Working Transformation Animation in UDK

Within these past weeks I also worked on the animations for all three forms. I also didthe implementation of the models and set-up the sequence in UDK. Thanks to all the research done last year this part went easy and without any major problems. I did had to reread some stuff and figure out again how certain things in the set -up works, especially the difference between the skeletal mesh for the animation and the skeletal MAT mesh for the morph targets.

Here below you can transformation animation working real-time in UDK

I am satisfied with the current result and glad the past 13 weeks of work have paid off showing that the pipeline and research I have done works on a more detailed/ higher polygon model.

The upcoming weeks I am finishing up the documentation and I hope to add some idle animations and perhaps a transforming back sequence. But it will depend on the amount of time I will have left.

Rigging and Skinning

It has been a month since my last update on this blog. I have been really busy over the past weeks working on creating the rigs and do the skinning for all three models. I made some minor tweaks on the colors of the models but nothing major from the previous texture blog post.

The problem that I had to overcome was that I had to crash course myself with rigging tutorials to get the hang of it again. Basically the knowledge I had had all but left me, it has been two years ago that I had to rig a character for a course. So to be able to get it all back I had to dive in and spend at least one week doing trial and error to get the rig structures done together with some minor scripting.

Luckily the skinning went a lot easier and once I had the hang of it I only spend a couple of days to get it done and another to tweak it here and there.

So here below I will show you the models in rest pose, a first animation pose and the model rigs as screenshots taken from the mayaview port in high quality textures. 

Human Form (Rest pose)

Bipedal Werewolf Form (Rest pose)

Quadruped Werewolf Form (Rest pose)

Model Rig structures

                

Human Form (Pose)

Bipedal Werewolf Form (Pose)

Quadruped Werewolf Form (Pose)

And now with all the rigging and skinning done, I also did a quick this if I could get everything to UDK and it worked. This means that in the upcoming week I will be working on the animation and creating the blendshapes and the week after that implementing everything in UDK and making it work.

Then if all is going according to plan I still have around 2 weeks to wrap up all documentation and create additional stuff before the deadline delivery of June 10th.

I hope to show some animation work in the next blog post!