Hey guys! Welcome to another mid week musings with me. Today I will be talking about the basics of animation and the power of having good solid reference material to work from. Not only from an movement point of view but also a timing point of view. Don't worry I wont make it boring.
So as many of our loyal followers will know I have been re creating our lead character to match up with my increased skills and to give the game a bigger graphical boost. This I had to recreate the rig and animations from scratch. Which is fine as the main character was literally a place holder up until now. After creating the mesh and the new shaders it was time to animate. I looked up many references for natural movement using videos from youtube and other game characters.
The above video is a video I used to help guide me on timing and movement of the walk cycle. This was uploaded by EndlessReference. They have alot of really useful reference for animators.
Looking at their stuff on run animation was not pushed enough for what I was looking for. Of course I could just use a normal run and push the effect my self but to make sure it would look good before I did it I went looking for other game characters that have a run animation that I was looking for.
And this guys run animation was waaay more of what i was looking for. Watching videos of his animations taught me enough of how to push the run enough to make Evelyn look and feel a little bit lighter on her feet.
The next issue was timing I personally like to do walk and run animations in 24 frame chunks. This rounds it up to a nice cycle per second and allows for clean flexibility, for things like a speed boost or a slow down time effect.
Above is a selection of key frames from the run animation. By pushing her to this extreme(even though its not super extreme) makes the character look like she is propelling herself in the air. As giving her pure Air time where nothing touches the ground makes her fell and look lighter as a heavier character running at the same speed would not be as bouncy.
Now if we decide at a later time we want to push this a bit more I may include a tiny bit of squash and stretch on certain frames or give her a few extra frames of hang time in the air. But for now this run animation is in the game and looking fine. So far the animation count that is complete on the main character alone is over 30 with another 20 or more to come in the next few weeks. Apart from that I have been working on new characters this week. These are demons that will be the main staple of enemies in the game out side temples. More animal shaped enemies will be inside the temple to stick with the game's Lore.
So far we have 3 varieties with the Grabber Flamer and Sprinter. No prizes to guess whats what given the body shape. Next for them today is to be textured effects added to them and rigged. This is a busy busy week and hopefully will have these 3 bad boys ready for in game by the end of the week.
That being said this is not the only things I have been creating this week I have also created an effect for the ground pound.
Its a complex enough effect with 3 particle systems running in tandom. Hopefully with the screen shake and other effects this will look like a big impact on the world.
I am back in the seat for Sunday musings so come back and have another read then. Have Fun!
Hey guys! The changes are still going along nicely and I have Evelyn all ready to move and groove to the beats of a battle! She now has a new shader and all Unity 5 FTW!
Evelyn was so excited she did a selfie shot. But now I have moved along onto re-doing some of the effects. The effects we had originally were particle effects with tons of sprites happening at once this could cause some problems for lower spec Pc's and laptops. This is a concern as we want alot off people with varying machines be capable of playing the game at the same frame rate as higher spec beast machines.
So to do this I am creating my own effects shaders one I worked on yesterday was an effect for the ground slide.
It took longer then I want to admit to get the fade on the back of the mesh working with the shader. Colour and texture can be swapped out depending on what surface the player does it on.
I am going to make 2 more effects to go along with this that will make it look and feel more satisfying. Such as some debris from the ground as we slide and maybe a bit of a dust effect using the same method as above to also save on Runtime. I am also going to start testing vert painters in unity so we can paint the world in game so we can use the same mesh but texture them all differently to give a better feel of uniqueness in the game. Well until Sunday that's all I really can say :D Have fun guys |
Adrian's SpaceThis will be the place for the cool kids. I will be posting up the things i am doing in the games we make. Maybe a few tutorials if you lovelies would like some. Archives
February 2016
Categories |