Original Cinnamon

Over the course of this big assessment, I’ve learnt a few things about rigging that just make it go all that much smoother.

1. Proxy Rigs are your friend. If your character artist hasn’t got around to retopologizing the character yet, grab his high poly model and cut it up into sections. parent these to the main skeleton in your rig, so you can get a head start on those animations~

You can see where the model will stretch and bend, and even though it may not be perfect, you can still get ahead on the work.

2. If all else fails, add a Root bone at 0, 0, 0, Space. As I was waiting for the main character to be retopologized, I started on some animations, one of them being a dodge roll. However, at the time, I have no way to test in engine how the animation would look, so when I finally DID got it into the engine, I realised I had missed adding a bone to the Curve that controlled the whole rig. I freaked out, afraid I’d have to do it all again.

Above, you can see I added a a bone to the curve afterwards, which fixed the problem, since I now have something to bake too, but that changed the base joint on all my animations. I did have to go and add the bone to all the other animations I had done, because the Root bone was now different, but since it was at 0, 0, 0 on all my scenes, I didn’t have to worry about some animations being off by a few degrees.

3. It makes Unreal and Unity all warm and fuzzy inside to have things imported in centimeters.

This ones pretty easy, when making the rig, make sure your scene is in meters, you can do this by going to “Window>Settings/Preferences>Preferences” and under “Settings”, change the Linear setting to meters. Then, when you export as an FBX, scroll down to the advanced options and under “Units”, untick the Automatic option and change the units to centimeters.

(You may want to double check with any team you might be working with to see if they’re changed the scale in their engine of choice however, since this might just complicate things.)

So, since Reflection was rejected from the final cut, I’ve been working on “Unearthed” with a new team. I didn’t know anyone when I joined, and I was worried the project was way too far out of scope, especially since they decided to scrape practically all their art and start over...

But, lucky for me, I didn’t have to worry about the art stuff, this particular project needed animations, and lots of them! I really enjoyed working on this team over the last couple months, I’ve become much more efficient with my rigging skills, being able to do a full rig in just a little over a day, less if I don’t need to include all the features I usually add!   I’m almost pretty proud with how my animations have evolved, seeing huge improvements from last years work regarding weight and timing.

So, we held our industry pitches yesterday. Unfortunately, Reflection was cut from the final projects.

No worries though! We plan to continue the project in our free time, going right back to what the project was suppose to be; a suspenseful thriller that makes you scared to even open the next door. No more generic jumpscares. No overused “collect the paper” or “key hunt” gameplay. Nope, we’re going back to focusing on the 5 stages of loss and grief, with the reflection being the focus point of the story, using the environment to your advantage by keeping an eye out for the hints towards danger.

With a brand new art style, and a fresh start, we have the renewed enthusiasm to see Reflection come to life!

We’ve, “reflected”, on our mistakes, and now we’re ready to correct them. <3

We’ve been making progress...slowly. 

We spend a week on one set of mechanics, only to end up scrapping it all and changing the idea entirely. The game itself went from being one thing to something completely different, only to go back to being exactly as it originally was. On the plus side, we’re much more focused on this idea and things are falling into place alot easier.

We no longer are using your own reflection as the antagonist, instead, choosing to have an invisible foe hunt you at every turn.

The level itself is coming together, finally having something to show on the industry panel day that’s quickly approaching.

So our team has been put together for the prototype round of our assessment. We have a total of 4 artists, 2 programmers and a designer to top it off. With a team like this, i’m expecting great things from us all~!

We came up with our final mechanics and changed the story a little bit, and after an entire day coming up with the final details, we’re ready to get this first level prototype’d and ready for the industry panel coming up in a few weeks!

Everyone has their jobs set out for them, I’ll be handling rigging and animation, as well as doing abit of character work and documentation.

Some changes included; -Changing the protagonist to a female. -becoming much more puzzle oriented instead of horror as it was originally planned -And finally deciding on an art style and level design for each stage

Below is a couple of concepts quickly drawn up for the new protagonist, chances are she will change drastically though.

We’ve begun on our end of year project. A couple pf weeks ago we all pitched our ideas for a game, and the one I pitched went through!

