Deciding the Scope of the project

 So, I've completed the walk cycle animation and did some research on gameplay animation packs. Naturally, the most reliable source of similar references was found on Mixamo. Since my idea was to make the character wield a heavy weapon, the Great Sword Pack is my primary reference as the character wields a heavy sword which is similar to my character, and I only needed reference for body movement.



After getting the reference, I wanted to practice more with the secondary controls of the rig like the skirt and the cape movement, so I made a simple standing animation as a practice base to improve my knowledge about cloth physics animation and how the movement of the body is supposed to affect the cloth.

 
 
I wanted to make the cloth movement exaggerated to add a sense of heavy weight of the weapon and the energy of the swing as I have yet to experiment with animating the facial expressions of the character. For now, I've set it back to default expression as I definitely don't want the happy expression from Walk Cycle.

Everything seems to be working well, but I feel like I need to practice more to make the animation smoother and make the cleanup process easier.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Conclusion

Image
For any project that I do, I always divide it into smaller parts first and then apply a simple linear approach to each part one after another that is: start one with primary idea -> finish primary idea -> experiment with small details -> finalize -> next part  Fortunately, for this project, the part division was already done as each animation was separate and I took one animation, applied this approach then moved onto the next one. I enjoyed working on the project very much because of the variety of ideas I was able to try and experiment with within such a short time and scope. I believe that given enough time I could improve the animations even more as practice makes everything perfect. Especially since I didn't do much about facial expressions and the cloth animation could use a bit more cleanup. But I'm happy overall for my first milestone as a set of game play animations.          Like I described during my journey, I'd like to try some...
Read more

Final Workflow Part III - Dash Animation Cycle

Image
 So, after having fun with the jump animation. The next thing on my list was the dash animation. For my workflow, I like to try a completely different or irrelevant part of the project after completing one part of my project because working on similar things for a long time can sometimes feel a bit boring. For example, if I started working on Run animation right after finishing my walk animation, the whole workflow process would feel a bit redundant as the walk and run have almost similar body movement and mechanics. But jumping up and dashing forward are two completely different sets of movements. This not only helps me stay motivated, but I feel like it also helps me practice variety of things one after another and compare the difference of different kinds of animation as the memory from making the previous animation is still pretty fresh when I'm trying something different. Another benefit is, I'll be able to see if I can retain the lessons for longer period of time (For exa...
Read more

Final Workflow Part II - Jump Animation Cycle

Image
 After completing the idle animation, I wanted to work on the jump animation first as I was curious to see the full potential of the cape movement as soon as possible. Again, the Great Sword Pack from Mixamo provided a perfect reference to work with a character jumping with a heavy weapon. But this time, I also had to look at other sources for a reference of cape moving up and down along with the body. But unfortunately, I couldn't find any good reference and so I had to practice and experiment for a longer period of time with the cape movement animation. Here's the final result:               Like before, i wanted to make the animation a bit more dramatic so i decided to make the cape wave way up high as she finishes reaching the peak of her jump and starts to ease into fall down movement. Even though this kind of cloth movement is completely unrealistic for such a short jump, but I wanted to do this anyway just to have fun.   If ...
Read more