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Animated Texture Process
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Character Turn Arounds and Process
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Prop Turn Arounds and Process
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This project was imaged as "Mech Warrior" melded with "Jalopy." The game emulates the interior of an impossible machine and puts the controls at the fingers of the player. A mech powered road trip through big foot country. Winner of Outstanding Senior Award at University of Saint Francis Student Show 2019. Released on itch.io with 500 downloads, written up on PC Gamer.
"Deusimator knows that we play mech games for the almost tactile experience of piloting a giant tank-exoskeleton-robot thing." - PC Gamer The mech controls were imaged as a simulation during start up to give the player the feel of driving an automotive mecha and to build up tension. Combat transitions to Punch-Out style boxing brawl as an arcade payoff to the giant robot fantasy and catharsis. The credit sequence highlights the human effort behind bringing this project together by showing you the game through their names. Developed in Unreal Engine 4. As Project Director I coordinated departments, including: GUI design, Sound Design, Level Design, and Animation. My responsibilities included modeling, texturing, materials, rigging, programming, and game design. MAY 2018 I began learning how to use Unreal Engine 4 while pruning my "dream" design doc into a more feasible goal. I began planning department tasks and drafted a concept artist (A. David Anweiler) to provide some art direction. The aesthetic was inspired by Pascal Blanché's print work. JULY 2018 The game was in a playable state as an "alpha" version. Most of the concepts were in place. Rough project assets were bashed together as a study for the workflow I would be following for the coming months. OCTOBER 2018 Lowpoly versions of the actors were completed and rigged for animation in Autodesk Maya. I used a primary skeleton that was skinned to the mesh. IK and FK skeletons were placed along side the primary skeleton with a switch exposed for the animator to choose. Non-active controls were hidden for ease of use. The primary skeleton is influenced by Orient Constraints to allow the joints to be re-positioned by translation if needed. This allowed for some flexibility on the rigging inside of the model if need be. This was done as a precaution to the possibility of issues with the finalized models. Also be only exporting the primary skeleton with the mesh and animation files this kept the file size more manageable on these assets. With the rigs done I assigned shots to a team of animators. It was essential for animation to work while the models were being finalized to meet our deadlines. By the end of production we had 10 animators produce 72 individual "shots" that I converted into 104 animations though blending in Animation Blue Prints. NOVEMBER 2018 Lowpoly version of the mech-interior was completed. This milestone included implementing the diegetic display elements made with animated textures. Highpoly 3D models of the gauges were built in Maya. These were converted into Normal Maps. The Normal Maps were animated in After Effects and exported into an 8K sprite sheet with 64 frames of animation. The Normal Map surfaces were then textured in Substance Painter. The material was then designed to respond to player inputs to facilitate the believably of playing with the controls on this giant robot. DECEMBER 2018 Environmental prop modeling was finalized along with the characters of the monster, the pilot, and the giant robot. The rough versions of the environmental props, mech, and interior were made into low poly assets in Maya with detail sculpted using ZBrush. The monster and pilot character were entirely sculpted in ZBrush and converted into low poly assets for the game. This was my first experience at converting ZBrush objects into game usable assets. JANUARY 2019 I transferred all of the models in Substance Painter for texturing. This was my first real experience with the program and proved to be essential to keeping the pipeline moving. All of the high poly models were baked onto the low poly models. Texture maps were produced and material assembly moved into full production. The diffuse maps were produced in grey scale to act as masks for the material which was driven by the engine. In this month I was also able to create a material set that emulated Pascal Blache's art style through a dot-product function. Color schemes were adjusted at run-time based on in-game events to communicate progress to the player. FEBRUARY 2019 All art assets were moved into the Unreal Engine. Game scripts were iterated on to work with the updated assets. At this stage the process was all iteration and refinement of the of art assets and play of the game. Excess content was cut, such as ambient birds and use of the radio. MARCH 2019 Sound assets were completed by our Sound Designer (Damion Rowe) and implemented into the game. Our Graphic Designer (Vaughn Gallagher) finished logo and menu design, which I converted into our interface. Our Level Designer (Nathan Ludwig) white boxed the level layout and then completed the environment. The game was finished and submitted for release. |
Game project hosted on itch.io. Available for download.
2018 Summer progress. Game "alpha-build." Proof of production for the game development. The following year would be used to refine the art assets.
Production Rigs for Bird, Monster, Mech, Pilot, and Pylon used by the animation team.
2018 Fall progress. Game "alpha-build." Proof of production for art assets. This was the implementation of models and animated textures. During this phase were experiments with style development.
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Shapeless is the University of Saint Francis, School of Creative Arts, Animation Department studio short. It was worked on and completed by the students, a team of nearly 60 people.
Our cute little shape characters were realized with a combination of 3D Animation for the bodies and 2D Animation for their faces. Our environments were built in 3D to capture shadows and reflections then drawn over with 2D backdrops. I joined the production in the summer of 2016 as a 3D Animator. Over the course of production I assisted on the background drawing and with 2D lining/coloring. In 2017 I became the project's Technical Director. I worked with every division of our studio during this phase of production. I passed renders to the background team for hand drawing. I wrangled our 3D character rigs, including the constraints to props and assisting our character animators. I also took care of additional prop modeling to improve the dress of our characters and personality of our environments. I handled all rendering of shots from Maya, Adobe Animate, and Photoshop. Midway through production we were forced to switch render software from Mental Ray to Arnold. As a result of this transition we took pause to switch our character rendering to a Toon Shader to better unify the 3D and 2D elements. I managed the database and archives that we deposited all project files and shot exports into. I worked with our Head of Coloring (Leah Noble) in preparing shots that our 2D-asset teams needed. I worked closely with our Creative Director (Adam T. Reed) to produce additional materials later in production, and coordinated our change in rendering software in response to his art direction. I worked side by side with our Project Director (Morgan R. Mathew) to complete the show. I produced shot exports from all of our software, assisted her with shot composites, and helped produce additional shots that we needed late in production in cooperation with our Lead Animator (Emily Lane). Morgan and I completed the project with our Sound Designer (Damion Rowe) in early 2018. Shapeless has shown in the Film Festival of Columbus (2018), Great Lakes International Film Festival (2018), at the University of Saint Francis' Student Show (2018), as part of University of Saint Francis' production of the War of the Worlds (2018) to an audience of 700 FWCS Fourth Graders, and internationally at Sanctuary Cove International Film Festival (2018) in Australia. |
The various animation, renders, and masking I was responsible for - used to build the show.
My contribution to the 3D Animation in USF SOCA Film's Shapeless.
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2018 End of Production Celebration!
3D by Andrew Jacobs. 2D by Morgan R. Mathew (Project Director). |
2017 Holiday Postcard with the Shapeless Team!
3D by Andrew Jacobs. 2D by Adam T. Reed (Creative Director). |
Late in the production of our animated short Shapeless I made a little game to boost the moral of our team. Made from modified Unity TANKS! Tutorial. Adapted assets from our 3D animation into the game engine. Edited C# Game Scripts. |
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