Suburban Descent

PLAY SUBURBAN DESCENT

https://cagd.itch.io/suburban-descent

SPRINT BLOG #6

In this sprint, I moved on from modeling, and started implementing the animations into the game. I started out using the Player Model, which I had trouble at first, but later on I worked on implementing the enemies starting with the zombie and wisp.

Implementing the player animation was easy at first. However later on, it got complicated once I attempted to script the animation with fluid movements. I first imported all animations into the game and created an Animator in order to get the player to animate. Once I created both Idle and Run states in the animator, I started scripting in the player script. Luckily our programmer was done with the script, so I was able to have the liberty to use it. I even added a second script in order for the animation to fully work once the game starts. 

In order for animation script to work I had the player's rigid body divided by the number of speed of the animation. However first time I tested it out, it stayed in an idle position. I looked over to see the transition from Idle to Run only to found out the numbers were all over the place. No matter which number I replaced for the number of speed, it still wouldn't work. That was when curiosity got the best of me and decided to add zero for the number of speed. I expected the game to either stop playing or crash, but as it turned out, it works. The player was able to transition from walk and idle movement just fine. Basically what I did was that I divided by zero. Once I got the movement to work, I went to work on creating the actions for the player with no issues. 

Once I was able to work through the player animations, I moved on to working on adding the enemy animations. The only issue I ran into when implementing them were that the original prefab of both the zombies and wisps are due to the fact that they have no rigs. Without the rigs, the animation will not work. So I had to replace the prefab models with the rigged models instead. From there, I was able to implement the movements. Compared to the player animation, these have the least amount of problems and I was able to finish the zombie and wisp.

The next sprint, I planned to focused on finishing the rest of the enemies, as well as attaching weapons to the player model. 

SPRINT BLOG #5

In this sprint, I was tasked to finish animating the last remaining enemies which are the wisp and the zombie. The wisp was less challenging compared to the zombie as I had to figure out how to make the zombie more vibrant. 

Starting off with the wisp, all I need to rig are the hands and body. Because the wisp has no legs, it is best to make the animation to be both idle and walking. So I animated the wisp to be floating while also animating the hands to follow along with the body levitating. For the attack animation, it is going to be the wisp blasting energy at the player. So I animated the wisp to ready its hands in the air as if it's creating energy and put its hands outwards as if it is blasting that energy.

Just like with the player model, I rigged the zombie similar to the player. Once that is done I began animating it which for some reason a lot more difficult than the player model. For the idle animation, I first began animating the upper body to not only to look like its breathing but also waving its arm to be more animated rather than have them be stiffed. I had issued with trying to get the feet to stand normally without cutting through the floor. Because I am new to animating models, I never tried using NURBS or any tools that could make the animation more fluid. Luckily because the camera will be a top-down view, players wouldn't notice the zombie's feet going through the floor. For the walking animation, I only focused on the legs since the arms are already moving. Using the same strategy as last time, I animate each part of the legs one at a time. Only issue I ran into when animating is how slow the walk animation was, so I simply shortened the animation for a faster walk. 

Now that I am out animating and modeling, my remaining task is to implement the animations into the game. Hopefully the result would work by the end of the next sprint. 

SPRINT BLOG #4

In this sprint, I had been working on texturing the player mode and animating both the flying zombie head and rat. This sprint has been less challenging to work on as these tasks are simpler to do. However, texturing the player model seemed to be a lot challenging than I thought it would be.

First task I did was working on texturing the model. Usually when I texture a character model, I used Photoshop in order to texture. However, I went into issues when the textures doesn't match what I want. That was the reason I decided to switch over to Painter in order to get the appropriate look. However, I am not used to texturing the model this way, so this took a lot of practice in order to make it work. I first created the color of the texture first before moving onto drawing details on the model. When making the face, I find it less appealing than I thought it would be. So to fix this, I simply giving her dark lighting over the face. I then added more details to her coat and jeans as well. I tried to add details to the boot, but due to an issue with the UV, the details were disoriented. To solve this issue, I added dirt onto the boots instead. 

