Game ANimation [Month 14]

The secondary class for this month was game animation, which was the first time we studied animation for games. All the other animation classes were set up for movies, and since games don't always display proper timing it was a lot of fun to see how to deal with those situations and keep the characters response times up with the player instead of the player having to wait for the character to perform a proper animation cycle. The other class this month ate up my time

Project 1: walk cycles showing personality
Walk cycles are important ... because to get around you either have to run or walk .. duh? Given a character personality, copy that walk cycle believably.


Project 2: redo the walk cycle with the character the instructor modeled and rigged, then make a run cycle with the same character. It became apparent rather quickly that while a good animator, he wasn't ready for modeling/rigging/weighting his own work.






Project 3: make an attack cycle for a creature that might live under ground and attack people or animals that might walk by.



Project 4: make an attack pose cycle for Frank, something like what you might see in a 3rd person shooter or action game.



Project 5: jump! When you tap the jump button, you want to see an instant result. So in game animation there's no anticipation for the jump.




Project 6: light attack before you make a heavy attack

Project 7: heavy attack that leads out of the light attack. This would happen in a game if I press the heavy attack button directly after the light attack ... stacking the commands one after the other.




Project 8: build a game rig on Frank, even though his geometry is messed up and when you try to animate him he becomes disfigured. :'(