Introduction

This is a high-quality black-tailed prairie dog character, including the model, textures, hair, rigging, and animation. The hair is created in XGen interactive with enough details, and all materials are built with Arnold renderer for realistically replicating the appearance and texture of a real prairie dog. The rigging is created with reference to real bones, making the animation in line with natural movements. The project provides a complete rigging setup along with 4 realistic animations. This character was created at real-world scale using Maya 2024, suitable for film, animation, and high-precision character presentation scenarios.

Features

Model Details: The model consists of the body, eyes, teeth, claws, lacrimal caruncles, and lacrimal glands.
Textures and Materials: There are 18 .tx files which support Arnold, all in 4K resolution for best quality and details. The materials of the character and the hair are rendered with Arnold renderer to present realistic effects. There are 2 UV sets of the body, which support single quadrant or multiple quadrants.
XGen hair: XGen interactive is used for presenting the details of the hair faster, and all maps of density and modifier masks for hair layering are included externally, all masks are in 1K resolution.

Meshes

Body: Vertices: 25,150, Polygons: 25,102
Eyes: Vertices: 3,048, Polygons: 2,978
Teeth01: Vertices: 2,736, Polygons: 2,528
Teeth02: Vertices: 377, Polygons: 346
Claws: Vertices: 2,506, Polygons: 2,340
Upper Lacrimal Caruncle: Vertices: 624, Polygons: 608
Lacrimal Caruncle: Vertices: 448, Polygons: 444
Lacrimal Glands: Vertices: 252, Polygons: 248

Total: Vertices: 35,141, Polygons: 34,594

Animations

Unlooped LookAround animation at 30 fps, frame range 1-241
Unlooped Shout animation at 30 fps, frame range 1-241
Looped Run animation at 30 fps, frame range 1-88
Looped Walk animation at 30 fps, frame range 1-88

Rigging

It features highly detailed controllers, making posing and animation much more convenient. The functions are as follows:

CTR_crv_MASTER is the master controller of the character.
It includes the custom attributes:
DEF_jnt_Vis – Controls the visibility of skinned joints.
MCH_jnt_Vis – Controls the visibility of auxiliary joints.
Subd_Mesh – Controls the display mode of the model.

CTR_crv_head is the head controller.
It includes the custom attributes:
Head_Follow_Target – Controls the head follow target.
Neck_Follow_Target – Controls the neck follow target.
RotateOrder – Controls the rotation order.
Sec_control_Vis – Controls the visibility of secondary controllers.

CTR_crv_L/R_B_thigh_attr is the back leg controller.
It includes the custom attributes:
IK_FK – Switches between IK and FK.
IK_Stretch – Controls IK stretching.
PoleVector_Follow – Controls pole vector following.
RotateOrder – Controls the rotation order.
Stretch_Control_Vis – Controls the visibility of secondary stretch controllers.
Toes_Spread – Controls toe spreading.

CTR_crv_L/R_F_thigh_attr is the front leg controller.
It includes the custom attributes:
IK_FK – Switches between IK and FK.
IK_Stretch – Controls IK stretching.
PoleVector_Follow – Controls pole vector following.
RotateOrder – Controls the rotation order.
Stretch_Control_Vis – Controls the visibility of secondary stretch controllers.
Toes_Spread – Controls toe spreading.

CTR_crv_spine_a_attr is the spine controller.
It includes the custom attributes:
IK_FK – Switches between IK and FK.
IK_Stretch – Controls IK stretching.
Stretch_Control_Vis – Controls the visibility of secondary stretch controllers.

CTR_crv_tail_a_attr is the tail controller.
It includes the custom attributes:
Follow_Target – Controls target following.
IK_FK – Switches between IK and FK.
IK_Stretch – Controls IK stretching.
Stretch_Control_Vis – Controls the visibility of secondary stretch controllers.

CTR_crv_L/R_eye_blink is the blink controller.

In addition, the face and body have many more auxiliary controllers and additional features.

Specifications

File format: Saved as .mb files by default. It can be saved as .ma files if necessary.
Version supported: Created with Maya 2024. Maya 2024 or above is recommended for compatibility.

Caveats

The XGen hair in this Maya character asset has been converted to interactive grooming, offering fast loading and efficient rendering. Although the original guides are not included, you can customize the hair by adding XGen modifiers as needed. All XGen hair in the scene is set up with Arnold materials, ready for rendering.
By default, Arnold uses GPU as the render device, and the sampling setting is suitable for medium quality output, as is shown in the preview image of the character. If you need a fine-tuned image, you can modify Arnold settings to your hardware limit.
The animation scene comes with Arnold lighting, which can be modified if required.
Except for the above, the character can be rendered directly.