For the last few weeks of the project I focused on tidying up the rigs, my animations and adding some extra background assets.

I added in a cocoon shaped body, skull and a spider egg nest. My methods are seen below:

Skull:

Once I modelled half of the head I used the mirror feature to give a symmetrical look.

Once modelled I went over it again and deleted extra edges that weren’t needed to try and keep the poly count as low as possible in the game.

Egg Nest:

I used an image of a nest to give me an idea of how the webs should curl around the main egg.

I sent this model into my group for any opinions and they mostly responded with it looking too realistic to match the style of the game and the poly count was really high. I took these on board and lowered the count and added a planer colour of texture.

 I found the lower poly model much easier to UV map and finding edges to cut a lot easier as well. 

Cocoon:

These two four images are of a model I found on Sketchfab, I used them as reference to the skull and shape of the body.

  

After importing my model into substance painter I found a lot of the UV’s were stretched and so I redone the UV mapping.

Over these couple of weeks I worked closely with Danielle with the spider rigging. As she was creating the animations if there were any issues I could go back into the rig and change to suit.

A major change was to add controls to the top of the leg rather than at the knee joint, we discovered when placing the legs at a sideways angle they would pop out of place.

By week 8 the second attempt of the spider was complete and I got some feedback from Michael about the rig. He let me know that my controls weren’t frozen before parenting them, He also added to include 2 IK controls at the knees and at the feet but as I worked on the rig I couldn’t get them both to work together so we stuck with just the one IK.

After his help this is what the final rig looked like:

On our Tuesday meeting call we had discussed about the inclusion of a friendly spider and how it would interact with both the character and possibly to be used as a method for the player to use the controls.

As well as this rig I had been working on a dead spider rig. This would be included as background animations and so I didn’t need to focus too much on the controls. Below is my method:

I repeated this method for the rest of the legs.

Once I finished the rig I added a plane to give me a flat surface to work with for the animations. I also used the graph editor for smoothing the animations as I found the legs would weave back and forth as I animated them.

I also exported the meshes and the skeletons into Unreal to test them before being placed within the game.

Week 2 started with a class on some common mistakes on our animations from last semester. These tips gave me a refresh to my old work and an idea on how to improve for my assignment 2.

The afternoon session began with our presentation from week 1. We all got some feedback on our escape room and our idea for our main game.

After our presentations we began discussing the narrative and styling we wanted. We use Miro to add in references and add the main areas of our story together.

On our Tuesday call, we finalised the styling taking the most inspiration from Celeste, Ori series, Undertale, The Cave, Minecraft and Limbo, and we came up with a basic summary of the story, which is a child falls through a hole beneath their bed and must overcome physical manifestations of their fears.

   

For the rest of the week I gathered references for possible animations that could be used. I also researched how to import the different animations into unreal and began some tests to see how they worked. For this week I didn’t produce a lot of work due to the other members coming up with concept work since they preferred working in that area.

Links:

ANIMATION FROM MAYA TO UE 4 10 HD: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOZbghSJNpc

Shinabro Platform Animation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6fHYb110js&t=5s

In my first class back in 2022, I was introduced to my first assignment called the Vertical Slice Group Project.

During the morning session we were asked to do some research into the different workflows everyone will use during our assignment. I found some images that gave me a good understanding of each area, especially the area of animation that I would be mainly focused in for this project.

In the afternoon I met up with my team and started some ice breaker challenges, using spaghetti and marshmallows, weird but effective. This introduction gave us all a great chance to show our previous work and our preferred role within the team. For the first week we began with a simple task, to develop a single interactive room that could fit within our game concept.

Our group came up with the idea of a escape room which would include a whiteboard with an equation, this answer would then be used as a combination to access a drawer with a key, this could then open the door to escape. The theme of the room we kept quite simple as just a classroom. We discussed if animations would be needed however, since only the drawer needed to be animated I was tasked to a chair model and the games design students added the animation in.

After the class, our team discussed possible names finally all deciding on Pixel Works. Danielle was able to produce a logo for us as well, first coming up with some variations and deciding on one.

During the rest of this week, our team discussed the finalised idea we wanted and were aiming towards. It being a 2.5D platformer game with some inspiration from mainly Limbo and Ori and the Blind Forest. We also set up our forms of communication being Trello for deadlines and Discord for our weekly meetings. During this week I completed the chair model. I followed a simple tutorial since I haven’t made one before, the link will be at the bottom.

Modelling:

UV Mapping:

Final Model:

 

Substance Painter:

Once the model was finished I put some screenshots onto our powerpoint.

Links:

Maya Tutorial [Chair Modeling] | Rees3D.com: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHeBUEDVKtk