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Levi's — Quality Never Goes Out of Style · Chapter 6 of 9

Rigging & animation

Human in timing, mechanical in execution: a performer’s motion on a robot rig.

· 1 min

Robot at a street food stall

Animation kept the rhythm and spontaneity of the actor and added the control of a machine.

Rig

A custom Maya rig with human-like articulation and mechanical limits: separate FK/IK for arms and legs, rotation limits against over-bending, secondary controls for the antenna, neck tilt, LED face panel and headphone bounce.

Performance & retargeting

  1. Tracked performer motion exported as FBX.
  2. Retargeted to the robot with Maya HumanIK and adjusted to its proportions.
  3. Timing refined to keep natural weight.
  4. A mechanical delay layer to imitate servo inertia.
  5. Hand-animated passes for LED eyes, head tilts and small gestures.
He dances like a human. He lands like a machine.
ToolsMayaHumanIK3DEqualizerKeenTools GeoTracker

Film & CG

Commercials, music videos and CG characters — shot, built and finished in one pipeline.

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