Road To Beta #3

Back end stuff continues to churn…might have a better picture next week.

• Framework for assets
• Setup for subscriptions

Character Package Update

We’ve been working on a Morpheus for Unity character package and the accompanying Maya – Unity pipeline and there’s been a good bit of progress on both fronts.

A lot of game animation – especially for quick prototyping – relies heavily on mocap animation, so we want to create a robust system that will allow easy transfer of existing mocap onto the Morpheus rig in Maya for tweaking and polishing. So, the first step is trying to get that working manually and then writing tools around it. Here is an example of mocap data transferred over to the Morpheus rig using the existing Locinator tools as a go-between. The results have been pretty solid thus far as much of the current character package is using this process and it’s been a huge time saver.

Next up are some videos of the character package in action. We’re currently experimenting with different rotation solutions. Different games do it differently so we’ll probably include several options in the complete package so developers have the choice in how the character moves.

In this setup for camera relative rotation, the character is always rotating forward in the direction of the camera, so pressing left and right and back on the control stick will have the character strafe and run backward. The current cycles need some work and they aren’t tuned very well in terms of speed as they’re still first pass animation assets, but there is a nice natural feeling here of the character slowing down a bit when they strafe or move backward as they would in reality. It does feel a bit sluggish though, so the animation will require tuning to get it feeling great.

In this iteration the character is rotating based on their velocity, so they quickly turn fully toward the direction they’re running. This currently feels better than the camera relative iteration because it has a more responsive, snappy feel as the full forward run is the fastest cycle currently.

It’s pretty easy to switch between the 2 systems depending on how the developer wants the character to behave, but it’s a good start on the base movement package for the character package.

Next on the agenda will be implementing a jumping, along with a cover system to hide behind walls.

Facial Prototype

Working through what we want in the unity facial setup.

• Iterating on setup. Trying some new idea in the facial structure with a limited joint count.
• Current  count 24
• Ribbon brow
• Ribbon lips
• Figuring out ribbon lip seal. New for us, done curve setups in the past but have a working solution for ribbons

NEW

Good progress on the eye rigBlock this week.

• Full build process complete – define/template/prerig/skeleton/rig/proxy
• Added some eyeLook functions to register to the head generally but to whatever rigBlock parent of the eye rigBlock
• Will loop back after the Morpheus for Unity protoype face is complete to rigBlock the brow and lower face

Modeling

• Finalization continues…