Final Alpha Version

I'm really pleased with how our game has progressed and I am excited to continue animating the characters for the game. The hardest part of this whole process was establishing my workflow and the pipeline from Maya to XNA. Now that these two things have been established it will be easier to create various animation cycles for the game. There are just a few more bugs to work out, but animations are officially working.

Main Character and Creep Animations

Check em out

Rigging Those Characters

At this point I have the main character rigged up and ready to animate, the next step is to have the creep character rigged. Then it's necessary to get them all walking. I will get all of this done in time for the alpha demo.

Weighting the Characters

Now that the animations are working (I figured out how to solve the tweaking issue). It now becomes my pleasure to bind our rig to each of our characters, This is a somewhat tedious process where each vertex is assigned a weight from 0 to 1 which indicates how each bone in the skeleton deforms the mesh.

After each character is rigged I will be able to begin their animation cycles. Currently I have rigged and weighted one of our Tank characters. Check it out below.

It's ALIVE (Animations are Working)

Well we have officially gotten our custom animation to function in our model viewer, which means that it will work int the game. There are a few weird things going on though. One foot on the character tweaks out, and the left side of the characters body seems to have shrunk in comparison to the left, this is very strange in the sense that it has messed with the geometry. So moving on from here, we need to figure out how to call different parts of the animation in the code, because we will only have one FBX file for all the animations. We also just need to start getting our characters completely modeled.

Animation Success

The animation is so close to being up and running, I can feel it. I have successfully rigged, animated, and exported an FBX file using our basic model. All of this is up to the specifications of the Digital Tutors tutorial where they successfully imported a character into XNA. I know that this is going to work because all of the strange errors that were appearing the last time I went through this process are gone. The only challenge that remains is this mysterious "Take" issue. In the example animation character that XNA provides there is a name called Take1 associated with the FBX file, in other words the animation is named and then is called upon in the code. I thought I had exported the name of my animation clip with the FBX file but it doesn't seem so, therefore we will continue moving forward from here and hopefully have animations working very soon.

Check out my animation below.

I've developed about half the character rig for our simple model that is to the specifications of the digital tutors tutorial. This should hypothetically give us a rig for animation that will work in XNA.

Progress

So as of our last class meeting, we were stuck as to how we were going to move our animations out of Maya as an FBX file and into XNA. While we have not successfully gotten one of our animations to work in XNA yet, I have made progress in researching how we can possibly accomplish this. After contacting the Beware of Dog team I discovered that they were baking their animations in Maya. This was enough of a hint for me to go out to several forums and read up on how others were experiencing the same issues that we were.

This in turn led me to Digital Tutors, although it is not free, the link below is a step by step guide on how to create a pipeline from Maya to XNA. I have followed the guide on how to export a mesh from Maya on multiple rigs however it still has not produced a successful result. I still feel that this guide offers the best bet on how to solve this issue. Dan also has the ability to access the training, therefore we can look for any hints on the code side as well.

I believe we are inching ever closer to finally having a working animation.

Here is the link to the Digital Tutors tutorial.

The infinite animation issues

Dan has successfully added animation code to our model viewer, as of right now we have found an FBX file that someone has animated a character walking. That seems to work successfully.

I have imported that model into Maya in order to search for clues as to how the working animation functioned in Maya. What I found was a little counter intuitive. It seemed as if the animator was no using a rig at all and was actually animating the joints themselves.

I did an animation test which can be viewed below, using our our base character model I put a skeleton in the mesh and did some quick skinning, and then created quite possibly the worst walk cycle ever conceived by man haha.

Finally after a few hours of work and then actually having our character "animated" in Maya, I exported him out as an FBX file (still receiving warnings) and once again  I am still getting errors. This time it's saying there is an input skeleton error whatever that means.

So still not much progress, I'm going to work on contacting the team that worked with 3D last year and figure out what they possibly did to get a functioning 3D model.

All this technical stuff is getting exhausting......

FBX transfer issues

As of right now I've hit a wall. I am trying to figure out how to export complex rigs with animation from Maya as FBX files so that they can be used in the game. After further research into this issue I am coming up with inconclusive results. It seems that I am able to export and mesh and as long as the animations are associated with the mesh itself they work in the game, such as what was demonstrated in the prototype. It seems that the instance a rig is associated with the mesh it presents all kinds of problems.

