After the previous update, Tori and I ran into some time consuming animation difficulties on our case study. We had animations that needed to be adjusted to fit the car we’re using in the scene, and Tori needed time to set everyone up in Maya and get those bugs worked out before they made their way back to me. So most of last week was spent cleaning out the project of old animations, testing the new things Tori sent me, then cleaning them out again.
I have the car sequence nearly completed with the new characters; everyone is siting where they’re supposed to be, the animations are timed, and the user can now successfully get out of the car and move down the sidewalk with Lucille and both federal marshals individually. Making sure they stay together as a group is another challenge. The doors aren’t fully timed and animated yet because I chose to save that for a later round of tweaking. Right now, I need to get all the broadstrokes happening in the scene to make up some ground. There are a few flaws with the characters - one of the marshals has an arm that breaks and spins when opening Lucille’s door, and the walk cycle that we’re using for some reason breaks all the rig’s knees when it’s applied. A problem to solve in January; right now, I just want everything in the scene and timed.
User view exiting the car with Lucille.
This iteration has especially been testing my workflow with Tori. I think in a future iteration we need to work more closely together on the capture process for the motion, because a large portion of my time on this scene was spent just getting all of the characters in the right place at the right time. I have to divide the animations I’m given because they don’t match the audio cut for the instructions, and or the length of the drive up to the school. Creating more intentional shots with a bigger emphasis on timing and physical props might reduce some of the cleanup and issues we’ve seen this time around. The bottleneck in our skills has been frustrating, as development halted while we solved the animation issues and replaced assets.
Now that I’m moving forward, I’m working with the assets as they come to me. I began testing “encounters” with the mob and federal marshals using empty game objects in Unity to represent mob members. As the group approaches down the sidewalk, the distances from these tagged objects will be tracked. Once close enough, the objects are destroyed and the federal marshal reacts by telling the mob member to back off. This can be useful in setting up encounters throughout the scene once the mob members are actually in place.
Test encounter with empty game object. Also visible: the leg deformation with the Federal Marshal walk cycle.
Moving Forward
This is technically the last week of development for this project and in terms of goals, I’m still back in Week 2. I am prioritizing the completion of the sidewalk locomotion with the group, the encounter at the end with the state official, and the mob placement by the end of the week. A reach goal would be to spend time integrating audio with the scene, assuming I can get all the assets in. Visual polish and environment development will have to wait until cleanup time in January; for now, a functional scene for the user is all I’m looking for.