Reflection. You haven't been able to dream lately, you’re restless, something is gnawing away at the back of your mind, desperate to be heard. At last, this torment manifests itself, within your dreams as you fall asleep each night, as you are greeted by the cold smile of your own reflection, a now self aware being. At first, this isn’t so bad, he seems to be on your side, helping you through the puzzles that are presented to you, all the hazards and dangers only apparent in the reflections version of the world. You mirror self even talks you though the way you’re feeling right now and comforts you, putting your emotions into order. The challenges you face aren't too dangerous, just a few obstacles to move past, until you reach the end of this impossibly long hallway and are faced with an empty table, however, looking over to the mirror, you notice a bladed weapon. Of course, as your reflection has mentioned through this short journey, he can only move with you, and asks you to approach the table. You do, only for you double to grab the blade and violently slash at himself, the pain, immediately shooting through your own body, as your reflection drops the blade and laughs. “Your denial ends here. Face yourself, You will be your destruction.”

From this point on, the game becomes a struggle against your own reflection, doing all you can to avoid letting it near a hazard. There are 5 levels in total, each of them being one of the stages of loss and grief. Denial; A tutorial and reveal that you can’t trust yourself. Anger; A race against your reflections wrath as it attempts to use the environment to throw you into the abyss of the level. Bargaining; desperate for respite from your own nightmare, you manipulate your reflection into getting past new puzzles and trials. Depression; A watery level with access to your reflection at every turn, a morbid creature, its form hideous and deformed and its dialogue despairing.

tl;dr You play as someone going through the stages of loss and grief each night they go to sleep. In this surreal dream world, you can only see hazards in your reflection, and your reflection itself can talk with you, even interacting with certain objects in a different way to you. The reflection deforms as the game progress’s

I’m super pumped for this project, can’t wait for us to get a prototype going <3

Finally got animations to work in unity today, it felt amazing. Only one problem though...Blend shapes wont export with animations.

But it’s ok! today I’ve got another little tutorial on how to give your character that extra spark, by showing you how to import blend shapes into unity!

There’s nothing like seeing a lively dance animation, only to watch the unblinking, emotionless face of the character stare back at you. For this tutorial, we’ll use a simple Blinking blend shape.

Create your blend shapes and apply them to the object you want to deform.

If you have an animation, bake it out to the bones of your character by selecting all of them in the outliner.

Delete from your scene everything you don’t want to end up in unity (including the spare heads you had for the blend shapes) and delete all Non-Deformer History. This will prevent a potential error when we export.

Select your entire character in the outliner and go to “Export Selection”

In the options on the right hand side make sure animation is ticked. You wont need Bake Animation selected since we’ve already done this, the only other thing we need to check is that all the options under Deformed Models is selected, especially Blend Shapes. Export as an FBX, chances are you’ll get a few errors, but this is fine.

Open up Unity.  Import any textures you may have, then throw in the FBX you saved out. Select the Model. There are a few options we need to select to get animations working. First, under the Model tab, correct the scale and make sure “Import BlendShapes” is selected. Apply the changes. Under the Rig tab, select the “Animation Type” drop down box and select “Legacy”. Apply the changes. Under the Animations tab, select the clip and rename it to suit the animation. To have the animation loop, just select the “Loop” options from the “Wrap Mode” drop down box. Apply the changes. To see if the animation is working the way you intend, you can click the little play button above the preview window on the bottom right hand side.

Now, if you drag the character into the scene and press play, you’ll notice, of course, that the blend shapes wont work, we’re going to have to add them using unity’s animation window.

Select your character, you’ll see the animation show up in the window, however, we cant edit this since the animation is a “Read-Only” file. To fix this, we need to make a duplicate of this animation. Click the arrow on your character in the Project window and scroll down to find the animation, select it and press CTRL&D, a duplicate of the animation will appear. Rename this appropriately.

Select the geometry with the Blend Shapes. you’ll see a component called “Skinned Mesh Renderer” under this there will be a Blend Shapes tab, click it and you will find your blend shapes. here we can adjust the Blends by typing in a value between 0 - 100.

Reopen the animation window. Change the active animation to the copy you made. Scroll down the list and click “Add Curve”. You’ll find the Blend Shapes option under the Skinned Mesh Render found in you selected geometry. From here you can key were you want your Blend Shapes to start and end in the selected animation.

