Unity: Whats Good Whats Not?

When we first came together as a collective we conducted several tests exporting our maya assets and importing them into the unity game engine. We found difficulty however in doing so, some of the assets we had created appeared transparent when imported from maya to unity. So we had to search through are assets and find A, which ones were essential to the visual aspects of our game and B, which assets would actually translate from maya to unity.

I also began conducting my own experiments with the unity interface, getting a better sense of what everything was and wither or not it could be implemented into our game level. After briefly looking at a couple of youtube videos on game level design in unity. I discovered that it is actually possible to design a terrain within the game engine itself. Discussing this with the rest of the group I decided it would be more successful to create a new terrain within unity but still importing the necessary assets from maya. The group agreed and I was appointed with the additional responsibility of developing the terrain.

Research/Reference Images

 I wanted to develop the game level as much as possible so I began to conduct research, developing a mood board helped to narrow down on the design. I also focused my research on different reference images. I found a lot of visual support from a variety of different medias, in particular; Borderlands 1&2, Book of Eli and Valkyria Chronicles.

I found the openings in the buildings interesting and feel its definitely something I will experiment with.

A screenshot from the playstation 2 game 'Valkayrie Chronicles'. A close depiction to what I had in mind for our level design. The crumbling remains of an ancient civilisation engulfed by sand and uneven terrain.  

The two previous screenshots are from playstation 3 game 'Borderlands 2', I feel are character design shares many relations too Borderlands characters. So I had a look at the aesthetic of there level designs. If i have the time I would like to develop the textures to resemble those of 'Borderlands 2'

Playstation 2 'Valkayrie Chronicles' I found the surrounding dust clouds inspiring and will look to incorporate a particle effect to our own level, if I know how.... 

Simple yet affective, the use of several duplicated rocks rescaled and slightly tweaked from one another to generate this look. Something I'll dabble into. 

I was attracted to the shape of the ruins but not only that, the scale is an important aspect to the ruins.

Introduction

Are first plan of action was to develop a general plan of what game we wanted to create and as a result what personal outcomes as well. We elected on creating a third person shooting tutorial level with Anthony S character as the protagonist. The player will have to shot target boards as they pop up and out of different locations, before the targets time out and drop back down.

We developed a showreal to present are work to groups of coders from the different class. This was almost like an interview to get an understanding of what both parties wanted from our art and their scripts. We had a good reception from several groups and we recorded their details and small notes to remind us of who they were and what they wanted from their personal out comes.

Once we decided on the group we wanted to collaborate with (Danius). Everyone within the group was appointed a designated role he had to accomplish in order to develop a practical game. I was appointed the role of level designer. This includes mapping out the level the using unity, modelling assets for the level with maya and then finally importing all the created assets from maya into unity.

Ogre Run cycle

Keyframed Character Idle

Here is the idle animation for the NPC character that will be imported into the scene, for the time being, this animation still needs more inbetweens.

Depending on the projects progression, I might continue in creating inbetweens for this character, or even use another, but again that is just a possible route to take.

Initial referencing

To begin with I made a video reference of the idle (using myself) just to make the creation of the idle a fluid process.

However, I did find that due to the length of the initial video the idle would end up looking rather stiff, so I broke down the video so as to make the character movement look more natural.

Using stills converted from the video reference I began animating TJ's character,

Introduction

For the creation of the game level, my role within the team was to create an idle animation for TJ's game character. Due to my role being focused mainly on character animation, I found working through it rather simple. As with most game levels, there won't be a large amount of focus on NPC's and their movements, however it does add to the entire scene - so my aim was to create a 60 second clip.

Troll Animation pt. 3

The reloading animation was the most challenging of the three assigned. As the Troll was holding both revolvers in its hands I had to come up with an idea that made the gamer assume that the guns were being reloaded in one motion. As it was a pair of revolvers that the Troll was using, I animated the barrels flip outwards as he quickly brought his hands to his waist and gave the impression of some sort of reloading motion before bringing back up his arms and re-flipping the barrels into the guns. Just like “the draw” animation, synchronisation was key because the gamer would want the reloading motion to be as fast as possible but not so fast as to loose its detail.

Troll Animation pt. 2

The gunshots for each arm weren’t that difficult. The main area that I tried to emphasise on was the recoil caused each time the Troll fired its guns. Movement in the elbow and shoulder joints were imperative in gaining the desired look, therefore they were the areas I put the most effort into. In regards to each arms animation, I tried my best to synchronise the movements with one another to avoid any suspicious errors but at the same time not mimic the two animations exactly identically.

Troll Animation pt. 1

Working alongside the sketches I had done, I started animating the Trolls first motion, (the Draw). As the model had the trolls revolver holsters on its back the animation would have to be it reaching behind in order to draw it guns. As a group we had also discussed on changing the camera angle within Unity to an over the shoulder shot once the Troll drew his guns, the gamer than controlled the aim and shoot through an eye level view. With the draw animation I tried to keep it as fluent as possible, which came through animating with the Troll already holding his guns. This way I could specifically concentrate on how his hands and arms would naturally move. Danius (coding group leader) assured me that he could make certain objects disappear while working in Unity so having the guns attached to the hands was easily amendable.

 

Troll Animation Prep

As the project developed the group decided on switching from first person camera view to a third person shooter. This way the gamer would see all of the characters movements from moving in all directions to aiming and shooting his twin revolvers. This being the case it involved far more animation time and therefore we split some of the animations between two people and worked are way from there.

I took on the responsibility of animating the trolls gun draw, shooting both guns and reloading both guns. As the Troll was not my own model, it required me taking the time to get use to the mesh and all the individual joints that it had applied to its features (guns, sword, brackets ect).

I find that having reference images always helps when animating and therefore I drew out rough movement sketches to help give me an idea of the sort of motions the Troll would use. 

Target Development

The next step was to test how my outcome would work within the games engine, so I exported the target from Maya as a FBX and brought it into Unity. As an FBX file the target should have taken all the animations along with the model however I encountered my first setback were Unity didn’t read the shatter effect that I worked so hard to create in Maya.

To resolve this problem I was to revert back to Maya and rebuild a new board, without any N Dynamic animations this time. To build the new board I mimicked the shape of the previous version however this time I used the cut face tool to split the board into however many pieces I thought seemed appropriate (these being the amount of times the board will beak apart each time it is shot at). With this model now imported into Unity as a separate object to the rest of the target, I could monitor its animation using physics within Unity to create a similar shatter effect, which was how I resolved the shatter effect problem.      

 

First Target

Without wasting any time I got cracking on strait away starting with a design.  

Once I had confirmed on the look I was going for, I started to create the mesh in Maya bearing in mind the animations that I would have to apply to it later. When I was happy with the outcome of the model I had built I combined the relevant pieces together and gave the base a joint so I would be able to easily tilt the target board up and down as if it was running on a pivot. When it came to animating the shatter effect that would be caused each time the player shot the board, I wasn’t quite sure on how to go about getting the desired look. I than researched the idea online and found a Maya N Dynamics tutorial (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vUmUReuPTU), which I followed to produce the flow I wanted which I think, worked quite well.      

Introduction

After meeting our coding group leader (Danius) and discussing what he’s specific area of talent was, we than proceeded to show him the Team Outlaws game designs (characters and scenes). With the distinctive look that our assets had, it did not take long before deciding what sort of game we would like to create. Following a brief discussion we had all agreed on creating a first person beta testing shooter, keeping in mind the workload we had, and the Unity side coding capabilities.   

We than proceeded to delegate our individual job roles with each other, were I took on the responsibility of building and animating the target range boards that the player will be shooting at in the game.