I created a very basic bone setup using the joint tool with symmetry on. I also weight painted the model and learnt the hardway that I should always ensure the model is perfectly aligned and symmetrical in both weight painting mode and in terms of its polygon setup. The cat is composed of 21 bones, and I played around with IK chains to see how I could use them to generate more realistic foot placement and movement of the head and tail. This proved to be very difficult to export directly to Unity as IK wasn't fully supported in version 3.7, and the IK wouldn't constrain to set values from Cinema 4D when it was being animated from Unity.
Bone Setup
Weight Painting
I also learned through weight painting that I should check each bone as I paint to ensure I get the right amount of movement from each joint. I realised the joint in the back was far too harsh to not look painful for the cat, and in the process discovered a weight painting smoothing option which allowed me to smooth either a single or group of bones simultaneously.
I accidentally moved the four IK points for the feet above the cat, in turn made it appear to be skydiving - result!
Unfortunately when a character has been binded to its skeleton, hand-weight painted and then animated there is no easy way (that I know of atleast) to transfer this information to a similar model. When I re-designed the character I also had to redo the entire group of animations, the bone structure and weight painting. Good practice I guess? Here is all the attempts at getting the rig right for the old and new cat :
Something that made the re-make a little more managable was to partner the old cat alongside the new one to try and replicate the movement. I also created a movement board to ensure whilst the cat moved forward its feet all moved in unison at a constant rate.
