Initial Block Out - 'F' Stage

 

Death to Dorothy

 

 

Visual Documentation of Work

Animation List 

 

Rig and Animation Reel

  

 

Written Paragraph

What I Did

For the initial block out of the Interactive Experience for the Death to Dorothy project, I worked on rigs and animation. 

First, I tackled the character rig for the witch character after KC modeled them. Working in Maya, I placed joints along the mesh to form a skeleton for the Witch, creating FK arms and IK legs. Then I painted the first pass skin weights on the mesh. Once I was done, I made controllers for the joints and constrained them to the joints so I could use them to animate with.

Next, I did the prop rig for the axe the witch wields. I made 2 joints for it, a root at the bottom and another at the top, and then painted the skin weights so that all the influence was held by the root joint. Then I made a controller for it and placed it where the witch would grab it. After I completed the two rigs, I exported the skeleton and mesh and imported then into our Unreal project.

 

Once both the Witch Rig and the Axe Rig were done, I constrained the axe to the witch's hand and then started animating. I made rough block outs for 3 animations for the witch: an idle cycle, a walk cycle, and an attack animation. I only did keyframes but I animated in spline so that we could see the range of motion more clearly. The skin weights are pretty rough so there is some clipping of the mesh. Once I was done with each animation, I baked the animation onto the skeleton and then exported the animation. Then I imported the animation into Unreal.

 

I also created a list of animation we'll need in the future, which are complete versions of the animations I did for the witch, a run cycle and some transitions for the witch, and all the animations for lion. 

  

 

Perforce Directory

Let's Make It Stick

 

Death to Dorothy

 

Scarecrow Stickers

Cricut Design Space

 

Module 2 Week 07 (Simple Crate and Barrel)

 

 Game Asset Creation 101

Texture/material Creation and Final Display of Work 

 

Beauty Shots

High Resolution Screenshots

 

 

Movie Made with Camera Sequencer 

 

 

Process

GAC 14 - Painting Maps in Substance Painter

 

GAC 15 - Exporting Maps from Substance Painter

 

GAC 16 - Pushing All Our Work to UE

 

GAC 17 - Showing Our Work in UE in a Professional Way

Tech Art Homework #7

 

Animation State Machines

 

Character Blueprint

Idle, Run, Sprint Blend Space

 

Character Animation Blueprint

Animation State Machine

 

Control Mappings 

The W, A, S, and D keys move the character around and Mouse X and Mouse Y move the camera. The F key causes the character to drop to their knees and start firing. 

Game Mode Set 

 

File Directory in Perforce

Use of Composition

 

Death to Dorothy

 

Lion Arena 2D/3D Concept Illustration

 To create this, I first blocked out the environment in Maya and then lit it with a few lights. Then I made a background with a bright color to make it easy to remove in Photoshop.

After that, I playblasted an image from my Maya file and brought it into Photoshop where I removed the bright red background and then roughly photobashed the 3D models I made over a few images I found to use for the background. Then I drew over that photobash for the final illustration.

Module 2 Week 06 (Simple Crate and Barrel)

 

 Game Asset Creation 101

High Resolution Sculpting Initial Map Baking 

 

Beauty Shots

 ZBrush Sculpt

 

Game Resolution Mesh

Bake in Substance Painter

Process

GAC 06 - Importing Into ZBrush

GAC 07 - Sculpting in ZBrush

 

GAC 08 - Exporting From ZBrush

 

GAC 09 - Resurfacing in Maya

GAC 10 - Game Resolution in Maya

GAC 10 - Extended Cleaning Up NGons

GAC 11 - Creating UVs in Maya

GAC 12 - Exporting Our Models Into Substance Painter

GAC 13 - Baking Maps in Substance Painter

Tech Art Homework #6

 

Game Animation

 

Demon ROM

First, I went into Maya and made a simple animation showing 4 different poses to display the range of motion of my Demon rig from last assignment. Once I finished, I exported the skeleton and mesh and imported them into Unreal as a skeletal mesh. Then I baked the animation to the skeleton and re-exported the skeleton and mesh with animation and imported them into Unreal with animation, making sure to make the skeleton the one from the Demon skeletal mesh.

 

Retargeting ROM and Mixamo Animation

Then I downloaded a character model and animation from Mixamo and imported them into my project. Once they were in my content browser, I set up an IK rig for both the Demon and my downloaded character, Michelle. After that, I created IK Retargeters to put my ROM on Michelle and the Hip Hop Dance animation I downloaded on the Demon. Then I exported those animations with the prefix retargetter_. I put the skeletal mesh of Michelle and the Demon in the scene and then changed the setting to get animation from an animation asset and chose the animations I exported. After that, the retargetted animation started to play when I pressed play in the viewport.

 

 

Creative Animation in Maya

 To create the creative animation, I found a reference video of a break dancer doing a head spin and then went back into Maya. I recreated the basic poses of the head spin in a loop-able animation using my Demon rig. Once I was done, I exported the animation and imported into Unreal using the same process of before. 

All Instances of Animation

 I placed an instance of the Demon doing the head spin after importing it into Unreal and then created a new retargeter to retarget the head spin animation to Michelle. I followed the same process to export the animations to make it play in the viewport. Then I set up a little scene for the presentation of my project and lined up all my animation instances for easy viewing.

 

 

File Directory in Perforce