Real-Time Plant Growth Workflow - Rigging? Blendshapes?
polycounter lvl 2
Hey crew,
So a small team and I are starting a plant cultivating game where you'll be able to make a little garden with alien plants that grow in real-time. One of the biggest technical roadblocks we're trying to figure out right now is how we could make the plant models "grow" and bloom. Our first thought was blendshapes, but having to make blendshapes for each variation of plant seems like a lot of inefficient work. Our backup solution right now would be to simply model swap the plants over time, but that's pretty counter-intuitive to the real-time growing aspect.
My experience with rigging is very limited, but would it be possible to make a rig that can be used / tweaked between plants, as well as allow room for it to bloom? Alternatively if there's maybe a different way we could make the animations I'm open to suggestions!
So a small team and I are starting a plant cultivating game where you'll be able to make a little garden with alien plants that grow in real-time. One of the biggest technical roadblocks we're trying to figure out right now is how we could make the plant models "grow" and bloom. Our first thought was blendshapes, but having to make blendshapes for each variation of plant seems like a lot of inefficient work. Our backup solution right now would be to simply model swap the plants over time, but that's pretty counter-intuitive to the real-time growing aspect.
My experience with rigging is very limited, but would it be possible to make a rig that can be used / tweaked between plants, as well as allow room for it to bloom? Alternatively if there's maybe a different way we could make the animations I'm open to suggestions!
Replies
I'd start with simply animating the scale of the model, and cross-fading between juvenile and adult plant models.
You could also scale a juvenile model, then when it gets to a certain size/age, you scale additional models on top (thicker trunk scales outwards from middle, additional branches scale up from joints, fruit scales from leaf junctions, etc.).
The Grove came up as a nice solution, it's a paid plugin for Blender. They have some nice timelapses of growth animation in their Twitter feed, might give you some ideas:
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/997189024627417088/pu/vid/640x360/-dE4BrsQkAE05UsV.mp4
https://video.twimg.com/ext_tw_video/789764842697744384/pu/vid/480x480/mcF4ry9SGi7K1Wap.mp4
I'd just make a stem, then parent some leaves to it and other stuff (or make more complex hierarchy) then just scale and keyframe everything
so it gives an illusion of growing.
Here's a quick example I made:
Although I agree with throttlekitty that the best way to do this would be to create a simple L-system that's controllable through script.
http://natureofcode.com/book/chapter-8-fractals/
Scaling animations is going to be way way way easier though.
The nice thing about shaders is that you can hit different platforms pretty easy. You mentioned maybe mobile later. Honestly that's not as easy as flicking a switch. Assets need to be built for mobile, or you need to spends lots of time down converting models.
This is a grass shader we used. It's got a bunch of options, and we can make changes without having to remodel / re-rig / reanimate, and notice how we have a couple of "Low" settings at the bottom.