Character : Flying Frog- Model & Animation, image heavy!
Hi guys, I'm currently studying game art and recently completed a character for a group work game in our course. The art style was meant to be cutesy and fun, textures were to be simple and flat, and we needed a flying character, so I concepted up this little fatty
After being given the go ahead, I sculpted & polypainted him in ZB, retopo'd in 3d coat. After that I took him to maya and rigged him up.
The major deviation from the concept was I moved his tusks from inside his mouth to outside, more like an elephant, since I'd have to make his mouth much bigger if I kept them in. That and the wing shape, I went for a more rounder look as it suited the game better.
The skinning took me a while (I'm terrible at it
) however the rigging went ok. It has a lot of custom things in it since I knew exactly what I wanted out of it before animating, for example : his belly/neck/chin fat controllers, his legs don't have a reverse foot rig on them since his feet don't touch the ground, and the eyes move via the socket instead of the ball, you'll see why in the animations.
Speaking of! (For some reason in firefox these play slow for me but in chrome they're at the right speed, no idea why).
Idle, Flying
Melee Attack, Ranged Attack
Death
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Ln-3f05vk"]Frog Animation Blending - YouTube[/ame]
Textures : 1k for body, 1k x 512 for wings, resized for here though.
Obligatory Marmy shot with wires :
I don't have any in game footage to show just yet but in a few weeks when the frog gets implemented I'll bump with a video.
Feel free to send me your crits, I'd love them. I know I have lots to improve on as a rookie artist, unfortunately I won't be able to implement the crits into this model since I've had to move on to the next task for the game, but your crits will greatly help my next character!
After being given the go ahead, I sculpted & polypainted him in ZB, retopo'd in 3d coat. After that I took him to maya and rigged him up.
The major deviation from the concept was I moved his tusks from inside his mouth to outside, more like an elephant, since I'd have to make his mouth much bigger if I kept them in. That and the wing shape, I went for a more rounder look as it suited the game better.
The skinning took me a while (I'm terrible at it
) however the rigging went ok. It has a lot of custom things in it since I knew exactly what I wanted out of it before animating, for example : his belly/neck/chin fat controllers, his legs don't have a reverse foot rig on them since his feet don't touch the ground, and the eyes move via the socket instead of the ball, you'll see why in the animations.Speaking of! (For some reason in firefox these play slow for me but in chrome they're at the right speed, no idea why).
Idle, Flying
Melee Attack, Ranged Attack
Death
Gamebryo Animation Tool, in-engine blending. 1080p fullscreen gogo 
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G0Ln-3f05vk"]Frog Animation Blending - YouTube[/ame]Textures : 1k for body, 1k x 512 for wings, resized for here though.
Obligatory Marmy shot with wires :
I don't have any in game footage to show just yet but in a few weeks when the frog gets implemented I'll bump with a video.
Feel free to send me your crits, I'd love them. I know I have lots to improve on as a rookie artist, unfortunately I won't be able to implement the crits into this model since I've had to move on to the next task for the game, but your crits will greatly help my next character!
Replies
I have to say, I looove the eye movement, particularly on the ranged attack animation (plus his almost bored expression in that one). Plenty of nice secondary motion on the extremities, too (love those feet).
I think you could push the material further, though. There's some spec, but he still strikes me as not being wet enough. A stronger spec map would help, I reckon, and also a reflection/environment map.
Ah this is due to me accidentally animating in 24fps since I'm used to animating for film, and not having enough keys to make the flapping go any faster. The wings flap on every fourth frame, if I did it any closer it ended up looking seizure enducing. This is definitely a lesson I've got to remember for next time, 30fps for games!
Oh this one I can actually fix! I just fiddled around with the exporter we're using, and got some cube mapping onto the Frog's skin, it looks much better.
Here's also a youtube clip of my frog in the engine's animation viewer (Gamebryo Engine if anyone's curious) , I'll also update the first post:
The reason I say this is because in the flaying gif, the way he flies almost looks like he's swimming, so it would be neat to bring that underwatery style back to the idle. It's pretty minor so I wouldnt waste your time fixing it but it's just something I picked out :P