INTERACTIVE :: 24/11/16 - MOTHECY

Patrick finished the game last night and we all got to look at it this morning!  I'm so happy we managed to get it done on time, and for a first attempt at Unity, everything's looking great!

Here are some screenshots from the game

And the downloadable file can be found here!

INTERACTIVE :: 23/11/16 - Final Touches

Spent today preparing the moth assets for integration into Unity!  I decided to make both a pants/no pants version of the character, since putting pants on the moth was a happy accident in the first place.  I really wish I'd had more time to make variations on the character, though unfinished UVs for a Royal Walnut moth variation exist - He's missing the correct markings on his wings.

While I was at it, I also did a proper 2D turnaround sheet for my current moth, and colored in the reference images I used while sculpting it.  Looking at them, the character has remained overall the same through the concept and finalization stages.

The Unity setup was easy to manage once I got a few pointers on how to go about making transitional loops.  I also refreshed my knowledge of booleans.

A few of the animations had to be edited though, due to the loops not being completely smooth.  The walk cycle has had a frame shaved off the beginning and end of it, and the jump animation was split into a jump and fall cycle.  It went pretty smoothly and I'm really happy with how the end result turned out!

Here's a playtest the animation states:

The last thing I did for the project was worked on a quick introduction sequence to familiarize the player with the backstory of the game.  I went for a sort of scroll-esque, history book feel, similar to things like the ending sequences of the early Fire Emblem games and the introduction to Zelda: The Wind Waker, so I have gone with a sketchy sort of line style and sepia toned images.

It has since been compiled into an intro video and will play at the beginning of starting a new game.

With that, I've more or less finished everything required of me for this project, which I'm actually quite surprised about.  I did not expect the process to go as smoothly as it has, and while I feel as though I fell behind schedule for a good amount of the process, I've made it to this point and feel very calm and prepared for the whole thing.  The project itself has been a very good learning experience, though admittedly my involvement with the Unity aspect of it feels minimal, but I have been able to draw on experiences and practices that I learned last year, and discovered that I could create a model a lot more quickly than I have before.  

There were very few, if any snags in the process, and things largely fell behind due to my own time management than any issues with the programs, concept, or group.  I messed up in a few places when I was rigging the character - the arms don't bend at the right angles, and I had issues with his knees due to not creating the slight bend in the bones where the knee joint should have been.  These were all adjusted and overcome relatively easy though, and I had no issues with the animation process at all.  I'm still not 100% with creating what I believe to be fluid and realistic animations, but for my second time animating a character, I feel as though I did pretty well.

In terms of development, I feel as though the character concept was pretty solid throughout the entire process - the team did not have anything negative to say about my moth, and he did not need much in terms of refinement, beyond a slight change in body shape.  I do regret that I wasn't able to make extra color variants of the character, as I would have liked to have seen a whole spectrum of moths, but I may do these in my own time.  The creation of the moth's pants was a happy accident, and I feel has been the only major change in the design process.

The team has been wonderful too!  We all worked extremely well with one another, each of us assigned to an area that has been completed within the timeframe.  I feel as though we're all ready for presentations tomorrow, and am confident that our game will look really good once all the coding has been sorted.

INTERACTIVE :: 22/11/16 - Completed Animations

Finished up the final two animations that I needed today!  Here are the playblasts for them:

Death Animation:

Walk Cycle (single loop):

In terms of frame counts, the final Maya file contains all of the following:

• Attack Animation - 20 frames: 01 - 20
• Idle Animation - 40 frames: 24 - 64
• Jump Animation - 38 frames: 68 - 106
• Death Animation - 28 frames: 110 - 138
• Walk Animation - 16 frames: 142 - 158

I'm cleaning up the final animations in the graph editor to make sure they're optimized for the game now, and will post a rendered video of the moth's animations once it has finished rendering.  Hopefully we'll be able to place the central character into the game tomorrow without any problems, which will then only leave me to make the opening sequence for the game.

INTERACTIVE :: 21/11/16 - Character Animations

Over the past week I've been slowly working on the animations for the moth character, with varying degrees of success.  Currently I'm looking up tutorials for how to do a convincing walk cycle and death animation, as these are the last two animations I need to create to place in the game.  At this point we're going with a one-hit kill format similar to classic games like the original Super Mario in order to save time.  Hopefully it will only take me today and tomorrow to get these animations done, and spend the rest of the week writing up the flavor text and drawing introduction images for the beginning of the game while Patrick puts everything into Unity.

Here are the other animations I've made for the project so far, in playblast form:

Attack:

Idle:

Jump:

INTERACTIVE :: 16/11/16 - Controls

Took me longer than i wanted to get to this point, but controls have been added and completed for the moth rig

INTERACTIVE :: 13/11/16 - Moth Rigging

Most of the week has been spent rigging and painting my moth's skin weights to make sure that it moves and flexes correctly.  With the model as simple as it is, figuring out the skin weights has not been too difficult.

Skin weights have been mirrored so that both sides are even.

Over the weekend, I made a quick animation to showcase what the rig can do!  Due to its tiny limbs, however, it is somewhat difficult to show the moth doing things that require extensive stretching of its arms and legs.  it was only after I finished rigging that I also noticed I positioned the joints of its arms wrong, so making them rotate can be a bit of an issue at times.

At this stage, all I need to do is add controls and then I can begin animation!  I may require a refresher course on how those work, but it shouldn't take too long.

INTERACTIVE :: 02/11/16 - Rigging Moth

The past couple of days I have spent trying to refamiliarize myself with the rigging aspect of 3D modelling.  The moth feels like it will be a lot easier to rig than the model I created last year, as it has very simple arms/legs with no fingers.  I honestly only wanted to spend a couple of days on getting the rig together, but unfortunately, personal issues have arisen and I'm a little behind on where I would like to be with it.

There aren't really too many progress shots to show so far - I've created all the joints and put them together in a hierarchy, ready to bind to the skin once I confirm with another group member that everything is connected the way that its supposed to be.

Also, while messing around yesterday, me and the rest of the team accidentally ended up creating a more appealing moth, as well as creating a basis for the 'sage' character by being silly and messing around with the character's fur parts.

The moth actually looks quite cute with fluffy pants, even if the 'pants' are just a rotated version of the fluffy collar around its neck.

As for the sage, we found that by increasing the size of the fur collar and shifting it up, we could create a pretty convincing beard.

This one was just for fun.  It really looks like a sheep now.