Quadruped Character Guide/Rig

[thursday420]

I’m trying to rig a horse I made in zbrush using the quadruped guide and rig, however, there doesn’t seem to be enough bones in the front leg. It goes from the shoulder, to the humerus, to the ulna, straight to the claw bones. there should be a “cannon” bone between the ulna and the claw bones. Maybe this bone is just specific for a horse, but regardless, I need it in order to properly animate a run cycle. Has anyone ever used the Quad guide to rig a horse before? Has anyone encountered this issue before? This is very frustrating being that I love my model, and if I can't rig it correctly, it's useless! I’d love some feedback. Thanks everyone!!!!

[AceMastermind]

I'm just dumping a link here you could take a look at:
http://gear.jeremiepasserin.com/download.html

^I always see that top image in my head every time someone posts about horse rigging.

[thursday420]

Yeah, I tried using GEAR, but I always get into issues when I build the rig from the guide. For some reason, all the control objects are all out of wack, scale wise. Also, it doesn't seem to include any kind of fetlock roll. But mostly, during the envelope phase, I don't know what to choose as my bones, because there are so many components to the rig, I don't know what I'm supposed to be picking.

[Jho]

I'm really new to GEAR myself, but I just got started with skinning a GEAR rig. And I would strongly recommend it, although I haven't used it for long.

My control objects were too big too when I started. I think it was because my mesh was so tiny, I got it sorted by scaling it up.

I believe what you are looking for are deformers. I mean, those are the ones you should use as bones when you skin. They can be found in explorer under what ever you named your rig. Also you should look for an already skinned horse in the GEAR files, you can try to transport the weights from that to your horse with GATOR. That's how I started skinning my bibed and it worked amazingly well.