#australiangamedevoloper

Finally! Brickstar, his animations and his unused model can be view on your device in 3D!! Now you can get a closer look at his handsome face and animations!

Type: Practise project.   Genre: NA Engine: Unity.   Key Roles: Animation, rigging, programming character control mechanics  Released:| 19/5/2026 Last updated: 19/5/2026 Learned from: Blender 2.8 Game Character Creation. Made by: Only myself. 

Meet Brick "Brickster" Stirling, a little Lego minifigure and Aussie legend. He survived in the outback inhabited by giant Lego creatures (especially big bugs) for weeks. He is fearless, he is handsome, and so strong he can shatter a giant Lego spider in pieces with only one punch. Don't underestimate him.

One of the simple and unique tutorials I learned at the start of the year. I wanted to learn how to animate my future characters' faces in 2D style for my future games to give a simple and expressive look without spending so much time making 3D realistic animated expressions like in modern games which could be stressful and time consuming.

While the tutorial covers making a Lego character, I decided to use my creative freedom to create a Crocodile Dundee inspired character named “Brickstar”.

Not only I animated the characters' facial expressions with sprites in blender, but I also combined the sprites into a sprite sheet each for Idle, run, and jump in a Texture packer app.

After I completed the character mesh, animations and sprites, I then tested it out on the Unity game engine with a custom movement script and a Unity third party Camera prefab, I also made a duplicate of my character testing the “Ethan” third party animations to see how accurately it works with Brickstar. The results were fascinating.

I made a “bonus animation” of Brickstar posing heroically at the end, I decided to animate without help except what I learnt from experience from the tutorial.

WHAT WENT WELL?: •  With animations, I manage to animate them smoothly as possible, including the bonus animation: Pose.

WHAT I LEARNED: •  The Texture packer program makes sprite sheets for each of characters facial animations in seconds rather than mins.  –Blender– •  K key: opens keyframe menu. •  I learned to use a Grease pencil tool for the first time drawing facial expressions and animating them for my character. •  / numpad allows you to zoom in and show only the 3D mesh you selected.  •  When modelling your character… - Shift + C: sets the camera perspective to view everything in the scene back to default position. - You can press E or F to re-straighten cuts during edge loops. - The bevel tool is affected by the geometry's scale. Be sure to reset the geometry to 1,1,1 scale which tells Blender it's a default scaled object. - You can press ctrl + M to mirror objects. - Alt+z allows you to see a transparent mesh without using the standard z-hold selection key. •  When making UVs for your character…       - Make sure you reset the scale on the mesh (1,1,1) before you unwrap UV maps. - You want to reduce stretching UV texture maps and hide seems as best you can. - Shift + H Only shows selected faces. - Alt + H to redo Shift + H.  - UV> Average Island scale: unwraps all UV maps to its approx 3D mesh size. - UV> Pack islands> Unwraps all UV maps and places them apart. •  When rigging your character… - It's always good to check on the role of the bone to see where the limb will rotate. Roll seems to be the angle the bone rotates. - Blender will take a look at the mesh vertices around each of the bone and set its position around them when selected "with automatic weights" with ctrl +P. - Shift + right click to select bone while weight painting.   - The foot roll is the most complicated of the rig. This is important since it adds believability to walking animations.  - When using the Inverse kinematics for the rig such as the foot bone, it needs to be curved to make the IK work easily with other bones. - When rigging, don't forget to duplicate the bone to make an IK bone of the, it should be parented with Alt-P. - With weight panting the character rig, remember red is the strongest influence. Blue has no influence at all. - Make pivot shapes to easily control the rig while animating. - Make foot rolls with several bones to easily control leg movements. - Alt+R clears rotation for bones and resets to default T-pose in pose mode. •  When texturing your character… - Shift + S turns on/off stroke. - F to change brush size. F+Shift to change brush strength.   •  When animating your character… - Shift+ left arrow: reset keyframe back to 1st frame. - 24 frames per seconds is usually "fine" for animation. –Animation control in Unity– •  If you get "loop match" in Animation import settings, you will get the animation to loop perfectly. •  For setting up your character in Unity, it's always good to test non-generic and humanoid skeletons with Ethan the third person controller before testing with other animations. •  Using anim set integer by value to play one animation at a time when the character either runs, walks, or idle. •  Generic type animation is for not quite humanoid specifically (e.g dragon with a tail or dragon with 2 heads, or even a Lego character with claw-like hands). Once selected, there are no green lights because it did not try to figure out if it's a cycling animation loop or not. •  Using a third party script from Unity to animate sprites in a material.

