. Once done, I set out the UV maps for the body segements and constructed the rigging that would allow the horses neck to bend.
I tried many different ways of adding joint to the horses' neck. I studied footage of real horses to see how they moved and how I could add joints to facilitate this movement in animation. The major problem with the neck was how to stop the metal segment interpenetrating each other when the horse turned its head from side to side. In the end I added a trapeze type mechanism to the inside of the horses neck, a bit like the extending metal arm you get behind a boxing glove in cartoons when it comes out of a jack in the box.
The wings were difficult to create in order that they too would be made out of rigid segements and also allow enough movement to create a convincing flying motion. I modelled the main body of the wing as a solid object and made the primary and secondary feathers seperate objects so they could be animated when the wings were flapping or extended. Because the body of the wings were fixed it was difficult to fold them away effectivly before and after flight, so a compromise was made by folding the flight feathers up once the wings were down. This is not strictley as bird wings operate but it was an effective solution.
The wings were rigged so that a custom control could be used to easily extend or contract the flight feathers, greatly increasing control over the wings during animation. The body as a whole did not require any bone structure as it was composed out of fixed segments that were linked together in a heirarchy stemming out from the segment that makes up the chest. The chest was used as the parent of the heirarchy rather than the hips because this is where the load of the horse is supported during flight.
This was a test animation I did to investigate the best way to animate something to fly with rigidly segmented wings. As well as animating the wings to flap it was very important to create a sense of anticipation before the take off. In the case of this box, the box must squash itself down before it jumps up into the air a little before it takes its first wing beat. I observed birds like pidgeons perform this behaviour before they took too the air.
While the box is in the air, its purple mass drags below it. This motion indicates the box has mass and that the wings are trying to keep it aloft. In the horse this motion is conveyed by things like the head, neck and legs moving slight with the motion of the body. The rider also demonstrates this but too a slightly lesser extent.
In the box example the wing tips do not extend and concertina as they do in real birds. This was remedied in the flying horse by making each one of its flight feathers individual allowing this motion to be expressed.
