Helmet Designs

Since the heads are so large the helmets are going to be key in getting a lot of mileage out of a few assets. Its easy to make variations on helmets with adding spikes or horns, so I'll make a base and then make some variations. Here's an initial pass. Also not sure about the "chest" piece on the skeleton.

Weekend Update 3_29_15

This week felt a little random b/c I allowed myself to mess around and not stay 100% on task. I worked on some props and some buildings, in addition to working on my main task of getting the Skeleton enemy up and running. I didn't get around to animating the 1 handed weapon, but got other things in a nicer place. 

Here's a version 1 and 2 of the skeleton

Enemy 01

First enemy blocking. Its rigged, UV'ed, but not textured. I only did a quick thing on the eyes.

Weekend Update 3_22_15

Its been a long but fun weekend, got a lot done but spent most of the weekend at my desk... good and bad. This is the first in what I'm planning on making a weekly update video on all that's been going on that week, what got done, what I'm doing next. Also going to mirror these weekend updates on the unreal forums to get some feedback here.

Walkcycle 03

Updated the rig with the Unreal ART tools and I'm liking it. I had some annoyances from using Maya 2016 Beta but those are fixed. I'm happy with the speed of rigging and animating with the toolset. Not sure about a quadruped solution yet, maybe just a biped rig on all fours.

Walkcycle 01

Well its complete crap, LOL but I finally finished the process. I've gone back and forth never actually taking the process to completion. I've re-rigged the character, test animated but never exported! I keep stopping when I hit any wall. Like the pops in the animation are b/c of the way I used fullbodyIK and how it keys more things than I was aware of, so next time I redo this I'll start a different way.
I want to re-rig him again changing the height of the hips so the legs are longer with a lower crotch as it were.

World Machine to Unreal Engine

Explaining the Unreal 4 Landscape with World Machine integration.

Helpful Docs:
https://docs.unrealengine.com/latest/...
https://wiki.unrealengine.com/Landsca...

Sorry for the somewhat poor audio quality

Reference: Minions, Despicable Me

There is a number of sources I'm referencing in my head, not exactly the same. Minions running was something I though would be close, but I'm thinking a little more hope between steps to get more distance out of very tiny legs.

and one of the best tutorials on HumanIK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7E1OmvpbvI
audio is quiet but its good. Another one with good tips is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-7E1OmvpbvI
audio sounds distorted and low but whatevs, its also good!

Rigged HumanIK

Well after all I think the easiest thing is what has the most support and documentation. I want to know what I'm doing and reduce the blackbox as much as I can. Since HumanIK has full docs and support from the community and Autodesk I think its better than a tool with less. This hasn't been exported/imported into Unreal yet...

My problem before with my initial test was that it needs to have the arms in T pose to get the control rig to work.

Town Blocking

Starting to block in the town. I expect to re-do this for spacing etc, so its about getting comfortable with the kit, making new pieces, and trying things out.

Light house on island, kinda mixed it with a keep, so there's potentially more to do inside. That purple spot is the terrain tool brush.

Feeling things out, seeing how it will all look. There still needs to be a mage towr/rubble rains of it. Also going to populate homes outside the walls and make another set of walls further out.

Side note, getting behind on rigging the character, have to switch gears back to that.

World Map 01

I give you Westeros! Ha, no, but I felt like I was making a world like that. This is version 1, need to get Andrew's feedback, as I made a LOT of choices. Other than the obvious, 1km map size. Starting map is high-lighted but any square could be the start.

And an initial pass or Points Of Interest, just to get a very rough idea, not really even marking them as what they are yet.

World Machine, in this view does an auto LOD so I can't show the real detail level.

For example this is the starting map rendered to its resolution.

Give an idea of where the city and other POI's might go.

And to give a sense of scale, here'e the Showcase level I was messing with in the starting map. Its a little hard to connect the 2 since this view is rotated about 120 degrees.

World Machine

Spent the morning getting World Machine set up, ironing out issues with WM-Unreal on a 1 to 1 ratio... and there were a few more issues now that I only have Standard version, instead of the Pro I had at work. The issues are in WM and I sent them an email. It will be very hard to work with it in this setting configuration as it stands now.

As for the why, I love WM! I like getting a natural base for a level with the procedural elements that makes designing around them actually fun.

Lighting & Materials Update

Messed with lighting, actually re-worked the materials again. I had some my metal mask not set to 100% metal (which was originally correct btw) anyway, re-studied PBS materials and got a new understanding of roughness ranges, and I continued to tweak. 

Still working on rigging. Getting a professional level workflow and pipelines from my friend but its a bit more of an ordeal to get running... so that's on-going behind the scenes. 

trying to remove tiling from water. Color tweaks, detail, depth and shore fx are still needed.

shadows too dark b/c of incorrect static lighting settings for vegetation. 

4.7.2 update, messed with veg shader... altho the simple part, the material, is easy. I think the trick will be lighting it. As you can see the static lighting isn't right on it as static baked.  I'm sure there's a doc that says I should have checked the box, don't use static lighting or something. 

Rigging Research

Well not as exciting an update b/c I spent a lot of time rigging, test animate, throw away everything start over. I've narrowed down what I'm going to use, and most likely its HumanIK with maya. Also looking at rigging tools like The Rigging Toolbox. I want simplicity, high quality, fast reproducible results. I also don't know what HumanIK as middleware is, or if that's an option... anyway... so rigging research.