Jason Copeland

"What happened? Axe happened!"

Axe is one of my favorite DOTA 2 heroes.  With the advent of the DOTA 2 workshop, Valve has made the large majority of their characters available to the public to download and make content for.  With such a cool character model to play with, I took the opportunity to build-out a rig for his currently-existing skeleton for other DOTA 2 Workshop animators to play with.

A rundown of my rig's features include:

• IK/FK switching for both Legs and Arms through Driven Keys.
• Body-relative and World-relative parenting for IK Feet using "Enum" Driven Keys.
• Parenting controls for World, Body, or Weapon space for IK Hands using "Enum" Driven Keys
• Elbow and Knee directional controls.
• Parenting Controls for World or Body-relative space for the Weapon.

About this rig:

As DOTA 2 is an isometric game viewed from a considerable distance away, the bone count on Axe is pretty low compared to other games.  Keeping that in mind, I created a series of controls that were visible from above, and easy to parse between.  Additionally, switching from IK to FK on either the legs or arms hides the opposite controls, keeping the animator's workspace clean and uncluttered.  All of his IK/FK and Parental switches can be accessed through the "global_control" circle centered around his hips.

And now we watch him dance!