Run 'n Gun #2

The past couple weeks have had ups and downs. We have nailed down the visual style we want, we are trying to go for a Matt Hazard look, basic shapes and 'semi-realistic' textures. I started modeling and texturing assets for the game and over the past week I have learnt that texturing is not my strong point. So I modeled a couple assets and passed them on to Cameron to edit and texture the way he wanted. Luckily his texturing skills are a lot better than mine which makes things easier on me.

Dan has finished modeling and texturing the main character and it seems to have turned out according to what the group wanted. So I have been given the task of rigging and animating the character. The hero needs a few various animations assigned to it, run, sprint, shoot, jump, fall and death animations to be specific.

But before I can animate it I had to rig and skin the character. Finally I got to attempt to rig a full human character. I had some problems rigging the arms in order for them to bend right but managed to fix this problem. The scene was looking really messy so in order to correct this I made groups for everything, mesh, rig, controllers and IKHandles. This made things easier to find and select. I had problems with getting the orientation of the arm controllers to match with the joints, but found a solution by moving the joints and model into a straight line which helped get everything oriented the same way.I found that rigging and setting up controllers for the upper body is a lot more complicated than for the lower body.

Rigging:

Fig 1.1) Rig and Controller Setup

Fig 1.2) Character with Controllers

The character is skinned, but I have not yet weighted it correctly. First I will create a short animation to test the rig in-game and make sure it works. If this goes well then I will start to correct the weighting and animate the character further. If everything goes according to plan I should be able to start animating the character later this week.

We a planning on using motion capture as well as keyframe animation for this project. I so I will be checking with my motion capture teacher on Monday to make sure this rig setup will work properly in Motion Builder. For the next couple weeks I will be going through tutorials and getting to grips with Motion Builder as an animation and motion capture tool. In the mean time I will be using 'placeholder' animation (probably keyframed) until we can get into the motion capture studio (I believe we will be in the studio within the next couple weeks).

That's all I have got for you today. Planning on getting some more work done this weekend and hopefully get ahead of schedule for once. As always feel free to leave any comments or even words of encouragement if you'd like. Thanks for reading.

Run 'n Gun #1

For now I have been assigned a role in asset development for our run 'n gun side-scroller. I have modeled a few buildings that will be used to create the world of this game. I have modeled these buildings in a modular way so they can be re-used to create bigger/longer buildings. They can also be textured in many different ways to create even more variety.

We are going to be trying a new method of level design that we haven't done before. I am sure it is a common practice in a lot of games so we are going to experiment with it as well and see how it turns out. We are going to be modeling everything separate from each other, windows, doors and buildings will be separate items and 'stitched' together to create even more variety to the environment. Hopefully this way we can make the game look and feel great.

Here are a couple screenshots of some of the work I have done for now.

Suspended Platforms:

Doors of Different Sizes:

Building Modules:

So what do you think of the work so far? I know it doesn't look like much right now, but we have high hopes for this game and really want to make it great. So your opinions and comments would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

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New Beginnings

It's time to put everything I learnt last semester to good use. In the last post I mentioned it's a new semester, which means a new game. At the moment I am working on a side-scrolling run 'n gun style game.

Basically the player plays as Agent Hank Malone and he is out to rescue Secret Agent Princess. The story will be your typical shoot up the bad guys and save the pretty lady(who doesn't like saving her) from the evil villain. The player will have a large assortment of weapons to use to create havoc and kill anyone standing in the way. The player will be able to run, jump and shoot, for now that is all the actions that can be performed.

Currently we have two levels in mind. The first starts out in a train yard where the player has to work their way through the hordes of enemy attacks to get to the next level. At the end of the level there will be a Boss Battle (still to be decided) and then on to the next level. The second level will be a little trickier. The player climbs aboard a moving train and has to make their way to the front of the train without being killed by enemies or falling off the train. There will be carriages the player will have to jump onto roof by roof or climb into and walk through the carriage. Once the player gets to the end, there will be another boss battle. Defeat this boss and save the girl.

That's the new game in a nutshell. Really looking forward to working on this game. Hoping I'll get to do more animation that last semester, which I think I will. I'll keep you posted on our work through-out the semester.