Ongoing work: getting used to animating

Work Assigned: cat run animation
cat looking up animation
model & texture a ball for the starting cutscene
scale bear
any other cat animations needed
starting fmv
maybe look about for sound effects & music

Ok so we all decided to try and get pretty much everything finished for this week, and everyone agreed on what we all should do. Firstly I did the pieces that other people may need, and that would take less time than bigger pieces of work.

So I did the cat's run cycle:

And then the cat being afraid (the big purple rectangle is a placeholder for the boss robot)

I then started getting the scene together for the starting fmv.

Although after spending so much time on it, I didn't managed to completely finish a tiny bit of it, being one of the robots arms moving around, plus the bomb-bots weren't walking as I didn't recieve the walk cycle from Chris.

So I didn't manage to render it off for the meeting, but that means I am then able to make sure I render it the same as everyone else, and now I've had people comment on things that could change, which will make it much better.

We have also now had an engine change so everything is now going into unreal, instead of torque.

Ongoing work: learning to rig

Work Assigned: Draw up animation assest list and hand out models (yes somehow I've become the producer of the art side of the project) I got the cat to animate

Ok so I knew this week would be harder than the previous as animating a main character is a big deal, so I started with the most integral animation, a walk cycle, which I then re-did as it was too slow, I'm not sure if I'm completely happy with it though, but being the bad person I am I've never been too keen on walk cycles.

I then decided to do a jump for the cat, as everyone loves to jump about in games.

Then I decided next would be an idle animation.

I had a little more time left, not as much as I hoped, but I had the choice of doing a death or run cycle, so I went with death.

I would have had a run cycle finished like I planned but I ended up having to export everything for myself and the other members of the group which took a lot longer than I planned, so my time was cut short.

Overall I'm pleased with my work, it could always get a tweak here and there as if maybe I had a week longer I would have had more time to spend on each animation.

Ongoing work: Making sure stuff goes into engine.

Work Assigned: Remodel the fembot, then hand to chris get back and then rig.

Ok well work is never that easy to do when it's the easter holidays, but that's always because lazyness packs in.

Anywho I managed to get my work done, took me a while to remodel the fembot, but I also lowered the poly count on it, which was a fun experience.

It went from 1500 to 1002, which I'm quite happy with, and here is the model with less legs.

So I then handed it over to Chris, once I got it back I then had my first go at rigging, thanks to a very good tutorial I was given it all went by very simply and I then had a rigged character.

Now it may not be as good as some rigged things, but it's my first go so it can't be too bad, so I then went on to animating, and here was my first attempt.

The first problem came when it was time to export it, it kept telling me I had a missing bone, but then after lots of frustration and asking Duncan he helped me out, and I had to parent the root joint to the start01 bit in the heirarchy.

So yays to Duncan, as I thought I'd never solve it and I couldn't find much help on the internet.

After I had the files all sorted I remembered I didn't actually have the texture sheet for the robot, so I got the file off Chris and applied it, only problem was that it went a bit funny.

So I guessed there was maybe a problem with the file, so I made a new one, but no luck, I tried a different image and it stayed the same. I then loaded up the UV texture editor and it looked exactly the same.

And here is the finished animation.