We were required to produce several full body animations, some animated assets and a lip sync facial animation.
Before starting on our main animations, we were introduced to how bones, rigging and skinning works in Maya.
We used the Mixamo online service to rig our characters, as there was not enough time to fully rig manually.
To plan my body animations, I did a Mind Map, and took choices from this.
My choices were:
Walk Cycle
Idle
Salute
Attack ready loop
Basic melee attack
To create the walk cycle animation, I looked at walking animations for reference. I used the graph editor to first animate both legs at the same time, then I used it to offset the left leg from the right, making a natural walk. I added swing to the arm and some lean to the body to give a more realistic feel.
I didn't want to do just a static idle animation, so I animated the character stretching his shoulder. This involved animating the fingers into a fist and rolling the head over in a natural way.
For the salute I went with more of a militia/mercenary style chest-pound than the military head salute. This was due to the style of game and the look of the character. I animated the arm up to the chest and made his foot stamp down like he is showing respect to authority.
For the attack ready, I created a looping animation where the character is holding their axe up defensively, waiting for an opening. The body moves back and forth and there is a subtle breathing effect on the torso.
For the attack animation, I begin with the ready stance from the previous animation, then bring the axe up to attack, then bring it down quite fast, to give it some force. I would have liked a little more freedom on how it moved at the extremes, but the primitive Mixamo rig started deforming the mesh weirdly.
For another task, we were required to rig and animate game assets. For my two assets, I chose a rifle I'd created and an animation for an axe weapon.
For the gun, I rigged each part so that they moved, rotating around their pivot points.
The animations I made were cocking the lever to set the hammer back, then pulling the trigger to make the hammer fall.
For my second asset, I created a melee weapon with multiple attack modes.
The blades moved as shown above, locking into each position. I wanted to get a very mechanical, powerful feel, so the locking is very solid, with a satisfying 'set' position for each mode.
To create the walk cycle animation, I looked at walking animations for reference. I used the graph editor to first animate both legs at the same time, then I used it to offset the left leg from the right, making a natural walk. I added swing to the arm and some lean to the body to give a more realistic feel.
I didn't want to do just a static idle animation, so I animated the character stretching his shoulder. This involved animating the fingers into a fist and rolling the head over in a natural way.
For the salute I went with more of a militia/mercenary style chest-pound than the military head salute. This was due to the style of game and the look of the character. I animated the arm up to the chest and made his foot stamp down like he is showing respect to authority.
For the attack ready, I created a looping animation where the character is holding their axe up defensively, waiting for an opening. The body moves back and forth and there is a subtle breathing effect on the torso.
For the attack animation, I begin with the ready stance from the previous animation, then bring the axe up to attack, then bring it down quite fast, to give it some force. I would have liked a little more freedom on how it moved at the extremes, but the primitive Mixamo rig started deforming the mesh weirdly.
For another task, we were required to rig and animate game assets. For my two assets, I chose a rifle I'd created and an animation for an axe weapon.
For the gun, I rigged each part so that they moved, rotating around their pivot points.
The animations I made were cocking the lever to set the hammer back, then pulling the trigger to make the hammer fall.
For my second asset, I created a melee weapon with multiple attack modes.
The blades moved as shown above, locking into each position. I wanted to get a very mechanical, powerful feel, so the locking is very solid, with a satisfying 'set' position for each mode.
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