Mixamo

-
Today I have been testing out Mixamo. Mixamo is a website that features a handy auto rigger for humanoid characters as well as a variety of animations that can be hooked up to said rig. Since both animating and rigging are such a time consuming processes this website and the accompanying  animations will help a great deal in creating the gameplay of my project as obviously attacks and other mechanics will indeed require an animation of some sort.


However there are some obvious downsides as not creating my own animations will inevitably limit the scope and features of the game as I will be constrained by what animations I have at the time. However, it is incredibly unlikely that my project will come close to needing specific animations made as if I want to complete this project properly I will have to limit some of my ambitions. It is simply impossible for me to make a fully fledged action game on my own in the time I have. These animations will put a hard lock on my ambitions which is something I feel I need to stop this project from getting out of hand. I have a nasty habit of becoming too ambitious and delivering something that I consider disappointing as a result. 
The Rigging Process


One issue with Mixamo is it's automated nature, whilst it works very well for basic humans it has some difficulty with certain geometry. For example the current design of my main character with the hood up confuses this system and whilst the hood stretches and moves in a reasonably realistic manner it also bends the helmet in the same manner which obviously does not look right. I can likely edit the rigging by hand later but for now I think it's probably best if I settle for the old design and have the hood down for now. I did expect some complications with the hood when it came to rigging the character so this comes as no surprise to me that it's causing some issues.

The model as a whole has been put on the backburner for now.




Comments

  1. UnknownNovember 29, 2018 at 8:05 AM

    More like it but still more imagery, video and analysis

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Creation of Minor Assets

-
In order to make my level feel less empty I need to create an array of smaller assets that I dot around for set dressing. Due to their small size and the fact that I will likely be placing a large quantity of these assets in my level I should ensure that the polygon count for these minor assets is low to prevent performance resources being used for such minor objects
Read more

AI and AI Damage

-
Image
Since I have spent all this time on mechanics it would be a waste to not have any reason to use them so I have added simple AI enemies to attack and kill. This is done simply by using the apply damage event that is tied to a collision box attached to the players sword. This collision box is active at all times so the player can currently just walk into the enemy to do damage, however since the event only triggers on a single overlap the player can't just simply hold the sword next to an enemy and kill them. The enemy tacking/following system is very simple using a pawn sensor that when active tells the AI to move to the players location. I haven't scripted any sort of player damage mechanic as due to the simple melee nature of the game it would be very frustrating to play against a simplistic system. Right now hitting the AI has very little feedback so that's the next thing I will address. Likely by adding sounds upon impact. I have dotted the enemies around the le...
Read more