13/03/13 - Evaluation and Link to all Animation Files

I feel a slight sadness that this module has come to an end, it has certainly been the highlight of my year so far. I've been introduced to many new aspects of game design throughout, though this can mostly be narrowed down to the corporate side of things such as management structures, and  the pitching process, as well as all the knowledge I gained on animation for games. However, I do also feel a slight sense of relief from the modules end. The formation of our group saw the coming together of various sub-groups in the class that normally didn't have anything to do with eachother, this led to the surfacing of some apparent 'clashing of personalities', as well as a slight rift occurring in the group at large as everyone basically kept to the sub-groups they were used to, and I fully admit I did this too, but even so I was left wondering whether we'd actually be able to work together successfully, thankfully as you may know this was not the case.

Still, I feel this brings me to the biggest problem our group suffered, and I think that was a general lack of communication. For example, throughout the project no one really seemed to have a definitive idea of what our game was and wasn't going to be/be about/do, I certainly didn't but I know why that was. A lack of effort to closely follow the development of our game outside of my own role. Yes we had an easily accessible Facebook page where certain people posted important info about their own progress but it was all nothing I really paid particular attention to, and I didn't delve into the group drop box to find out everything I could, I was quite happy working on the stuff I needed to work on rather than passionately watching over the project as a whole. Perhaps that wasn't really my job though, and to be fair if our team was using the Agile management structure then I guess no one needed to really do anything more than what was required of them, but I still feel like I should have invested myself more into this project. I generally blame my social anxiety for these types of things. I can normally deal with the ones that require talking to people I don't normally speak to if I have to, but I’m sure everyone would agree they'd feel far more comfortable working in a group with people they're good friends with on the whole, and in some respects I feel that everything would have turned out better if this had been the case. Still it's a given that the ability to work comfortably within a group of unfamiliar people is essential to anyone wanting to go into the industry or hell work comfortably in any job for that matter. Even so, I still feel like there's some area for improvement there on my part.

Speaking of myself however, I should discuss how I think I personally fared in this module. I feel I coped well with my role, I made sure I met my deadlines, as well as making sure I discussed ideas thoroughly with my co-animator Tim before using them. I was really surprised and impressed by just how well my animations turned out, and though it was incredibly frustrating at times I would gladly do it again as I believe I could do them even better. From research through to production I really enjoyed the animator experience and have come out of the module feeling that I may well have found my profession at last. Though even with all the knowledge I have gained on animating in Maya and the animation process, I realise I have only scratched the surface.

Overall I greatly enjoyed this module, it has been at times fascinating and my anticipation for gaining a place in the industry has never been higher. If I were to be given the chance to do this module again, as mentioned before I would try and invest more of my time and interest in the project and generally try to be more sociable within my group, even if that just meant posting on the group Facebook page more. As for my work within the project I feel I could have saved the Small Character from its importing problems by making sure the model was consistent in all the files, so being a little more thorough would be where I would improve things in my work, I also believe that the knowledge I’m currently gaining in our Animation for Games module would see some improvements to my animations were I to do it again, though thankfully the course was running parallel to my work so it did see some benefits.

Finally, though I may gripe about how things were a little tense and divided in the group, this did seem to fall away as time went on, especially when everything started coming together (though it was definitely still there under the surface!) Its incredibly gratifying to see your own and everyone else’s work coming together in a playable prototype, and I really thought this created more of a team spirit towards the end of the project. 

I am now greatly looking forward to the next time I get to experience another group project, be it in my final year, an internship or in my first paid job in the industry.

Finally, here is a link to all my animation files.

13/03/13 - Importing Issues

Having completed all my animations i let myself believe that all my work was done, but this week some issues presented themselves, confirming some fears i'd had whilst creating them.

Our Coder Dean informed myself and Tim that he was having some issues importing the animations themselves into Unity, everything else seemed to have imported fine but that animations refused to play. We attempted exporting our files to fbx format without success, as well as trying to use the mb files that Maya saves to by Default. Again this didn't work. Thankfully after some intense panicking Dean managed to get them working in-game without having to make any changes to our animations or models beyond conforming them to a new naming system. Phew.

Another problem arose shortly after, one that did require some modifications to the animations themselves. Thankfully the adjustments were relatively minor, but i'll explain how this came about. Simply, the way that Dean has implemented character movement in the game, using a cube that traverses horizontally along the screen, meant that the vertical movement from the Jump animation had to be removed. This is because when the jump button is pressed in game, the cube representing the character physically moves upwards, therefore if there was still vertical movement in the jump animation the character would move upward, and this movement would stack with the vertical movement of the cube. So rather than messing with the game itself we decided it would be easier to remove the vertical movement from the animations then import them back in.

The last issue was one that i personally created, and that was due to my decision to split the fail animations. Bugger bugger bugger. When i realised after watching a demo that all the animations were playing from one file i knew i would have a problem, and given the difficulty i had moving a single pose from one file to another i thought i was in for a mountain of extra work...

Luckily however, i found a solution that would have helped me in the situations where i found myself copying from a pose across from one file to the other, and possibly saved me some time too. I discovered that if i simply imported the file for the second part of the animation into the first, despite this creating a second character model, this meant i could simply copy the keyframes across from one model to the other, simple!

And with that, i was certain my work was done. I handed over the files, and Dean imported the character into the game, once tweak had been made the character came to life, or at least, everything except his right arm did.

Frustratingly, we just didn't have enough time to figure out what the problem was, but everything about my character was fine except for the arm, which refused to move from its tock pose. The rig and animation that myself and Tim had made for the Large character all worked fine but for some reason something went wrong with my Small Character, and i have a sneaking suspicion it had something to do with the inconsistencies between models for each of the animation files, though it still leaves me baffles a to why only one of the arm was affected, i am sure however that given enough time this bug would have been fixed.

06/03/13 - Large Character Animations

As mentioned in the last post, i was to be creating a couple of the animations for the Large character rig i had created to make things easier for my co-animator, Tim.

Given the size and appearance of the character he obviously suited the big thuggish tank stereotype and so i tried to make his animations reflect this.

Idle

For his idle animation i wanted him to look imposing and bulky, i took inspiration from the hulk as he is shown in the avengers, a slow rising and falling of the shoulders and a slight bend at the knees, as well as some subtle head movements convey the bulkiness of this character quite well, i think.

Running

For the running animation i simply opted for a slightly slower animation than i used for the small character, to clarify, the small character takes 3 strides as opposed to the larger characters 2. This leads me to believe that the run animation for the small character may have been too slow for the character he portrays, though sadly its too late to change that now.

I enjoyed working with my Large Character rig, it proved to me that the extra effort i had put into it to make sure it didn't misbehave really payed off. There were no issues with IK's at all. I also enjoyed how greatly this character contrasted with the animations i made for the Small Character. Whereas the animations i made for the small character were quick and jumpy, those of the large character had to be slow and lethargic. A great test of my ability to adapt to different animation styles, and a great way to finish off my work for the module.