New custom monster? [DISCONTINUED]

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Thanks What school if I may ask? Are there public universities in Sweden that have Game development related courses or is it just private schools? Here in germany you have almost no choice but to go to a private school... It really sucks. Well, our government is known for being kinda hostile towards games in general, so yeah ^^ And considering you already seem to know a lot about 3D modeling, you'll probably make another great leap forward in those 2 years. I didn't know anything about all that 3D stuff 2 years ago...

[Traggey]

Thanks What school if I may ask? Are there public universities in Sweden that have Game development related courses or is it just private schools? Here in germany you have almost no choice but to go to a private school... It really sucks. Well, our government is known for being kinda hostile towards games in general, so yeah ^^ And considering you already seem to know a lot about 3D modeling, you'll probably make another great leap forward in those 2 years. I didn't know anything about all that 3D stuff 2 years ago...

FutureGames, stockholm. It's a private school but there are a few public places here in sweden that I know off actually, however none of them seem to be covering the 3D parts all that well.

Yeah I'm super excited for these 2 years, it's going to be super fantastic getting some proper education within the subject and also picking up a new program to look fancy on the list.

[neocrawler]

PLEASE! looks good

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PLEASE , looks great

[Obliviator27]

*wall of text pertaining to animations*

Awesome. I got this information, and I appreciate the feedback! Truth of the matter is that I haven't been doing animations for nearly as long as you have been, so it's good to get a "veteran" opinion.
Started animating a few months ago with no prior experience.
Animation controls aren't supported by the HPL engine, so it's strictly joint rotation(to my knowledge, at least) and sometimes the animations don't import as smoothly as I would like them to. Ah well.

I've carefully read your post and followed your advice, and the animations themselves have a couple more tweaks to go through before they're as I would like them to be. Then, sounds need to be recorded and added, and the forum will have a new monster. Yay. :3

[Potato]

I'm really liking this little guy so far, kinda want to see how he'll be implemented in any custom stories or TCs. His animations are looking very nice, good work Obliviator. If I could make a suggestion Traggey, when you update the textures, I'd give his body more of the dusty brownish look seen in your initial concept art, as opposed to the somewhat red-ish brown tone he has in the video, it might just be the lighting or me though. I can't wait to see this guy in action though.

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Hey, for only a few months of experience they're really awesome already! (And I'm always happy if I can help someone - even though I'm far from being a veteran myself )

Animation controls aren't supported by the HPL engine, so it's strictly joint rotation(to my knowledge, at least) and sometimes the animations don't import as smoothly as I would like them to. Ah well.

Oh, don't worry, they don't need to be supported, you'd still only export joint rotation (and translation maybe but that should work too). You see, it's often easier not to animate joints or IK handles directly, but instead to create a control rig around them, consisting of simple Circles or Locators or whatever that influence the joints via constraints. (Orient constraint, Parent constraint or Point constraint in Maya, but I'm sure similar functions can be found in any 3D program) These aren't exported, they're just there to make life easier for the animator
Depending on how you export the animation you might need to bake the animation onto the joints before exporting though (select all joints, then edit>keys>bake simulation if you're in Maya)...


Having a control rig can make animating a lot easier because the controls are easier to select in the viewport (especially stuff like fingers etc), you can have one control that drives the movement of many joints and you can do neat stuff with driven keys and custom attributes and whatnot. My giant Bird for example has one big control for each wing with attributes like "fold wing" or "bend feathers" so I don't have to select and rotate each of the 30
or so joints in it by hand anymore. (which would be a pain to do ^^)
Its definitely more complicated at first to make a control rig instead of animating the joints directly, but it really helps in the long term. (Its also a bit safer, because joints are more prone to bugs and weirdnesses than NURBs curves, so if your animation is on those you can just replace the buggy joints with new ones if something goes wrong and re-do the constraints.)

Anyway, controls or not, baking the animation could also help you if your animation exports weirdly, because it means that Maya puts a key on every frame so the engine doesn't need to interpret any curves and tangents anymore. (Don't forget to make a backup of your file first, editing a baked animation is painful ) I don't know anything about HPL engine though, so I don't know if it would help... Might be worth a try though.

[Vyzor]

I enjoyed watching your work Hirnwirbel, this so called wall of text is helping me adding more detail to my animations since am kinda new to this stuff

[candlejack131]

so...is this dead?

[Traggey]

It's not dead, my computer is. Will finish this as soon as I get it back.

[Obsidiaguy]

I hope you didn't have any zombie games installed, otherwise your computer could be undead soon..

As cheesy as that may be, I laughed.

The model for the new monster is pretty damn amazing if I do say so myself. Very cool.