Wailing animation Refining

Today I started refining my walking animation, this means adjusting the head, shoulder, elbows, arm swing, knee bends and feet contact positions.

I also needed to fill in a few of the positions that were missing in between stages, these stages were the dip and rise of a walk as up until now I only really had the main stepped points.

This is my current timeline and the frames I added today were 4.7.10.16.19 ans 22 all of these are the “in between” frames

This is the stage of the walk I was missing with frame 4,7 and 10. Frames 16,19 and 22 are the same as these but they will essentially be mirrored.

I still need to adjust the head a little to represent some bobbing. in the middle frame the character dips down and then back up so i need to alter then head to also match this movement.

the shoulders have been adjusted to represent the arm swing, my current walk in this which i don’t think looks too bad as a whole but looking at it frame by frame I can pick up on some slight imperfections.

Analyzing adventure time

What ere the eyes like?

They eyes consist of solid color and very little detail. Finns eyes are small black dots where as Jake’s eyes are Big black circles with big white circles inside of them.

What are the arms like?

The arms are thin and show no detail for joints,  they are often stretched and exaggerated to show any bending movements.

line thickness?

The lines are thick as they can easily been seen around the characters but this helps add the the detail of the body, specifically with Jake as he is a solid color.

How is volume shown?

Volume is shown with shadows and a variation of shapes.

 

Unwrapping my shield

For a while now I have been learning unwrapping by unwrapping my shield ready to be textured, at first I didn’t think this would be much of a haste as I could remember unwrapping my ship. This was until I realized how awkward my model was, specifically the fact that I chose to make a chain.

This was the initial result of UV mapping my model, all of the small piece are part of the spikes and chain. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The rest of the shield how ever was pretty easy to sew together as they are all quite big  pieces.

 

This was the final result, as you can see al

Trying out Alchemy

Today I was introduced to a drawing program called Alchemy, unlike Photoshop this program has the capability to let you draw in complete symmetry.

I was tasked with creating 3 drawings using the thicker bush and mirror settings.

I must now choose one of these to continue on with using Photoshop.

I kind of like the look of the alien crab type thing that is on the top right. That being said the top left image is more straight forward and the bottom has the better head shape.

I like this method for creating a silhouette it saves a lot of time and the results have turned our better for me. it is easier to use a mirrored method than it is to try and math every detail by hand.

Animating a walk cycle

Today I started animating a walk cycle using a rig and character model that was provided.

I had a initial feeling that this would be a bit of an awkward task but the amount of exaggeration that is required even with a realistic walk threw me off a bit, at first I was keeping all of my body parts closer together than I should have.

I thought that realistic would be more refined but it turned out that even with a realistic animation the body parts need to be stretched out and placed further away from the body than I imagined.

I first started out adjusting the points around the model but then I was told that using the channel box gave a lot more to work with than what was shown with pivot points. as you can see with pictures below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see by the image on the left there is no pivot point for the knees and this is where the character box really comes in handy.

So far I have found it a little tedious trying to perfect the positioning of body parts as you can refine one but then if you forget about something else it can have repercussions, this happened to my with my legs ans hips. I started to get the legs into position but forgot about hip rotation while meant I then had to go over the legs once more.

I had Matt help me refine my first frame as I didn’t exaggerate as much as I should have.

This is my walk cycle so far.

Walk cycles – References

Today I have been tasked with sourcing some videos on walking to help me understand how to animate a perfect walk cycle.

The first video I found was this one. “the perfect walk” by  james Braithwaite

In this video he explains what a perfect walk cycle is in terms of posture and how it can help improve posture as he specializes in physiopherapy, this helps me as he goes through step by step on how to position the different parts of your body while walking.

 

 

The next video I have found is “Animating walk cycles” by Alan Becker

 This video goes though different walk cycles that can be used to animate different types of walks from happy, excited to sad and depressed but it also points out subtle details that make each of the walks accurately. The timing, position and offset for each walk specifically.

Game feedback

Today I displayed my game to the class in order to receive feedback on how to improve it.

The feedback form that I used was split into tow sections, the first was what people enjoyed about it and the second was how they thought it could be improved

The reviews I gained in order were:

Ryan Trotter

Enjoyed – “the art work is really cool, it is what had drawn my attention to the game”.

Improvements – The play is not visible from level two onward.

(the invisible player was an issue with the game build, setting it up through the engine solved this for the rest of the testers, it will be looked into properly)

 

Anonymous

Enjoyed – The game ran smoothly and the mechanics were solid. I also liked the custom assets.

Improvements – Possibly expand on levels and make enemies killable

 

Aiden

Enjoyed – Good game and use of own art.

Improvements – Turn off the exit time between animations so they don’t play until they’re finished, making the animations more realistic.

 

Robert Catley

Enjoyed –

Absolutely love the artstyle, the flames are also a very nice touch and give the game a really nice “gamefeel”

The gamedesign is really nice and the enemy ai is also a nice touch

Improvements – Camera movement and placement hinders the player from seeing certain parts of the level and makes getting past enemies quite a challenge (perhaps camera placed slightly down and to the left could fix this).

 

I have received some decent feedback and have a few things that I can improve apoun.

the first thing I need to do is refine the animations so they transition smoothly

Once I have fixed my animations i will then look into the position of the camera allowing some better viewpoints.