Texturing the model was a lot more taxing than I realize as I couldn't be able to finish model until after Spring Break. Luckily I had enough time to finish it before moving on to my next tasks. I decided to focus on animating the easier models which are the rat and the zombie head. The rat will be moving its tail to give off the vibe that it is moving. Unlike the character model which I had each rig to be connected to each model, I had to have multiple rigs to be connected in one, which is the tail. In order to not make the tail stretch due to the rig I painted weights in order for the tail to barely stretch. Then I animated the tail to give it off that it is not only wagging its tail but also felt as if it is moving. 

The last task was animating the zombie head. Now I could've just have the spinning cap to be animated, I wanted to give the head to be more alive. Originally I was planning to only rig the head and neck, but I realized later the spinning cap would end up be stretching the head and itself at the same time. So after rigging the neck, head and the spinning cap, I was able to do the animation. I first start spinning the cap, but kept it at the same position but in different degrees. After that I have the neck and head to move in a way that the neck is not only dangling, but also swaying with the head as well. 

In the next sprint, I hope to do a lot more to do than these three tasks, which will happened as I planned to start implementing the animations into the game instead of just modeling. This is not the first time I had done something like this as I did something similar on my own for a personal project.  

SPRINT BLOG #3

In this sprint, I had been working two models: the zombie and the flying zombie head. However for the rest of the sprint, I had been UVing the rest of the enemy models. 

My first model in this sprint was the flying zombie head. I wanted to lean into how a zombie head instead of just be a floating head. So I decided to model a cap with a propeller to make it both cartoonish and realistic in a way that doesn't break the player's immersion. The pole that supported the propellers was originally connected to the cap, however I decided to have the two separate in order to animate the propellers. 

The model I used for the zombie was already pre-made that I had modeled in Blender for a temporary internship. Originally it was a model of a knight so I got rid of the armor and transfer the model to Maya. It was a lot bigger than the default human in Maya so I had to size it down. Not only that there were a couple of ngons that I spotted when I first imported the model, so I had to get those fix before modeling it. To make it more zombie-like, I resized the lower arms and legs to make it look like bones as well as duplicating it for an accurate anatomy. In order to get the damaged look I also have the arms and legs interacting with the bones to look more fleshy as if they are deteriorating. 

Now that I finished modeling the enemies, for the rest of the week, I had been UVing the enemies. Starting off with the rat, I cut off around the head of the rat as well as the nose and ears. Since the model doesn't have a bottom, I was able to UV the rat's body with ease. I even have it organized so I will be able to texture the model the way I want.

The next model was the Wisp and the simple to do. I cut the body from the side so that I will be able to texture the front and back of the Wisp. I also got rid of the left hand of the Wisp so I could UV the right hand alone. That way I can UV it alone without any repetition. For an easier unfold, I added lines between the top and bottom of the hand. Originally both the fingers and palms were connected, but due to the stretching I decided to cut the fingers off.

The flying zombie head was also easy to do. All I did was separate both the zombie head and the cap, including the propeller. The cap was supposed to be whole, but due to huge amount of stretching, I had to cut it down in three pieces. One for the top, second for the top fin, and the third for the bottom fin including the bottom rims of the cap. Looking at the UV again, I made a mistake of having the neck to be separate from the head. I'll plan to fix that mistake once I reached to that point.

Unlike the three UVs that I had done, this was the longest to finish. Usually I get rid of the left or right sets of arms and legs so I could be able to UV the arms and legs I kept the finished UV'd shapes when I duplicate them. However due to the amount of changes I made to some of the arms and legs, it is more longer to UV. For the damaged arms and legs, I separate where the fleshy bits of the limbs are and place them in the right corner. As for the reason I have smaller pieces in the UV, not only are they easier for me to unfold the rest of the limbs, but also they are unnecessary to be focus on, so I planned to texture them in simple colors instead of much details. 

For the rest of the next sprint, I plan to texture the rest of the models, before moving onto rigging and animating them.  

