Cheetah Rig from HighEnd3D - Handle with Care

Cheetah rig for Maya by Vikram Verma

It's hard to find a good cheetah rig for animation in Maya, which is a shame, as these big cats are beautiful animals, and there is plenty of excellent live action reference available for animating a cheetah run cycle.

The best rig we have found is the free Cheetah rig by Vikram Verma, available for download at Highend3D.com.

Leopard Rig by Truong

We're liking this Leopard Rig by Truong, available for free download at Gumroad. It is an attractive, well-structured rig with simple controls, and it's pretty easy to figure out how to use it.

In order to get real-time playback in your viewport in Maya, you need to go into your Animation Preferences (bottom right hand corner of the screen) and then under Settings/Animation/Evaluation change Evaluation Mode to Parallel.

So, how do students get the most out of this rig?