Mechabots Rigging System – Built for Real-Time Body & Facial Mocap Retargeting
For MechaFightClub, our robotic chicken fighter game, one of the biggest challenges was producing enough high-quality animations with a small team and limited time for the Mechabots. To solve this, I developed a custom rigging system that allowed our chicken characters to seamlessly use human motion capture data with minimal retargeting or correction. By emulating human body structure within the chicken rigs and adding strategic constraints, I was able to make the mocap integration work naturally. This solution cut animation production time by 75%, allowing the team to focus on polishing and looping the animations, while the core complexity of the fighting moves came straight from mocap.
Mocap Clean Up & Retarget
The retargeting and cleanup process was minimal, which allowed us to generate full animation sets for the game in no time.
The system worked as easy as drag and drop raw mocap, then the animator would adjust ranges and clean clippings, polish the loop and boom!
This was the key to produce large quantity of animations for state machines, motion matching system and cinematics with only 2 animators on the team.
Testing of mocap raw footage in the Mechabots body
The chickens had an unusual shape, massive wings and tiny legs which made retargeting a challenge. However, with the right rigging setup, we were able to achieve nearly clean retargets. Of course, a human touch was still needed to refine and polish the final animations!
Face rigging build to accept human mocap in real time
In the video, you’ll see me adapting the rigging system to a very low-poly model—which came with its own set of challenges. Stick around until the end to watch the chicken come to life… and sing for you!
Having Fun was the Key
All of our mocap was recorded in-house using a mocap suit, and we had an absolute blast doing it!
Want to see the final product?
Check this cinematics and teasers!