On a side note I am still teaching myself how to rig, just waiting on the other members of the art team to come up with some models. On my test rig I have a full IK system on the arm that stretches, this rigging experience has been valuable because I have encountered issues that will be easily avoidable when I set up a rig for our actual characters.

Rigging the Arm

I have successfully gotten the SVN to work on my workstation at home, therefore we can now attempt to set up a pipeline for testing animations in the game. On another note I am continuing work on my test rig.

It is necessary to create a strong rig that is not going to break. This rig is almost entirely IK and this is very much necessary for the feet so that I can animate properly.

Missed Blog Update

Forgot to update this last Thursday. Been animating like crazy this past week. I have created a simple run cycle for our game with a generic character. The challenge that our team is facing now is attempting to export an FBX file from Maya and then put that animation into the game.

test_rig

So I'm in the process of learning to rig 3D characters. For my test rig I have completed the spine. This is a very clean and advanced IK spine rig in that you are able to stretch the spine and the mesh will stretch along with it. The spine rig also imitates FK when you bend the character forward. Watch the demo below.

My plan with this character is to use him for a test animation in our game. The other artists on my team should be working on 3D models which will later be implemented once I have rigged them.

Character Rigs

So it has been a while since I've posted anything because of fall break.....our group is going to be using Maya to create the art assets for Creep Commando. I have been appointed the designated rigger of the group but.....I don't know how to rig haha. No fears though I am teaching myself with tutorials, one of which is the Gnomon Workshop's Puppet Rig DVD. I have a basic bi pedal mesh which I have completed a skeleton for. The rig is very clean and will work well once I've attached all the controls. Ready for all kinds of awesome animation.

Here is an image of the skeleton

Creep Commando

I think I failed to mention that I am part of the Creep Commando team for the rest of the school year. Today we should be determining what the most important features of the game will be and what each of our sprints will be for the rest of the semester so that we will have a release available by December.

Blog Postinggggg

So I definitely neglected to post last time before classsss....Sorry Bob. Does anyone else even check these? Anyway as of the last class we are determining all of the features we would like to include in our game. From the looks of it I will be the groups token animator/rigger guy. Should be all kinds of fun.

Final Team Announcement

I've voted to work on the Gravity Shift game as I feel they received very positive feedback from the professionals and they have a creative concept. I suppose I will find out which team I will be on by the end of the class period. I feel like I can an asset to the team with my artistic skills.

Today is the day

Today we pitch our game to a panel of distinguished experts. I'm excited about our presentation and I am proud of the work that our team has put in. If our game does not get selected I still feel that it was a valuable experience for me to animate a flour sack. As for presenting the art style for the game here is a picture of several of the models I created in Maya for the game.

Some Rendered Cycles

New Jump Cycle

Forgot to update this before class, anyway I've created this jump cycle of a flour sack along with several other art assets for the game.

New and Improved Walk Cycle

So after meeting with my group Tuesday we came up with the cool idea of using a flour sack for our character. Its an old animation cliche from Disney used by the nine old men to show that simple shapes can convey emotion.

Here is the walk cycle.

I may want to add some more overlap on the character but for now I think it'll work. Gonna do a jump cycle next.

First Sprite Sheet

Today I sent out the first sprite sheet I've designed for our team. I created a basic walk cycle in Maya and used photoshop to combine all the images. Check it out below.

I used a basic humanoid character that I found for free on creativecrash.com, the rig was very unique compared to others I've used in that it had about 25 controls. I feel like this cycle will suffice for now, however I would love to give our character some more personality if our game is chosen in the future.

Machine Madness Team

I'm very pleased with the team that I've been assigned to. We have a couple weeks to develop a prototype for Machine Madness. This game concept was created by Colter Haycock, his original pitch is here.

What I liked about this game originally was its simplicity. Sometimes the most fun games simply involve solving puzzles with using a physics engine. A game like World of Goo is an excellent example.

My Original Game Pitch

Here is the pitch for my original game called Asteroid Destroyer. Unfortunately this game was not selected to move on and be developed into a prototype. The game was originally conceived to be a side scroller where the player controls a space ship struggling to survive in an intricate maze of colliding asteroids. See below for the original pitch.
 
Original Pitch

Pitches

There are a few exciting pitches out there. Really can't wait to get started on all the art and animation for whatever team I end up on, that said more than likely my game won't get made however I really can't wait to just start collaborating with everyone.