Vertical Slice Project – Week 1

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My group is Group I for this project!

We had originally had a lot of different ideas, but eventually narrowed it down to ‘Home Alone Style Gameplay’, ‘WWII Tower Defense style game’ and ‘Slide & Glide’.

After we gave the ‘pitch’ presentation, we settled on the Slide & Glide Gameplay idea, which wasn’t my favourite one, but with groups that big it’s bound to happen. We chose this because the WWII one didn’t have enough creative room, and the Home Alone one would be pretty challenging due to the number of animations needed – and most of our group was more interested in the art side rather than actually animating.

However, we had to rethink the premise of this game after, as the narrative and environment we were going for left an incredibly simple environment, which had very little need for props and not a lot of room for detailed art creation and would’ve had only a few animations; sliding and gliding. Eventually, we agreed to change the idea to a wall running/parkour-type game, as most of the group was still very interested in motion-based gameplay. The setting for the game is a cyber-punk style/industrial city that has been taken over by an AI and is turning everyone into cyborgs – which leaves a lot more room for props, modelling and better animations.

Meetings & Miro Boards

We had two meetings during the week – one of them was to further discuss our new idea and set up/work on our miro board together; and the second one was to create our PowerPoint presentation for Monday. We also took notes for group members who couldn’t make it to the meetings and posted them in the Discord chat.

Individual Work

I started my research into creating character concepts by looking into the cyber-punk aesthetic more so I could better understand the aesthetic I was working in. This included looking into styles of clothing that existed and twisting them around to fit our world better.

Looking at games like Cyber-Punk, Severed Steel, Ghost Runner and Project Feline helped.

Due to changing our idea in between these weeks, we hadn’t fully settled on a narrative for the new game – so I focused on designing general outfit concepts for the basic character until we had the narrative sorted and details could be added.

Powerpoint for Presentation

Animation Reflection

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Overall I enjoyed this assignment though I was definitely out of my comfort zone as the only 3d animation I had made before, from last semester, was not that great. I think I learned a lot about the pipeline and the general process of animating, especially in 3D, from this assignment.

I had fun doing the walk cycle, although it took me a little while to get used to the rig and how it worked, as well as re-acquaint myself with Maya’s animation interface and process. I loved the result and I think it’s my favourite one, although the animation is a bit more simple due to the arms not moving. The run cycle was also fun to do, and I definitely had improved as I found it easier to navigate and animate, with previous learned information sticking in my brain.

The body mechanics one was a lot harder to animate, especially with the action I chose to do including the arms and hands moving together a lot. I think it came out well and I am proud I was able to create something like what I was going for, even if I ran out of time at the end and the secondary clothes animation is a bit messed up.

Animation – Body Mechanics

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Review

This is probably my least favourite one. I tried to do a weapon combo, but due to my limited time because of personal issues, I had to cut it a little bit shorter than I planned, losing the following two sword swings. I still think the combo looks okay without it, though it would’ve been nice to finish it.

Overall the actual movement animation isn’t bad, I can see some issues but it’s pretty okay. Doing the clothes was incredibly hard, although everything looks great…except the poncho/cape part. It was giving me extreme problems and then I ran out of time and couldn’t finish smoothing it out.

I think I’ll come back to this and polish it up at some point, or just completely redo it.

Animation – Body Mechanics Research & Process

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Research

I was trying to come up with things to do for the body mechanics and the first thing that came to mind was an attack combo sort of thing? I wanted to use the sword in the azri rig and I love video games so I just combined them. I’ve decided (probably incorrectly) to use the sword as if it was a longsword for the sake of cool attack patterns, as I find shortswords boring.

I looked at some references of people using swords and fighting with them.

References

Process/Playblasts

Animation – Run Cycle

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Run Cycle – Determined

Review

I think I prefer the walk cycle I made to this run cycle, but I’m still pretty proud of it. I think I liked giving the walk cycle personality, and it’s harder to do with run cycles.

Now that I’m writing this up I can see some issues, like the hair needs to be slowed down a bit. I think I forgot I could go past the number of frames it took for the repeatable walk cycle; like I could go past that number to animate the other things.

Animation – Run Cycle Research & Process

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Research

Alec’s run cycle animation from the lectures was a good reference for how run cycles work.

I then looked on the internet for other run cycle references and information.

 

Looking at some 3D animation run cycles was also helpful for getting a grasp on how things move!

References Used in Animation

I wanted to try and put some personality in the run, and I settled on making a confident or determined run cycle.

From this video

Process/Playblasts

I thought that was the final one, but something was bugging me about the animation still. I couldn’t figure it out so I asked some people and they also thought there was something off but couldn’t figure it out fully, though I got some suggestions on things to try to fix it. Eventually, I think I figured it out, and the body needed tilted forwards more for the type of run I was trying.

Animation – Walk cycle

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Walk Cycle – Cold

 

Azri Rig

Review

I think this was done in a more pose-to-pose method, as I did a passthrough of the legs and general walking motion, then refined them. When I was happy with them I moved on to the arms and then the smaller details like the hair, clothes and face.

Overall I am quite happy with the animation, as this is the first 3D animation I’ve produced that actually looked good. I enjoy the walk cycle and I think it gets the point of being cold across, although I think I should’ve picked a walk cycle where the arms moved more.

I realised afterwards that I didn’t move the balls of the feet to fit the walking motion fully, although I think because she’s wearing boots it’s harder to spot. I don’t really like the face animation I did, although I can’t figure out what it is that annoys me about it. I also think some of the secondary animation (specifically the bags on the belt) wasn’t synced properly as I tried to match them to the wrong movement.

Reference (again)

Animation – Walk Cycle Research & Process

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Research

This website was extremely helpful during the beginning phase of planning out what I wanted to do.

I then started looking at walk cycles and video references for them, to try and find one I liked and learn more about how people move.

References

I settled on using one of the walks from the 100 walk video as the reference for my walk, though I was torn between the cold walk, the sneaky walk or angry walk. I settled on the cold walk as I was more drawn to it.

Azri Rig

I read through the Azri Rig controls part of the website, as well as watched this video on the rig to try and learn more about what I could do with it before starting to animate it.

Process/Playblasts

I struggled with the actual animating quite a bit at the beginning and wasn’t enjoying it, but I figured out what to do slowly by failing and eventually found myself in a place where I was enjoying the process.

I actually found myself sending playblasts to my friends, peers and family and asking if they could see anything wrong with it that I wasn’t seeing. I found I was getting some good feedback from this process and I’m happy I’m getting more used to asking for constructive criticism, without being afraid to show people my work in progress, and not taking anything said personally.

 

Actually one of them managed to catch something small through those playblasts that I wasn’t noticing at all, due to having been looking at the animation for so long. This prompted me to go back and look through the keys and see if anything was strange and I found the offending rotation value. So I’m very glad I asked for feedback this time.

Fixed version;

More;