WHAT WENT WRONG, COULD I HAVE DONE BETTER?:  •  In Unity, I could have made the controls for the character easier to control like in Super Mario Sunshine or Galaxy rather than use tank controls, but I decided to let it go since it's not an important mechanic I want to use for my future fps games. •  The bonus animation “Pose” is still a bit stiff and rigid; I may need to rig the character and practise animating by hand better to make the animation more flexible and bouncier. •  With animating keyframes in Blender, I will need to make sure they are consistent, snapped together, and lined up properly to reduce animation mistakes of them happening.   •  I could have made the character move faster in Unity, but I decided not too since it wasn't that important, but I need to keep in mind that for commercial games movement needs to be faster.  •  I had the pose animation at 101 frames in Blender, but when exported to Unity, it was shortened down to 100 frames, I should probably stick to 100 frames or less for each animation. It might explain why the facial animations were not in sync with the pose physical animation, I'm letting it go for now since it's not an important animation to make, but a bonus one instead. This is something to keep in mind for next time. •  For the pose animation, I got the characters hands clipping through his torso, I didn't realise it before, next time I will need to animate with textures on instead of a generic grey material so I can see errors easily and fix them before they go in a game engine. •  Unfortunately, I couldn't upload the character to Sketchfab because I did not prepare in advance for the character to be viewed there properly, next time I need to plan ahead.

OVERALL: It was a fun and exciting lesson; this has helped me to give my game characters more dynamic expressions and animating experience for Blender. I may not be animating dragons, characters, zombies, or cyborgs yet, but I'm getting there!

This time, I am looking for something a little different, instead of basic 3D art, fps mechanics, and other prototyping, I have decided to get a better understanding of the Unity engine's particle system so not only can I make my own particles in the game engine like fire, muzzle flash, and magic effects, but to get a general idea and understanding of how particles are made so I do things like edit public domain particle's I get from Unity store website, or if I am working with game artists who are using the particle system, I can communicate in their language, terminology and just generally be on the same page as them when creating particle's for games.

I learned how to create the particles with modules from a website called “School of Game Design”. I did not make the particle textures myself, it was probably done by the School of Game Design.

This took a while to assemble, and I learned so many things relating to particles.

WHAT I LEARNT:

--General--

How good the editor for the particle system is when editing multiple child object particles in the parent object particle.

Always good to start with a basic texture prefab particle, then play around with its modules like Renderer, Lifetimes, Texture sheet animation, etc to see how it all fits together until you are satisfied with the end result.

Most of the particle module properties can be determined with a single value, a value between two constants, and curves.

For properties of particles, there is no right or wrong answer, it's whichever one works best and what it needs depending on the particle.

For some particles, you may need child objects to separate different particles of the parent, e.g. dust funnel or snow storm that has debris or small balls covering the house on impact.

How powerful using curves for X,Y,Z options for certain modules, however, can take some practice to get used to.

--Modules--

Prewarm starts the particle before the player starts the level, however, it is costly for performance.

Gravity multiplayer determines if the game's physics affects the gravity of the particle.

For Simulation space: Local simulates sticking with objects while World space trails the particles behind when the game object moves.

For Simulation space: Start lifetime determines how long the particle lasts before being erased, Simulation speed determines how fast or slow it is going, and Size over lifetime determines how big or small it will be over time.

For Shape, turning it off makes the particle appear in one position which is good for making orbs.

For Shape, Radius thickness determines how the particle emits outside its shell shape.

Force over lifetime determines the force that pushes the particles over time.

Collision quality checks each particle collision in the scene but may need to be reduced to ease on performance.

Velocity over lifetime is good for speeds of particles between two constants, It can go slower or faster depending on the value.

