Final Delivery

 Contributions

    Fixed conveyor parts

    Fixed screen on buttons

    Finalized bad animation

Sprint #5 Delivery

 Contributions

    Imported low poly Victor model

    Moved ending room

    Changed font colors on credits

    

    Flickered camera on robot jump

    

    Fixed parts on printer being too high

    More polish on bad ending animation

    Created leaver pull animation

    Helped implement screens

Sprint #4

 Contributions

    Added a wrench to Victor's hand

    Hand pose passes on Victor

    Cleaned robot chest skin weighting

    Adjusted robot resting pose to not break arm

    Fixed material on printed parts

    Updated robot bad ending animation

    Better timed bad ending animations

    Fixed radio physically breaking

*note - the video is not the current of the sprint, but has all of my contributions (I just wanted to record earlier before others put their contributions in)

Sprint #3 Delivery

 Contributions

    Disabled sound of red light on endings

    Targeted Victor and robot to look/aim at player's head when needed

    Faded ending on good ending

    Imported low poly bad legs

    Imported low poly torso

    Prepared new control panel geo for integration

    Victor Bad Ending time adjustment

    Polished animations :  

        Victor's opening idle animation

        Victor's opening scene animation

        Victor's mumble animations (3 of them)

        Victor Ending Start animation

        Victor Turn and Idle animation

Sprint #2 Delivery

 Contributions

    Modified arm pose on conveyor belt

    Added flip open panel to replicator door that closes after grabbing a part

    Fixed robot not aiming at player on bad ending

    Added a proxy lever instead of the generator button

    Better paired Victor and Robot animations in bad ending

    Tweaked Beginning Victor animation preparing to clean it up

Action

     Pass 3: All in spline pass. Looking forward, I need to "follow the line of action" as well as clean up the keyframes for easier editing.

    Pass 2: Got half way through the spline pass. Not to my surprise, I had a lot of rotation issues (gimble locks). 

    Pass 1: This is designed to have 2 people interacting, so what better way than to have 2 characters fighting each other! I'm pretty excited about this animation. Blocking it in was all right, but I believe I have too many and the multiple flips are going to be troublesome later. How bad can that be..?

Sprint #1 Delivery

    On our week back from break, our goal was to get everything into engine that is needed for the final product, minus polish. Seeing as the animation was in there prior to this, I spent the time working on the bad ending animation and tried to figure out how to get the robot to jump at the player's location no matter where they were.

Contributions

    

    Bad ending animation spline pass on robot

    Implemented good legs and good arms as their game res models

    Adjusted materials showing on mesh

Interm Review 4

Interm Review 3

Sprint 7

     This week was aimed to get all 'C level' assets into the game and provide a build for people to test outside of FIEA. This week, I focused on getting all the new limbs into engine. Maya's reference helped a lot with that.

Contributions

    Rearranged buttons again...and again...

    Got rid of some unneeded print strings

    Implemented Bad Head geometry and skin weighting

    Disabled player movement on endings

    

    Teleported player to room with credits after bad ending

    Bad Ending animation block out

    Tweaked dialogue to further prevent overlap

    Implemented proxy limbs including all the bads, neutrals, and goods

    applied new materials to limbs (done after video was taken)

    tweaked visual effect for switch (done after video was taken)

Sprint #6 Delivery

This week I got to work in the backlines by streamlining the animations for preparation to work on them. I tweaked a lot of the Maya folders and condensed the endings to rely on only one animation per ending. Hopefully next week I can get to work on the bad ending for the robot

Contributions

    Tweaked limb orientation on the conveyor belt

    Tweaked Victor ambient dialogue frequency (made him talk less)

    Combined and referenced Robot endings per version of ending in Maya for easier editing

    Added world parenting to arm on robot rig in Maya

    Added first key frame to each of the endings so they sync up with the animation before the split

    Set up good animation ending in blueprints to let the new animation play properly

    Opened replicator door when parts pass through it

Dialogue

    Pass 7: Final pass before industry review. Changed up a few of the main poses, mainly the ending pose, and smoothened the walking. Also added more expressions and better mouth shapes.

    Pass 6: Cleaned up a lot of the in-betweens and added more of the viewer's head moving to make it clearer that they are the one talking in the beginning.

    Pass 5: Adjusted some of the timing and exaggeration of the expressions - made some smaller while others bigger.

    Pass 4: This week was spline week and background work. I used a projection mapping to get the background. It took a while to get the spline looking proper, and it still has a few issues, but looks fine otherwise. I had to change a few of the poses to make it feel more natural in spline.

    Pass 3: More block-outs and in-betweens. 

    Pass 2: This week, I focused on expression and nailing the base movements for the dialogue. I got rid of the viewer walking as well as lessened the camera movement to make it less jarring. For the character, I messed with the eyes a bit and changed some gestures. Aiming next week to put it into spline.

    Pass 1: I was talked out of using a Heavy rig due to it not having the facial rigs I needed, and boy do I not regret it. This ninja rig is fantastic! This pass was the foundations and blocking out of the movements. I believe I blocked in too much of the mouth movement, as apparently you 'swallow words' and thus don't go through every mouth syllable.

