Preparing the Mech for Rigging
Once both models were completed, I shifted my focus to rigging the mech, which ended up being one of the most technical stages of the project. Because the mech was built as a collection of separate mechanical components, I first needed to bring order into the structure. It was made up of the gun, the two shoulders, the torso, the head, the waist, and both legs, and each one of these sections contained several smaller meshes. I began by grouping every part carefully and cleaning up the outliner so the hierarchy was absolutely clear before introducing any joints. This preparation was crucial because mechanical rigs rely almost entirely on structure, and any confusion in the hierarchy would have caused problems later when motion needed to flow cleanly through the skeleton.
Working fully in Maya, I started building the joint system by adding bones section by section, always parenting them back to the waist and then the main root. This gave the mech a clear internal logic: the waist acted as the central hub for the upper and lower body, while the root controlled global translation. Creating this order before binding anything helped me think mechanically, not anatomically, which is a mindset you really need for machines. Every joint had to represent a real hinge, a rotation axis, or a point of connection — not something expressive like you would do in a character rig.
Solving the Legs and Establishing Motion Systems
The legs quickly became the most complex problem to solve. Each leg needed to be able to carry the weight of the mech and still move with the stability you expect from a piece of heavy machinery. They had three to four joints each, and I needed to build them in a way that would hold up under an IK chain. The feet were especially frustrating because I had designed them with an angled, V-shaped form, which meant that a traditional foot rig setup didn’t apply cleanly. I tested several versions of ankle and toe joints to see what gave the cleanest movement, and after a lot of failed experiments, I simplified everything to a single ankle joint. This ended up giving the IK chain the stability it needed without deforming or collapsing in strange directions.
After grouping the meshes within each leg, I bound the geometry directly to the four leg joints. Since the mech was fully mechanical, I didn’t need any weight painting. Bind skin alone produced perfect, rigid results and avoided the deformation you would find in an organic model. I did experiment briefly with merging some subgroups to simplify the rig, but it created unnatural sliding and rotational artifacts. Keeping the components separate was the only way to preserve the mechanical logic and prevent any bending.
While the legs relied on IK for grounded, stable motion, the upper body required a different approach. I rigged the torso, shoulders, and head with FK to allow cleaner, more intentional rotational control. FK also matched the animation style I needed: heavy, deliberate pivots instead of elastic, organic movement.
Creating Controls and Building a Usable Rig
Once the skeleton was stable, I added controllers and locators to turn the technical structure into something animatable. I created clear control shapes for the major sections, scaled them up so they wouldn’t get lost inside the mesh, and locked unnecessary transforms to prevent accidental movements. I also designed a system where the shoulder controllers could influence the gun but still allow them to behave independently, which was important for the final animation where the mech twists its upper body while the gun points in a separate direction.
Seeing the rig finally respond the way I intended was incredibly satisfying. It took about three full days to get the entire rig functioning properly, and although the process was slow, it made animating the mech far easier later in production.
One of the biggest lessons I learned during this stage was the importance of establishing a proper root control. At one point I made the waist function as the root, which caused major issues because the entire mech would pivot in strange ways when I tried to move it globally. Realizing this mistake early saved me from much bigger problems later. I rebuilt a true root at the base of the hierarchy, which finally allowed the whole mech to translate cleanly in the scene.
By the end of the process, the mech felt like a fully engineered machine — stable, logical, and responsive. Figuring out the rigging was one of the defining steps of the project because it transformed the model from a static design into something capable of carrying the emotional and narrative weight of the film.