What is everyone working on? #2 Thread

IKs usually are not linked to the origin if you do this kind of animation trick as they would move with the origin but the origin stays where it is. You can of course also move the origin bone linearly forwards instead. This would work too but only if the export script doesn't export the origin bone. What I do is parenting all IK related bones to a master bone. I call this "ik.global" which by itself is attached to "ik.mover1". The origin bone then I leave alone. This way it always stays where it is not getting me in troubles with wonky export scripts. All IK solvers ( including the feet ) are then parented to ik.global and everything is fine. Made a little screenshot of one such setup ( only the first level ik-bones shown to not clutter things up ). This is now a Blender setup but the idea stays the same for all other apps. Just separate game-bones from ik-bones ( two different hierarchies with game-bones starting with "origin" and ik-bones starting with "ik.global" ) and you can do all kinds of complex animations without having to worry about positions.

Edited by: Dragonlord

Damn, I'm really stumped on thinking up of levels as I am usually stuck creating the spawn room + hallway + large "middle" area and then don't know where to go from there (unless I'm using reference images). Anyone got any suggestions on how to go about thinking up an outline for levels?

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"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."

Imo it doesnt really look like fur. Try to download new alpha or make a new one that would actually look like fur. We cant see enough muscles sculpting... I mean if this thing fly using his arms it definitely has strong muscle to support everything. 
Keep it going

maybe those would work:
Gnomonology.com

Nice alphas... but unfortunately locked. No idea why they make these "free to download if registered" crap.

Edited by: Dragonlord

Quick animation ( 1 hour) :

MrFred monsterwip video - Mod DB

I Still need to tweak some movement ( mostly the arms) and change some timing

Anyone?

Edited by: Toyoka

To coax you into paying for the other tutorials. Although, many of them appear to be very useful.

I worked on the bat a little more today.
Mainly some detailing on the face and muscle, a lot of texturing (still a lot to go), and i used two or three of those alphas to add on some fur/hair.
I'll possibley do more tonight. 

It all depends on the resources you're using.
EX: Mapping for Half-Life 2;
Play through valves maps and see how they used their models/materials and the scenarios they set up with them.
Most things in the game have a purpose.

Also, make sure you atleast draw a layout, and then box out the layout in hammer before you get really into it.

Edited by: ngs616

The simplest thing would be to extend the IK chain from the hand one more to include the shoulder, that is, if the rig contains a shoulder. If not one solution is to add a bone near the elbow and to add a Track-To type constraint to the upper arm. This way you can prevent the elbow from whirling around in an unpredictable way.

Nice skeleton, Jimi.

Reworked some stuff on the bat, redid a lot of the detailing.

Edited by: ngs616

Nice rig but too many bones in some places. Neck, Torso and Tail have too many. That's going to be a pain to animate. For that kind of actor the neck needs one at most 2 bones. Torso usually 2 maybe 3. With the tail one can argue. In my opinion though too many at the tail end. Half of them would do the trick to except of at the very tail tip to give some extra motion. That's going to keep you sane while animating

MrFred monsterwip2 video - Mod DB

I started a new whole scene without using those IK arms... I still need to animate the hands and tweak a few thing (like the arm movement) and fix the center of gravity on the player mesh when he's going backward

edit: uploaded another video with 10 frames still at the end yo stop moddb from cutting the last few frames

Edited by: MrFred

Hm.. good idea. I'll get a thread up after I come back from work

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"There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it's going to be a butterfly."