Cosmic Combat

For this project, I worked as a technical animator on a 50+ team to bridge the gap between all disciplines to get animations looking and feeling good in-engine. When the project began, almost nobody else on the team knew anything about rigging or animating for games, or how any of these systems would intertwine with gameplay. And while I did have my fair share of knowledge, there were still a few gaps on how things might work out.

Getting Things Right

When starting the project, the team looked into how Maya or Blender rigs might be compatible with Unreal. We learned that the deformation bones should be separated from the control rig, yet still constrained in our DCC of choice, as only the deform bones will be transferred. One of our biggest breakthroughs of the time was figuring out how to transfer scale into Unreal by using a flat deformation hierarchy.

Running with this, and with the experience I was learning about game animation from other projects (see [Unity Combat System] and [Chronostasis]), I put together a document for our other animators and riggers to follow as we transitioned over to making custom assets. We wanted things to look and feel snappy for players, and for no work to go unused.

Final Results

While the game may be on the simpler side, a lot of work went into making sure every character was on track for being Unreal ready. But once the rigs were set up and characters had their full animation sets completed, getting things hooked up in game took no longer than a few hours, and it was a surprising joy to hear everyone's relief and excitement for seeing these creatures move about in game for the first time.

Gabriel Salomone