#modular rig

I tried the run animation again inside of the game, but I didn’t feel like it was good enough. So, I took some time and adjusted the animation to make it more suitable for the game and character’s weight.

After getting the base animation done, I polished and improved animation further but increasing the time between jump and going down. Adding more anticipation and spacing.

A few days ago, there was an unreal engine update. I updated it, but it caused the character rig to collapse. Originally, the knee and elbow joint rig followed the arm and legs but after this update, the rig controls went to (0,0,0) axis and inside the floor.

Apart from the instructor’s feedback, I also had a few tweaks in mind. One being the body turn a little on the side when the character lands on the ground. This is to show that the character is heavy weight. For now, I fixed the arm rotation when the body is pushed forward during the vault.

I also stopped the hop in the start of the animation and made it stand on the ground. The feet only goes after the upper body goes into the air.

After the polish and following the feedback, the animation is looking quite refreshing and actually better.

After the initial framing, I polished it and added more anticipation and make me it more like “Vaulting while running.” I sent the animation to my instructor for feedback.

This is the version I sent my instructor for feedback. He sent me a very constructive and detailed feedback which gave me insight of where I should polish more, and which part needs more work. First, he told me not to start with the hop. This is because it will create problems inside the gameplay. Since this is my first time working on a gameplay animation, I should focus on creating the animation as it is an individual animation.

In the above image, the feet need to be on the side when landing.

In this image, he mentioned that when the character goes in air, the elbow should be side of his body.

Here he mentioned that I have a keyframe added to keep the body in the air for a few seconds before landing. This is causing inconsistency in the animation especially from dropping down to landing.

I started working on the vault animation and made a cube as a reference of the height that the character will be vaulting over. This cube will be the solid surface that the character will jump over, shifting his weight around.

For the first pose, I want the character to rotate a bit while extending his hand out first. This pose describes that he is going to use the pipe or box to lunge himself on the other side.

Then the second pose would be the jumping pose. Before the jump pose, I have to make the anticipation of jumping. So, for that, I would make the character crouch a little before making it go into the air.

First draft is mostly poses. I want to get a rough animation done so I can clearly see which pose needs to be polished in what way. Like adjusting the arms, giving more anticipation, squish squash etc.

Mark shared his feedback to polish it even further. I need to add a bounce before getting up. And after that, put one foot behind when getting up as to show he is putting force while getting up.

After adding anticipation and polishing the animation according to Mark’s feedback, the animation has become much smoother.