Here is a play blast of an attack using the tentacle rig

PlayBlasts

here is a playblast of the head Rig

Head Rig

After a lot of laborious internet searching i finally gave up on trying to apply an Ndynamic Cloth effect to the chin tentacles so they would flow wherever the head turns. after about 3 hours of attempting to make the chin mimic rubbery tubing i scrapped that idea and moved directly onto skeleton rigging instead. When it comes to skeleton rigging id like to think I'm competing on home turf but this rig gave me a few surprising problems which to be very honest. Stumped me. Firstly i Had problems attaching the chin rig to the tentacles but this was overcome fairly easily but the major fault i have yet to fix is that no matter how hard i try i cannot seem to attach a master controller to the whole piece. So currently i cannot re size the Kraken's head or move it in the Maya window. I am able to rotate and twist the mesh however which is already more than adequate for what dramatic panda need. Dramatic panda intend to take existing pre-rendered animations and convert them into a 2D sprite format using the video footage. they will then import the sprites into their game.

                      Demonstration of head twist and eye closing with the rigged chin

 Head Rig

New Developments

After completing the tentacle rig i emailed Dramatic Panda to notify them of my progress. As usual there reliability and dedication to replying to their emails was found wanting. I then took it upon myself to get in touch with the team and show them firsthand how the rig works. After a brief demonstration to the Lead Programmer of the work so far, it was safe to say he was very impressed, and I quote "Out of all our models that's probably the best, you should see the crap i had to model, it's painful to look at" After reviewing the work we then got into a discussion on the animations needed for the actual game footage. To cut a long story short it finally twigged with them that they have no actual animators and were just going to split the work between all of them to find the most skilled. Me being me i had to point out the obvious and landed the job of doing the attacking animations for the kraken. I hope that so far my modeling/rigging/Texturing have sufficiently impressed them to maybe secure some future work and the Animations will be the icing on the cake.

Tentacle Rigging

With the mesh for the tentacles complete and the Texturing completed i then moved onto the rigging. I must admit that rigging is not my strong point in Maya but i do enjoy learning how its done. Rigging the tentacle proved a tad tougher than originally expected as i couldn't find a decent guide for rigging a tentacle so i had to go at it from the ground up. I started by placing a series of 34 joints in a somewhat similar fashion to a spine inside the tentacle. I then added an IK Handle which is in effect a large tendon spanning the entirety of the tentacle rig. With this in place the tentacle could curl up and down and move side to side(As seen in the left tentacle) but it would do so in a seemingly unnatural way. After learning how to use Clusters (Small objects which allow for deformation of parts of the tentacle) i removed the IK Handle and replaced it with an IK Spline handle, this allowed for more maneuverability. I then placed 4 clusters at strategic spots on the tentacle, these allowed me to move the tentacle more like it actually would if it were real. (As seen in Right tentacle)

                                                                   X-Ray image of the Rigs

                                                              An example of using the Rig

                                                      A Render of the Rigs using Mental ray

Mesh Complete

Essentially the Mesh's for both the tentacle and the head are in effect, complete. I imagine a few changes will be necessary when i receive feedback from "Dramatic Panda" The following images are of both the tentacle and head. Both have very basic textures on them currently but i'd like to change the basic green texture to make it appear more slime-like.

                                                                         Rough Render

                                                                       Visible Wire-frame view

Tentacle

After a lot of negotiating with the team at "Dramatic Panda" I eventually started working on the first tentacle out of the 4 they wanted. I began by using reference pictures of both an octopus and the fictional deity Cthulhu.

                     Cthulhu

 Octopus

 Tentacle Basic Model Side

Tentacle basic model Perspective

With the base model of the Tentacle finished i will be sending these screens to the Team at Dramatic panda to see if any changes are necessary.