Unreal Universe Monsters! Lets make some art together!

[rapfamily4]

Hello! I'm working on the texture and I thought it would nice to make the pole of leather instead of wood. When I saw the concept art for the first time I though it was made of leather. It's coming out nicely!

[Rooster128]

Has there been any work on animating characters? Also- where are the character sitting art-wise? Would be nice to have a spreadsheet of progress on the first post or something like that.

[exo7341]

Has there been any work on animating characters? Also- where are the character sitting art-wise? Would be nice to have a spreadsheet of progress on the first post or something like that.

FWIW, I'm currently trying to gain some experience on rigging/animating.

Using old Brute for practicing (since his motions are rather simple and few, and he's quite common foe on the other hand):


But I'm expecting my work being rather DIY-ish in the end lol

[Darkloser]

What are you using for animation and the creation of the skeleton ?

[exo7341]

What are you using for animation and the creation of the skeleton ?

It's Max. Blender's fbx export for animated skeletal meshes was waaaay too tricky when I've tried it last time... (however, it works just fine for statics).

[rapfamily4]

Anyway, did you notice monsters in Siege have more than just one weapon? Especially the Brute (Tank at the moment), which has a Rocket Launcher, A Flak Cannon and a Redeemer. This is more noticeable increasing the difficulty level: higher the skill is, more attacks the monsters have. So, beside many variations of a certain class of monster, a default one could attack in different ways depending on the difficulty level, as someone in this thread suggested a long time ago (I'm sorry, I don't remember the name).

[Rooster128]

I'd suggest The Art of Rigging book, but I think it's primarily for Maya- there's Max equivalents of everything Maya does though. In general for bipeds you probably want to use inverse kinemaics (IK) for the legs and arms, and then simple forward kinematics for finger joints (clutching) and toe joints (toe peeling). There's heel peeling too but I think that'd use IK. A lot of the magic for animation would happen in the animation trees- that work is done inside of the engine. There's a bit to it, so the KISS mentality definitely helps you here- the more simple your rig, the better. That being said- make sure you have some way of selling secondary motion (hair waving, tail wagging, dampening while landing from a jump)- you can rebake that secondary motion in your rig, or there should be a way to do it in the animtree.

I hope some of that helps- just trying to be helpful. I'd offer to help- I actually reeeeaaaaally want to help- but I have so much on my plate as it is. :P

[exo7341]

Hey Rooster128 thanks for a tip! I'll look for that book.

Here's some of my WIP: 2 anims for a Brute (both far from being perfect lol) plus some homing projectile code...

...and, as you see:


Oh, and btw... this may be my last 3d asset for a while as I won't have access to 3ds Max on my job anymore. Seems I gotta switch to something else...

[Rooster128]

It's looking good! My feedback is that the animation curves seem a bit too linear- you probably want to do some easing in / easing out or sawtooth animation curves. Also, it appears at the start/end of the walk animation the character comes back to rest at idle pose when you want him moving to anticipate the follow through- that makes the loop more seamless. I usually do this by crafting the animation longer than what I need it for for the engine, and then only baking a part of it (a complete loop, but the excess bits ensure the follow-through is there).

It does look really good. Can't wait to see that on the modern character.

I'll also add, if you have a .edu account you should be able to make an educational license on the Autodesk students site to get max or maya

[Hunterman]

Hey Rooster128 thanks for a tip! I'll look for that book.

Here's some of my WIP: 2 anims for a Brute (both far from being perfect lol) plus some homing projectile code...

...and, as you see:


Oh, and btw... this may be my last 3d asset for a while as I won't have access to 3ds Max on my job anymore. Seems I gotta switch to something else...

Not bad, the sounds made it hilarious.

[exo7341]

...
It does look really good. Can't wait to see that on the modern character.

I think some things could be modernized gradually... like making just guns first, then boots, armors and so on...

[rapfamily4]

This one is curious for test purposes! Regarding the 3D modeling program, you could try Blender if you want: it's free.

Anyway, do you think a Mercenary model could be useful in Siege? We have Speedy and Jumper placeholders at the moment, who use automatic weapons. Do you think the Mercenary could take those roles? I also think the Slith could replace the Bio Minion.

[exo7341]

This one is curious for test purposes! Regarding the 3D modeling program, you could try Blender if you want: it's free.

Anyway, do you think a Mercenary model could be useful in Siege? We have Speedy and Jumper placeholders at the moment, who use automatic weapons. Do you think the Mercenary could take those roles? I also think the Slith could replace the Bio Minion.

Actually I think Unreal monsters are very flexible in terms of Invasion-like game mechanics (many of them are even might be quite good as a playable classes too). In case of Mercenaries, machine gun/rocket launcher/melee and temporal invincibility are already good combination of feats.

[TOI-700]

Any updates on the animation exo7341? The brute animation wasn't that bad

[exo7341]

Any updates on the animation exo7341? The brute animation wasn't that bad

Yeah, as I said before I had to switch from Max to Maya... so this whole time I was learning it 'hard way' (those my Cow turrets were actually a 'by-product' of that process). Maya's handy HumanIK tool didn't worked for me because it expects your mesh to be in a T-pose (which obviously is not available in our case), so I had to create my own custom skeleton from scratch.

Currently I'm working on rigging part, and I hope to do some animation tests this week.