Unity 3D Animation tree tutorial 2017
This was a tutorial for the students at University of South Wales. The project involved bringing their rigged characters into the a game engine.
More game tutorials on my youTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLkWoc3O06_BXc11X2BpLEHww8FXVSseuA
Form Wars: Witch Doctor
This is a six armed character from Form Wars the game, see Scripting, Games & Tools for more info. on the game. The Character is designed and modelled by Pierre Laffoux. We had to try and limit the amount of bones each character has to increase the models performance in the game engine so I instructed Pierre to model the character with his hands posed. This video is demonstrating the FK/IK switches I out in the rig, I used a mel expression to turn off one set of controls while the other is active.
We used bone maps to communicate between myself as rigger, Pierre the artist and Suvi Jokiniemi the animator to get the best
performance and look out of the character, with a limited poly count and bone count.
Form Wars: Doom Jester
This is a bi-ped character from Form Wars the game, see Scripting, Games & Tools for more info. on the game. The upper body of the rig was asymmetrical so weights didn't mirror correctly but it only needed fixing from the elbow down. Again the Arms have an FK/IK switch like the Witch Doctor. Yikes! that is me talking, I made this video to hand the rig over to the animator. Due to time pressure it wasn't always convenient to meet up and a text doc explaining a rig would be big and boring so I made the Video. I hate hearing me voice.
Bone Map.
Form Wars: Meteor Mage
This is a bi-ped character from Form Wars the game, see Scripting, Games & Tools for more info. on the game. Unfortunately this rig never made it to the game or it hasn't yet. I wanted a 3 in 1 rig that could be used across all 3 versions of the meteor mage. Characters can level up during the game and in doing so they change there appearance. Being able to use the same rig for the 3 characters is practical as it saves asset space and the animator, the time it would take to do several walk cycles, where one would do. This Video is again me explaining the rig for the animator to use. Proxy Models (rough low poly models) were used for all the rigs. This way the rigger wouldn't have to wait until the artist was finished. Later in production when the artist is finished Maya's transfer skin weights tool makes
it easy to transfer the weights from one skin to another. Meteor Mage Was designed and sculpted by Fen Evetts.
Form Wars: Seedling
This is a bi-ped character from Form Wars the game, see Scripting, Games & Tools for more info. on the game. The seedling is a much simpler rig than the other rigs used in the game. The only thing of note is a slider to stretch the bones in the branch coming out of his head. This was to give him the ability to whip the branch at enemies. Seedling design and modeling by Pavel Tsihhotski and animated by Claudia Staelens.
Left: The the Seedling rig in action. Footage from Form Wars.