Sprint #5 Delivery

This sprint, I focused on getting our new animator up to speed and working on back end preparations to allow for 2 animators to work on the characters. Hopefully, by setting up the robot files properly, the new mesh will be implemented smoothly.
We also created an Unreal Engine Forum here: https://forums.unrealengine.com/t/fieavr-cyberstein/505137

Contributions

    Changed hand material

    Closed printer when the ending starts

    Finally fixed time rate so the animation and dialogue sync regardless of framerate

    Helped new animator get adjusted to our project

    Set up Maya files to let the animators (me and 1 new one) work on animations at the same time

    Rearranged robot files to prepare it to get its proper meshes

Sprint #4 Delivery, Asset/Feature Complete

    This sprint's focus was to get every asset into engine and functional. As such, all of Victor's animations are in engine at a rough level waiting to be cleaned up and finalized. The Robot's animations are in and key posed to interact with Victor in the endings. All of which are playing correctly when they are needed to play. I can't seem to figure out timing issues - VR seems to delay differently than non VR and I'm unsure of how to fix it.

Contributions:

    Adjusted heads to no longer glow before they are interactable

    Sound and animation retiming

    Edited robot bad animation

    Edited Victor animation during ending start to not run through the far wall (the table will need to be adjusted to give him room to move

Exaggeration Animation

Pass 8: Adjustments to the flip and timing of the ball returning.

Pass 7: Added some squash and stretch to the ball and adjusted flip timing and hitting the ground.

Pass 6: Adjusted Scout's position before the swing to better reflect hitting the ball forward.

Pass 5: Minor adjustments to timing and positioning.

Pass 4: I decided to add a flip to better sell the exaggeration of the assignment. I also adjusted the background to be less saturated.

Pass 3: This week I aimed to convert the stepped animation to splined. Industry review is coming up this week, and I want to show this in that.

Pass 2: Focused on adding more breakdowns and movement. The flip at the end is going to need more attention before I can spline the animation to make it smoother. Capstone Vertical Slice was this week, so there wasn't much improvement from the first.

Pass 1: I want to try to start my animation process like 2D animators do -- with key frames and breakdowns rather than the individual joint key framing I have been doing. That way, I can control individual poses much easier.

Sprint #3 Delivery, Sound & VFX

This sprint was focusing on sound and visual effects, though since we had most of them already laid out, I set to work on getting mocap into engine among other tweaks and adjustments.

Contributions:

    Made the body parts move on a conveyor belt when the print button is pressed

    Adjusted button layout to open after beginning dialogue and to make it easier to understand

    Moved heads away from player until arms and legs are attached

    Added and retimed Victor's mocap into the experience

    Made a fast forward button affect global speed to quicken the repetitiveness in multiple playthroughs

    Fitted the text properly on the subtitle tablet

    Created a trash can to get rid of unwanted arms and legs

Sprint #2 Delivery, Beginning/Middle/End Part II

     This week we focused on finishing the beginning, middle, and end of the experience. You begin with the radio giving a bit of exposition, then Victor responding to your arrival. Then the middle section it creating the robot. Then the ending is watching one of the 3 endings play out (Victor will be Mocapped this week, thus he does not sync up with the animation yet)

Contributions:

    Adjusting animation key poses for the robot's endings

    Setting up an appointment to record Mocap for Victor

    The Ending Credits Menu

Sprint #1 Delivery, Beginning/Middle/End, Part I

 This week we were tasked to create a definite beginning, middle, and end of our Cyberstein game.

Contributions:

    Fade in to level.

    Dialogue implementation that plays with a sound once key events are triggered.

    Made a tablet that writes subtitles with the dialogue (note: wrapping and graphical errors will be fixed as the dialogue is finalized).

    Sequenced animations (key poses for the time being) to play with certain dialogue for the robot in the good and bad endings (note: they are not accurate to the level since it was recently changed).

    Swapped player model to have the ones with hands.

    Fade out and exit level once an ending has concluded.

Quadruped Animation

    Pass 8: Relaxed neck, edited feet/arm impact on ground, changed tail in the air, and removed clouds.

    Pass 7: Final, final touches, fixed tail hitch when landing and added camera movement.

    Pass 6: Final touches, smoothened out the tail a bit more.

    Pass 5: I was given extra time to make this animation more polish and tweaks. I spent this time working on the tail and added cloud shadows. I think the tail came out pretty good after a bit of fiddling.

    Pass 4: Final cleanups and added rotation to show it off. I needed to repeat the animation twice. It was a bit difficult getting all of the rigs to show so I can duplicate them. Also, the rig fails to send to Unreal. In future animations, I hope to use a rig that I can put into UE5 to show off and doesn't have show/hide rigs or find a way to select all the rigs (those shown and hidden).

    Pass 3: A bit of cleaning up and polishing. Process is going smooth enough, but I am honestly loosing inspiration and patience as I move the foot for the umpteenth time as I adjust other things, as they are all linked together (especially the transition between FK and IK).

    Pass 2: Retargeting textures is a pain and repetitive when switching computer. I focused on the flight and landing this time around and overall slowed the animation down.

    Pass 1: I spent a bit of time over Christmas break working on this. Almost gave me a heart attack when I overrode keyframes when trying to retime my animation because I couldn't select all rigs at once and didn't notice it until it was too late. Now I am a firm believer in incremental saving. I then realized I had a layer of rigs in the display panel of Maya, so I can select all objects in there (sigh of relief). And of course all this happened the night before...

 

Interm Review 2

This is a showcase of some of my work I made in the second half of the first semester at FIEA. These took around 4 weeks each to make, tweak, and adjust.