 For Rotation over lifetime, rotating particles under 90 degrees is generally suitable, depending on the particle, however.

 Velocity over lifetime limits the speed of the particle once it spawns. Dampen controls how long or shorter it will be over time.

For Colour over lifetime, it can be used to control the alpha over time for particles, meaning how soon or later the particle is visible or invisible.

For Emission... - Rate over time determines how many particles in a scene at a time. - Rate over distance: determines how many particles are in the scene following a trial at a time. - the more particles you have, the more its harder on the processing performance. - Speed scale determines how big and fast the particle goes to be smaller, larger, slower, or even faster. - Length scale determines the scale of the particle before it shrinks. - Bursts: delays a certain amount of particles at a time.

Start size( at the top) is a good way to start small on the first step and experiment with it all the way to the biggest step before experimenting with other properties.

 Texture sheet by Animation... - controls how the texture sheet of the particle is rendered piece by piece. - Single row: Will animate in a simple row, left to right. - Whole sheet: will animate from left to right, up to down. - Frames over time control speed time between frames. - Cycles: how many times it loops.

Sub Emitters - spawns a particle. - Birth: creates a new particle.

--Idea’s for particles in future—

Dust storm could also be used for chemical smoke if colored. The same particles could serve multiple purposes with tweaked colors, modules, or textures.

Fire particles need to be on spreadsheets to animate consistency with their child object particles.

How different child object particles can blend with each other to create one whole particle game object, e.g. Fireball.

Render  - determines how it renders in front of the camera, e.g. the particles(s) look straight at the camera when it renders. - Horizontal billboard: renders facing above ground, does not look at the camera. - Billboard: particle looks at the camera. - Billboard> stretched billboard allows you to stretch the rendered particle (e.g. raindrops).

Sort mode - sorts which particles emit first or last. - By distance is good to make sure the particles are not transparent with each other. - If the texture in the particle has lots of detail, it's best to organize the sorting mode so it can be seen better. - Youngest first: emits particles first, think of it like front to back like layers - Oldest first: makes the oldest particle within the particles to be seen first then the newest(simple fire). - Sorting Fudge: sorts the number of layers in order like Photoshop layers to organize which layer is to show first starting from layer 0.

Simulation space: world is good for making particle trails for moving objects.

How effective Shape is for particles to be given a 360 arc so they form like a circle like the Magic effect and Sunrays.

How good controlling the speed rotation of particles while they move, e.g. dust storm.

How effective Size over lifetime is to making particles start small and go smaller or larger over time.

How effective the Collision module is for using properties to behave when colliding in with objects like... - Bounce: how effective does it bounce when colliding with objects. - Dampen: how effective will it lose its friction when colliding with objects. - Max Kill Speed: How fast do particles need to be after it has collided with an object and then it dies. - Can determine which objects with certain Layermask it collides with. - Can be enabled to collide with dynamic objects.

WHAT WENT WRONG AND WHAT COULD I HAVE DONE BETTER?:

Next time, when showing the particles in the scene view, I should have the orange selection outline turned off.

I had a lot of difficulty making the video on Microsoft Clipchamp because it kept deleting the recorded clips and I had to reimport them back in which took a long time to load. I was originally gonna make one whole video, but I had so many problems with it, so instead I had to make separate video parts of the Particles video. Soon I will stop using Microsoft Clipchamp, and use a different movie maker app after I make two last videos of my newest project.

I was not really satisfied with the Smoke funnel because I was hoping it would look like a tornado with all particles blended together rather than look like it's coming apart, I will need to improve on making particles in general if I want to make a tornado particle for next time.

I think the snowflakes from the snow particles should have an actual snowflake texture to be realistic rather than a simple white circle, however, it will depend on my next game's art style and how far the player sees it when in snow-themed levels.

OVERALL:

Overall I’m glad I got a better understanding of how the particle system works, despite it was a bit tedious and a big project to do.

Now that I have learned a lot, it should make new and editing existing particles much easier in development with less headache.

I was originally sculpting and then retoping a 3D zombie to improve my skills in 3D coat after my 3rd gaming course in 2018, but I had to put it on hold because I was about to do my 4th gaming course making me forget it afterward, until recently I decided to finish it off by texturing it in 3D Coat and Photoshop, then using Mixamo to animate the zombie and finally to edit its animations in the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya completing the project for good.