I can then work on adding more features such as a way to kill the enemies

Finally I need to figure out why my player turned invisible after a certain point once the game has been built. I checked the #layer order quickly during testing and this was not the issue so it seems to just be a bug with the build.

 

 

Character design – silhouettes

Today I started doing character design with tony and the first task of the day was bring put into groups and talking about properties of body language, the emotion I was assigned with was sorrow.

This would have a character with their head down, slumped shoulders bent posture to name a few vital features that would represent this. Unfortunately I as having issues with my pen and was unable to draw a charter to represent this and I will need to attempt it another time.

Then I was tasked with creating silhouettes for character designs my first attempt came put like this.

Although it is a little rough with some split edges it is a pretty basic design and could be easily used, once I had done this I was then tasked with creating 10 more designs and playing around a bit more with different features and shapes.

Although most of them ended up a bit smaller that I realized I tried to add different bits of variation per model this is things ranging from head shape, body shape/size arm and leg length.

A lot of them have mismatched limbs but this can be altered in a newer design once one has been chosenb continue on with.

I like the squared off shoulders of my 4th design and the elongated head and ears of my first, the body and limbs how ever, I am still pretty indecisive on which direction to take with these as smaller is easier to balance out but at the same time I don’t think they would fit well with the long head and broad shoulders.

Creating a spritesheet

Following on from having created a character within Magica Voxal.

 

I can then animate it by saving it as an obj file and opening it within mixamo and choose the animations that I would like to use.

As you can see I get a lot of option to alter the animation to how I see fit,

I can alter the length and speed that the animation is played, then there is the option to alter the arm length of the character to better fit the animation and finally the chance to reduce the amount of frames.

 

Once I have settled on these settings I can download the character animation at which point I will be given more options.

The file type is as I would need it to be and I would like the animation with the skin, the fps is set to a stable rate and I don’t want to reduce any of the frames, after I have selected the setting I want I can the proceed with downloading.

Once I have all three of the animations that I need (Idle, run and jump) I can then export them into Maya.

Once it is in maya I can then go into the file drop down menu and set a new project, this will create a new save space for what I am about to do.

After the save space is set up I then need to change maya into rendering mode which is a drop box below the file options. Once I have selected rendering a new render drop down menu will appear across the top of the window, I can go into here and select render settings

Once in the render settings menu there are a few things that need to be altered such as the render software, frame rate, file format and camera position, this image shows exactly what will need to be changed.

Once all of these settings have been altered I then need to click onto render along the top of the window and then onto batch render

Once this is done the animation will be rendered into indivdual images, an image per frame and save in the specified location that was set up when I first entered Maya via the project settings.

This is the finished render of my Idle animation. now that I have these I can create a sprite sheet that can be used within my 2D platformer.

 

This is done by using Photoshop and creating a new plane which is 4096X4096 pixels and then another plane which is 256X256 pixels.

I can then add all of my render frames onto the 256X256 or add them individually ( i done individual at first but found it easier and less tedious to add them all at once).

As you can see the only layers that I have available to view is the background and the starting frame of my animation.

Now that the frame is on the 256X256 plane I need to resize it this can be done by pressing CTRL+T to show a bow around the frame which will help center it with the middle cross section.

I then need to drag it to the top and it will snap into place.

Once that is done and it has snapped into place I then need to hold shift and drag the corner to align with the side lines

Then holding shift again, move the image to the center (it should snap)

Once this is done I can then drag the image from the layers at the side onto the 4090X4096 sheet

Make sure that the frame is exactly center otherwise they will need to be altered later.

Repeat this for every frame and then crop the spreadsheet then remove the background to ensure they can be used without being surrounded by a white box at all times.

A finished sprite sheet should look similar to the above, trying to keep all of them allign and as square as possible for the final result.

 

 

Background assets

Using some images to trace for a simple design I created a dungeon window, pillar and door.

I have thought about refining the top of the pillar to have a bowl shape on top and using it as a stand for lighting particles once in game.

I wasn’t thrilled by the idea of a clear window so I looked at a tutorial on how to create a frosted glass effect .

The process of this was actually a lot simpler that I expected.

After creating  new plane I went into the filter menu > render > difference clouds

this can be repeated to generate different effects until you find one that is suited to the style or just one that you like, I did this a few time to find one that I wanted to use.

Once I had found one that I wanted to use I then went into the filter menu again and clicked on filter gallery which gave this screen below.

Click on the distort menu and you will get options to change the distortion (clarity), sharpness (polish), texture and scaling. For this I am obviously using the frosted texture option

Once you have selected the setting you want to use and have clicked on ok it will bring the effect back into the photoshop window.

If you are looking for the black and white effect you can leave it here but if you want to go one step further you can add some color to it, which is what I chose to do.

To do this create a new layer and drag it below this one the use the color picker tool and select the color you want to use, I use used a blue effect for mine.

Now select the glass layer and change it’s mode to luminosity.

You will then be left with something like this.

I then added my window into the image over the top and began to crop the glass down to fit, I could not crop it to fit the shape so after I had it cropped down to as small as I could go with it I then had to be careful with the eraser tool to get rid of the rest so it would fit the image as intended, this was my finished result.