Basic animations done....

I have, at last, finished some animations for the game. It took me a few attempts to get the rigs done due to my lack of knowledge but it is safe to say that I am now considerably better than I was, doing the animations was fun although they are scrappy and definitely not Pixar but for now they will do. The biggest problem was getting them exported from Maya using the FBX exporter, it took me longer to do that than actually rigging them or animating them....

I have also set up some lights to bake the shadow detail into the texture maps for the level, once they are baked out I will use them as a reference to complete the texturing before re-baking them into the tenure maps next week.

Just words

Over the last couple of days I have been rigging, not just one rig but 3!! Two are for the game project and one is for my 3D animation project, to be frank i really do not enjoy the rigging process but I do enjoy the animating part so from a workflow perspective this is the part fo the project (rigging) is the low point. I think this has something to do with the key fact that it is quite technical and requires the structure to be done in the exact order with very little deviation.

Over the next 2 days i will get the animations done and passed to Lee to be placed in the game so I can get teh lighting sorted for the level, the plan there is to get this done by Friday evening or saturday morning and bake the lights out over night on more than one machine.

On another front the audio is coming along too thanks to Stuart Wilson, we so far have ambient effects, gun fire and some tension building music. We are all working on the script for the characters too to add some life to proceedings, I will need some actors for that!

Retop and Normals

Here is the NPC with the Normals applied ready for placing into the game, well apart from the texturing and animations. The mesh is just under 2,600 triangles, I could as always add more but I am conscious of keeping it low at the mo until we know what the game can throw around and if we can add more I will later.

Tomorrow I will make some adjustments to the player controlled character such as more detail and a higher rez mesh.

Guard....

The guard NPC is practically done, all I need to do now is make a nice animation cage and we are in business.

3D animation module

This is the character model for 3D character animation, I still have more work to do on the base before I build the animation ready mesh and make sure all the topology is in place. The rig is nearly done though with only a few more steps to take before I add in the facial rig.

Guard

A little update on the guard model, this model is proving harder to make than the hero model because it's not as much fun due to the fact it is an NPC. I only have a few more touches to do (armor for the legs) before laying in some detail but all going well it will be done by the weekend.

Not much to show..

I have spent the day rigging, well 50% of the day. For the first half I built a new collision mesh for the level and also discussed making the characters bigger. The environment now looks more active due to the increase in size making the areas look far less cavernous, we also sat down and discussed the audio so that is now in hand.

For the remainder of the day I built the majority of the rig for the game characters, I took my time with this as I wanted to make sure there were as few as possible future errors that could occur when it comes to the animating and exporting into the game. For the hero i plan only to have 3-5 animations (idle, walk, run, shoot, walk & shoot and run & shoot) but for the enemies there may have to be more to help add a more believable working area with the guards doing things such as standing around chatting or at work at the terminals.

I am leaving the rig though for a couple of days whilst I create the enemy class, the sketching is done and I have a pretty clear vision to work to. This is a new direction for me as this one will be hard body and soft body combined, should be fun :D

Need more triangles

I spent a little time yesterday trying to keep the mesh low for the game to make sure that we can maintain a good frame rate but I have been informed not to worry but get a mesh built with a limit of 15,000 tri's. My plan is to now start the second character for the game, troopers, and then head back to the hero to add more detail before the re-top cage is made. My plan is for next week to have both of them finished and the rigging complette, providing there are no problems.

But for now here are the initial Occlusion and Normal maps for the hero and it's timre for some R&R this weekend after 3 weeks of solid work :D

Pre re-top

I have added as much detail as I need for the game, I will be ramping it up for Low-poly though. I will re-top it today and lay out the UV's before grabbing an Occ map for a tempory rexture, if all is well with the level tomorrow I may even have a go at the rigging as it is going to be roughly 500 tris for the game and should not require exhaustive weight painting!

More update on the character

I have added a little more detail today, I was hoping to have done more but got sidetracked by the level. I had to make sure that the level plus the occlusion made it into the game ok. It raised a couple of issues but not the ones I thought. The big one was that now that the level is divided up into individual rooms there are definite texture seems visible between each room, I will have to think of a way to cover them up, either with lighting of by placing the doors over them.

Anyway here is the character so far;

Stage one of the Unknown

Here is the first stage if the Unknown character, so far so good all I need to do tonight is quickly add the metal boots before adding detail such as buckles to the wrist pieces and the top.
The next thing to do is quicly make the head properly and add the finer details.

Rendering...still rendering....head modeling!?

Currently rendering out AO test sets for the level, this is taking a while but the results are looking good so far. If I need to finish some off tomorrow I will pop into the studio and set them going so that it frees up my PC to build a vehicle for the low poly module.

I am also planning to start the 3D part of the character phase this week, looking to get stuck in and get a vast proportion of the work done before heading off for the weekend. Anyway to prepare for the charter phase I did a quick 3D head to loosen up. This was just for fun and to help remind me of the topology of the face and head, admittedly he has horns but that was to help break up the image and make it more interesting.

Putting it together

I have been placing the assets into the level and so far so good, I will hopefully get the other room and the corridors done tomorrow. Then the next step will be to get each UV map laid out (I have already unwrapped everything) before baking out the occlusion map for delivery on Monday....oh and model a futuristic vehicle and maybe make a couple of characters :D

I have been modelling assets for the level, here are a selection of the smaller ones. Currently laying out the UV's but I hope to get them all placed and some occlusion maps rendered by the end of the weekend.

WIP adding assets to the level

I am now adding assets to the level now that the final flow of the level has been finalised, this is a simple light bake test to get a better understanding of techniques and how the game will look. Once I have the final assets built and furnished the game world I will move onto the characters later this week.