After I finished texturing the zombie, I exported 4 animations from Mixamo using the zombie T-pose model in the process. I exported attack, scream, idle, and catwalk. You heard me, right? Catwalk! I honestly thought it was funny that a zombie was doing a fashion catwalk. Unfortunately, I had issues with editing the animations in Time Editor since it was my first time using it, so I scrapped it.

For Time Editor, I tweaked the animation of the attack, and then for the idle and scream - I blended them together into one animation.

Not only I was happy to finally finish it and learn new things, but I was also happy to warm myself up yet again to do 3D art again due to myself not doing any 3D art for a while. In the future, I will need to use those skills to create assets for my own games, especially when it comes to creating my own original characters and monsters.

Since it’s been a while since I sculpted and retopoed the zombie, I can’t precisely get into nuts-and-bolts detail of what I learned or improved, but I can explain what I learned while I was texturing and animating the zombie recently for the last month.

Post mortem is short because most of the skills I used in 3D Coat and Mixamo are what I learned in the past, however, I did learn new techniques in Photoshop and Autodesk Maya.

WHAT I LEARNED:

Various voxel and sculpting tools to make details of the zombie in 3D coat.

How I can use the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya to edit Mixamo exported animations and blend two of them together with layers.

The difference of creating an Additive layer which adds on animations like moving the head and arms. Override layer which overrides animations on any chosen joint rig in Autodesk Maya's Time editor for animated characters.

Creating a control rig to allow me to control the joints of the zombie easily when animating them in Autodesk Maya.

 Making adjustments in Photoshop using the Hue/Saturation and Color Balance to change the zombie's skin color. These adjustments I rarely use for my projects.

 Making adjustments in Photoshop using the levels to make some areas darker or lighter depending on the texture map in Photoshop. Yet again I hardly use levels in Photoshop.

WHAT I IMPROVED:

Better making muscle and bone placements on the 3d model based on human anatomy compared when I made Rambit Bonzer 3D model years ago: https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/rambit-bonzer-e5cdc786e744479f884136a3be7c6c83

Making texturing details stand out using a bit of light and dark texturing e.g. (rib cage around the body).

Remembering to save color swatches before I switch to a new texture color to use in 3D Coat.

I got the hang of exporting the retopod 3d model better in 3D Coat so that way it shows its sculpted details better when rendered.

WHAT WENT WRONG? WHAT I COULD HAVE DONE BETTER?:

I could have made some cuts and muscles deeper compared to the source material I used for inspiration on my zombie in 3d coat.

I occasionally make a mistake I paint the texture on the wrong layer in 3D Coat. I need to make sure I don’t do that otherwise development will be slow causing me to not meet certain deadlines in time before the game launch.

It was my first time using the Time Editor in Autodesk Maya, so I couldn’t easily edit the zombie catwalk with it. I need more time practicing using Time Editor in Autodesk Maya.

For the Zombie attack animation, I couldn’t get the other arm that the zombie didn’t swing with to be more flexible. Yet again I need more practice with Time Editor in Autodesk Maya.

I struggled with making the right lighting and rendering on Sketchfab for each zombie man model, I will need to practice with the options more to get a better hang of it.

I could have made the video render shorter so I could encourage people to see the actual 3D model of the zombie and the animations on Sketchfab rather than show it all on social media and spoil the surprise.

OVERALL:

It may have taken a while to complete the zombie, but it feels satisfying that it is now on display on my portfolio so people can see it. The project sure gave me a better idea of how I can make characters and scary monsters better for my games.

I don’t use 3D coat as much as I used to, but I hope I can use it again in the future to give it justice showing how effective it is in creating assets for my games.

I don’t know how likely I will use Time Editor again in Autodesk Maya, but at least I know it’s an effective way to blend and tweak animations if need to be used, but practice using it won’t be my biggest priority for now.

Full 3D models can be viewed here: https://sketchfab.com/Adamh5/collections/adams-zombie-man-d4b3f25a2cd740d4973a8f079065290e