sprint 5

This sprint I hit the ground running with animations as my goal was to have the heavy and light body models done by the end of this sprint. At the beginning I just had one more animation of the heavy body model to finish so i tried to get through that as quick as possible to be able to move on to the light body model. The last heavy body animation was a turning left or right movement. This involved basically remaking the walk cycle but having the feet land to the side of where they originally started. The only problem I ran into for this one is the timing of the feet because it doesn't nicely line up into a cycle but with a little bit of careful offsetting it looks nice.  

 

To start off the light body I got right into the turning animation using what I had learned from the previous one. This one ended up a lot smoother than the first one and I think it is because bipedal movement  is easier for me to imagine, especially in a cycle format. I tried to match this to the character by baking it a little quicker and more jumpy.

Next I have a simple idle animation for the light body model. Because we are splitting the animations of the top half and the bottom half, this idle animation really just ends up being a simple sway movement to match with the more exaugurated upper body idle. The only challenge I had with this animation was editing the very subtle curves that were made which took a second to get used to.

After I have a backwards movement that is sort of a jogging backpedal. This animation took me a couple of tries which I didn't expect. For the backwards walk of the heavy body model I basically just reversed the exact frames of the forward movement, but because of the speed and supposed weight of the light body it is significantly different from the forwards movement.

Next is the shooting animation for the upper body of the model. The main focus during this process was making the timing of the shots match the pace at which the enemy ai shoots in the game. After a little trial and error I made one that matches the firing rate that we have currently and can be changed easily in the future if necessary. 

For the last upper body animation I made a simple idle. This needed to match any of the lower body movements so its sort of subtle but it also matches with the lower body idle to make a clean full body idle movement. Overall this was easy to make it the way I wanted which was a nice break between harder animations.

next I worked on a strafe animation to be used by the enemy to move left or right. This was easier than the backwards movement because I just started it from scratch instead of trying to base it off of the forward movement. This one also had the same issue of not lining up in a nice cycle but I ended up fixing it by making the movement for one leg take longer than the other.

Last but not least there is the forward movement. This is a simple run cycle to match with the speed of the character. Thanks to the very detailed rig made by my teammate, this was easier than it could have been. The triple jointed knees created an interesting challenge that I enjoyed tackling throughout the entire animation process.