Animation ReportIntroduction

Animation is the process of a creating a fluid motion by means of multiple sequences of images to create the illusion of movement. The project I was assigned is to create a scene that showcases these sequences and add game engine physics to them. The animation was generated in blender and imported into unity game engine. There are several steps in order to create this animation, they are;

· Rigging - Is the addition of armature to a 3d model in order to manipulate movement.

· Animation clip creation – Is the creation of the animation sequences.

· Importing into the game engine i.e. Unity

From there the project will take shape, with the addition of artificial intelligence, sound effects and scripts to bring the character to life.

Project TimelineBlender2Rigging2Clip Creation3Unity4Scene4Scripting4Particle System6Sound Effects6Artificial Intelligence7

Blender

Blender is an open source animation studio. It allows the creation of 3d animation from modelling, rigging to simulations. For this project blender will be used to rig 3d models, create various action animations and simulate them before exporting the animations to the game engine.

Rigging

Rigging is the skeleton of 3d mesh. Compromised of bones and joints similar to an actual skeleton, which can be used to manipulate the character to pose in certain positions during a key - frame. These positions are then sequenced to create the illusion of life. For this project I had to rig two different characters, a human and a non-human. These are my rigs;

This was my first 3d mesh to be rigged, from the image its clear to a skeletal structure in the model. Consisting of the following

· Head & Neck

· Shoulder blades

· Upper & Lower arms

· Hands

· Spine

· Thighs

· Knees

· Feet

The second rig is of a dog. Again a skeletal structure is visible, consisting of

· Head

· Spine

· Upper & Lower Legs

· Tail

I chose to add four bones to the tail to allow more freedom of movement as a wagging tail is a great idle pose for a dog.

Clip Creation

Clip creation is the process of posing a mesh with a digital skeleton into various positions within a sequence to best simulate movement. This is done by posing a character and saving it to a key frame within blender. These key frames allow a timeline to be generated between poses to create a cycle. In the project I use various different simulations, from an idle motion to running.

The image shows the character mid stride during a run cycle. This process was difficult to complete as many joints are moving simultaneously during the movement. From the right arm extending when the left leg is elevating to the right leg dragging behind as the left arm sways backwards. This process incorporates four different limbs moving to create a realistic feel of extension of the body mid stride.

The walk cycle was also very difficult and exceedingly hard to get right. Similar to the run cycle it incorporated four limbs moving in different directions. The hardest aspect was determining the extension of the knees and the placement of the ball of the foot when it impacted the ground. Just like the run cycle the right arm and left leg would extend in unison and vice versa the left arm and right leg.

Video Links

Run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jg4LN1uByKs

Walk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_K1SOdk0p8

Idle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnqcKEibVqY

Dog – Idle - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2urFElFXmzY

UnityScene

The scene created is based off Portal. The textures used are the same used in the game. I wanted to create an adventure map inspired by the game, however with difficulties related to the colliders of the models and game objects I found it hard to implement.

The use of box colliders with the model was not clearly provided in some tutorial videos I studied when working on the project. One solution I found was to give each limb a box collider instead of the entire model as shown below.

This allowed me to add a rigid-body to the overall model without the character falling through the terrain. With this concept I was able to provide an obstacle course for the character, however there still remained collision aspects which were unforeseen.

Movement Cycles

The movement cycles are Run, Walk and Jump. As seen in the script below each key represents the animation being played, as well as when particle system is launched. The jumping movement I found more difficult of the three to implement, as I needed a stationary position and a jump event, each with their own animations and effects.

Walk - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FJosmAWBxbs

Run - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H-mvtUEGLRQ

Jump - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifj_5_5GBQI

Particle System

When creating the particle system there were a few avenues I could have explored. I originally had dust emanating from the feet of the character when running but I found the particle collision when the character landing on the ground more visually pleasing. Although not using meta channels as specified I found the lack of online descriptions worrying as I had presumed wrongly the addition of particle system outside of the animation was the correct method to follow.

Particle Video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QvD-I5nYK6g

Sound Effects

Similar to the particle system, with a lack of online description of meta-channels I found an alternative method of sound effects for unity. Within my AI script for the dog character, I added the sound effect within an if statement that determines the distance of the player to the NPC. When the player is in range of the NPC, the dog will bark repeatedly at the user. The audio clip was downloaded from an online resource website.

Audio Effect - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WBdYI-MtDFY

Artificial Intelligence

For the AI, I decided to incorporate “waypoint follow intelligence” to the NPC dog. When the player is outside a magnitude of less the 30 the dog will follow empty game objects known as waypoints. However when the player encroaches upon the dog to a specified distance the current waypoint to follow gets retargeted to the player but only if he remains within that distance.

AI - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwWVZc88bR4