Spore, early rig block experiments

In Spore you can create buildings.

I wanted to make the parts that you create with feel like magic lego blocks. They would have handles that transformed them in all sorts of ways. I wanted them to be fun to manipulate.

I started out calling them "morph blocks", but eventually renamed them "rig blocks". Morph block is a better name, I should have stuck with it.

These are a few of my first experiments, seeing if I could create such a thing, and then what a structure assembled out of them might be like:


This was the very first example. I think it has a hypnotic quality. The idea was that the player would be pulling on the handles effecting the transformations...


These blocks are supposed to animate on their own, without the player manipulating them. They bring the structure to life.


And here's a building assembled from the various parts, both player sculpted and dynamic: