018 Updating Character Models & Animations
Updated: Jan 29, 2019
Friday 25th Jan 2019
8:10am
A continuation of what I started yesterday afternoon. Looking to get the updated characters in and playable in prep for new marketing material & the demo build.
12noon
I decided to re-rig and create new animations the new small male character, so I’ve been working on that this morning. I did try for a while to make it work with the old rig & animations, but it just wasn’t working well, and the old animations are not the best.
So far I’ve made his idle and run. I’m going to leave the facial animations (using blend shapes) until the end as I want to revisit how I set this up.
Stopping briefly for a phone call with a local journalist!
12:55pm
Call went really well, fingers crossed it leads to a positive article about what we're up to. Time to stop for food!
1:55pm
Back to work on the small male’s animations.
3pm
Made some minor tweaks to the run and idle, and finished the ‘big hit from behind’ anim. Time to stop for the school run.
4pm
Back again, and back to Blender for animating.
10:35pm
Whoa. I’ve just realised the time and how long I’ve been working without a break. I’ve done 95% of the small male’s animations now, just one fairly long one left to do and he’s good to go (the Desert skin version at least, I need to transfer the anims to his other skins and refine them to suit, but that’s a job for another time).
Not sure whether I’ll come back for more work or not tonight, I will take a break and see how I feel.
11:45pm
Came back just to finish off the small male character whilst it’s fresh in the mind.
1:10am
And I’m calling it a night. I got the animations all finished for the small male, except for the facial animations. This is what I’ve been looking at since I got back in the office. Because I’m using blend shapes (or Shape Keys) in Blender, I need to be sure I can re-use them for the other versions of this character. I think I’ve found a way to make it work, but I’m going to get some sleep and come back to this tomorrow. I’ll also be working on the new large male (Chompster) character animations tomorrow, and tidying up a few of the large female ones.
Hopefully by the end of play tomorrow all of the updated characters will be in the game and playable.
Adios amigos!
Signed by my face