Voila! You have no successfully added blend shapes to you animation! Press the play button and enjoy~<3

I was a little surprised there wasn't an option in Maya to mirror a blend shape, but, after abit of a search, I was able to find a solution to my little symmetry problem. Note; this tutorial will only work on perfectly symmetrical geometry.

When creating Blend Shapes, you really don't want to try and recreate, vert for vert, a mirrored blend. Chances are, they wont be exactly the same, and the extra time it would take is tedious. To begin, simply make a blend for one side of the face, in this example, we’re doing a blink. Once you've got it the way you want, you’ll need to duplicate the base head again and drag it off to the side. a handy tip with blends as always is to keep an untouched copy of the model off to the side to duplicate from, this will save time, especially if you've already rigged your character up and have the mesh skinned. Name this duplicate “L_blink_Copy”

We’re going to use a wrap deformer to get a perfect mirror. Duplicate the copied head one more time, but keep it ontop of the selected mesh, don’t move it, or the wrap wont work. Rename this new copy "L_blink_Wrap”

Now, on the “L_blink_Copy” invert the “Scale X” 

Then, select the blend you want to mirror and CTRL click the inverted copy in the outliner and add a blend shape.

Now, if you select “L_blink_Copy” and go to your channel box, scroll down to your “INPUTS” and you’ll find your freshly added blend shape. Select the Blend and middle mouse drag in the viewport. You’ll see the blend is now mirrored.

However we’re not finished yet. Select “L_blink_Wrap” and CTRL click “L_blink_Copy”, then, go back up to your deformers and add a “Warp”.

Select “L_blink_Copy” and go back to you “INPUTS” and fully apply the Blend, you’ll now see the wrap follows the copy.

Duplicate “L_blink_Wrap” and rename this “R_blink”. Delete “L_blink_Copy”, “L_blink_Wrap” and “L_blink_CopyBase”. You now have your mirrored Blend Shape!

Now, simply apply both your left and right Blends to your main mesh and enjoy the variety!

Thanks for reading! Next week, I write another wall of text that, after gaining a head ache, you realise you could have just watched a 4 minute youtube video instead. cya!~<3

So, last year I spent 3 weeks making a rig. To do this I watched various tutorials, spent hours going through the node editor, raged hard at MEL scripts and drove myself mad trying to get knees to lock in place.

And now, I discover this magical thing known as "Rapid Rig". What took me weeks of frustration and tears, can now be done in a matter of minutes. I wasn't sure whether to cry tears of relief and joy, or to despair over all the time I spent on a now inferior rig.

No, now that I think on it, I'm still glad I took the time to learn all of these things in advance, knowing how the rig works and how everything connects is super beneficial. If I hadn't of taken the time to make a rig from scratch, I wouldn't even be able to look at the node editor without trembling in my boots.

Saying this, there's still so much that I want to learn. One day, i'll create my own super speedy rig making system, and with it, i'll get a better understanding of MEL scripts and all the magic they're capable of.

For now though, I'll focus on animation, since it looks like i'm going to be making a tonne of characters this year, watching a 30 episode long video tutorial on rigging every time I need to figure out where I've gone in a rig isn't going to be good for work flow.

This here is a link to the Basic Rapid Rig page, and if this magic isn't enough, the creator has an Advanced rig too, with a $40 price tag, but worth every cent considering all the time it saves.

Well, this is me, on tumblr. Guess I should start posting some things.

My names Catriona Shaw, I'm currently a student at AIE Melbourne, studying Game Art. I have a passionfor creating characters and drawing, even ended up getting a twisted kinda love for rigging as well, a sorta, Love/Hate relationship if you will.

However, while doing my first year in this course in 2014, I discovered where my real passion lies, Animation. How can I hate it? sure, it's tedious and listening to the same audio clip over and over can induce insanity, but, in the end, the magic of seeing a character i've worked so hard on come to life, is by far the best feeling i've had since starting this course.

I've got so much planned for this year, number one of course being to put my all into my school work, but as well as that, I'm working with some awesome programmers on their games and hoping to refine my animation and rigging skills.

To end this little intro, here's a clip of my last year project. By the end of this year, I hope i'll be ashamed of this.