SPRINT BLOG #2

For the past two weeks I had been working on making the animations for the player model and worked on both the rat and wisp model. For the first week, I have been working on eight animations. These animations included Idle, Run, Dash, Run, Shoot, and Hit. The two others are variants of the idle animation which were for the gun and the bat. As for the second week, I worked designing the rat and wisp model, however the animation would be created in later sprints. The animations alone had been very difficult to work on, especially for the run and hit animations.

In the past, I had been animating from Blender while also mixing my lessons from an Animation course I took three years ago. So I had been using from what I learned from Blender to animate the player models. Starting off with the Idle Animation, it was simple. All I did was moved the arm to make her more lively while also for her to move her chest up and down as if she is breathing. For the Gun and Bat Idle Animation, I simply changed the arm movements while keeping the chest movement.  As for the Run animation, I decided to animate each body parts one by one so it is more easier to recreate a running movement. For the Dash animation, it was never really an animation as it is only a still of the player model dashing. The Shoot Animation was simple to animate as all I did was move her arms slightly up and down as if she got recoiled from shooting the gun. The last and difficult animation I had done was the Bat Hit animation. The arm movements were janky as at one point, they don't follow through the swing, but instead moved in a randomized position. It also doesn't help when each hand didn't follow one another so it ended up looking like they're not grabbing the bat at all. However, by the end I managed to fix it.

So more on the simpler models, I first worked on the rat model which is simple as well. Since this model is supposed to be a horde of rats, it would be much easier to just model one and duplicate it. Unlike the player model, the rat is only made up of two parts: the body and the tail. For the body, what I did is get a side view of the rat and start building the rat from there. For the tail, I used a curve tool to create a line before having a created cylinder around the line.

Finally I worked on the Wisp model. Like the rat this was simple to design as well. However the only challenging design are the hands. Luckily the fingers would not be animated. I started off with a body and gave it a ghostly look basing off of the lead designer's concept as well. For the hands I had to look up for a reference of a claw and design it from there. 

The first week was really challenging, having to animate all eight animations. While I was able to animate them, I worried later on that some might create issues for the programmers, but I will cross that threshold when we will communicate further. The second week was luckily much easier as I had to work on simpler designs. Unlike the player model, they will not be animated right after as I have plans to first model the remaining characters before animating. 

SPRINT BLOG #1

For the game I worked on is a zombie apocalypse roguelike game where the player must survive through suburban houses in order to reach their home to save their family. I was tasked to model the main character and enemies. Originally, the plan was that another modeler would be working on some characters as well. But after looking at my work, he have me solely work on the models. In this first sprint, I have been working on modeling and rigging the character of the game. 

The character was simple as I have reused the low-poly model I created for my personal project. However, at the time, I was new to modeling and ended up noticing that I have numerous n-gons than I have considered. So I reworked some of the parts, improving of what I had. 

I added a hood, extended some parts of the body to make it look like a coat and boots, and added a tactical backpack for the player to use in dire need. The only issue I ran into is trying to align the backpack strap with the body, but otherwise the model went well.

Once I had the models covered, I UV'd the models as usual. Since I have been updating the model, the older UV wouldn't look the same, thus creating some strange stretches on the UVs. I simply updated them and layout from scratch. While the process is taxing, this was less complicated to do. Rigging however was a bit of a challenge. 

It had been a while since I rigged the model in Maya. So this took a while to get back into it again. Adding the joints to the character was easy enough. It was connecting both the joints and the parts of the model that became difficult. While they connected just fine, they didn't work well once the character moves her arm. When she does, the arm gets deformed. Once the hand moved up, the mesh of the forearm followed, deforming the shape of the model. I looked deep into the setting to notice that one of the modes was setting it up that way. Looking through the modes, I found one that was able to moved normally, creating the pose as the one from the image. 

While there were hiccups, I was able to finish up the model and rig of the character in the first sprint. Next sprint would be working on four animations of the player and creating three variants of zombies.