Check this great beastly mount, perfect for itinerant royalty wanting to stroll through the markets of their sequestered magical city.

I recommend watching this instructional video for a complete explanation of what's in this file. (Put it at HD)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sblw-aCF_ck

UPDATES

Added different lighting, environment and compositing. Fixed some IK/FK switching errors on the necks. Reduced the effect of the detail textures in the cataphract shader, as it was muddying the main textures IMHO. Also, I've been working with this in 2.57, so beware of it breaking on older versions of Blender. Particularly, I've had issues where going between builds often unlinks compositing node groups, and you don't realize the file is broken until you render.

FEATURES

Squash and stretch IK/FK on the neck, tail, legs and spine.

Integrated IK splines on the necks, tail and spine.

Volume preservation on many things

Eye look/head follow

Compositing setup

Minimalist environment

Starting walk cycle

Probably much moreplay with it to find out!

CONTRIBUTORS

The desert scene on Layer 11 started with a scene from Potado, grabbed off of Blendswap.org. Blender 2.5′s metarig system was used for some instances, such as the spine and initial leg setup, so thanks to Nathan Vegdahl, Campbell Barton and the Durian team for that. I use a compositing node group from Luceri, and so should you!

VOCABULARY

Cataphract–an armored heavy mount

Howdah–a half saddle, half gazebo apparatus that goes on elephants and similarly massive mounts.

SHAMELESS SELF PROMOTION

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Enjoy!