This Project was part of Units 5-7 of the first year on the course. Our task was to make a small video game in a group of 3 or 4. My Group was Myself, Emilee Machado and Ljay Yarrol, also known as T.E.L Tail Studios. Our plan was to make a Video Game with a animated scene at the beginning. Ljay insisted that we should do an animated scene but because of the time we had, we agreed to focus on the quality of the game and make it look appealing as possible.
The main idea of the game is to have our hero, roaming in an abandoned warehouse looking for an object, We made it look like a demo by having objects and destructibles and make the character interact with them to show the potential of the game. The objects we would have would suit a warehouse environment i.e Barrels, Debris, broken items etc. The Hero would have combat animations and can be used to hit objects and make them react to the actions of the character.
This page will discuss my input on this project.
Character
We decided to make a superhero with a costume inspired by spiderman and the winter soldier. His name is The Red Bandit, A russian hero that wears the soviet star on his chest, with abnormal strength and enhanced combat ability.
Here is the Concept Art and Character Profile: (Concept art made by LJay)
Character Profile (Concept Art By LJay)
I sculpted the character in Zbrush and textured it using Ljay's concept. Emilee was given the role of sculpting the character,but ran into an issue which could've been fixed easily in hindsight, But because of the lack of knowledge with the software, I took it upon myself to redo The Red Bandit in Zbrush. I ran into issues with the hands because i never sculpted hands before and It was first time I really used Zbrush. Overall we were happy with the outcome and we agreed to rig and animate using this character. The Final model had 20k polygons and had 1024 textures, because there wasn't a lot of detail to export.
Here is the Final Model Of Red Bandit:
Final Model Rendered with Toon Shader
Assets
We all had input on the assets in the game. It took us about 2 weeks to get the models ready to be put in the game, including all the textures.
Ljay modelled:
The Jewel Stand
The Jewel
Crates from Madagascar
Shipment Crates
Girders
Support Pillars
A red cushion for the jewel
A Shelf
Ljay modeled a lot of things but most of them couldn't make it into the game because they didn't match other assets modelled and didn't look right, but of course the assets that looked good were put into the game.
Emilee modelled:
Computer Monitor
A clipboard
Paper
Pipes
A container
I modelled:
Debris
Rock piles
Barrels
Tarp
Cardboard boxes
Flattened Cardboard
Wooden Boxes
Pallets
Rack
Here is a Gallery of the Assets I Have Modelled:
Title Sequence made in After Effects
I made the title sequence using After effects, we did this to start the game with a cool opening, that can intrigue the audience into playing and gain interest to The Red Bandit. This was very easy to do and was put into the game via a gamode setting, This lets you import a video sequence that can play at the beginning of the game, this was unskippable so the game could be introduced properly, rather than the title screen that just has the start button on it.
Rigging and animation in Maya and Mixamo and Programming in UE4
The rigging and animations were done through Mixamo, but the animations had to be blended together in order to work well with the keybinds, The animation tweaking was done in maya using blend layers and retargeting. This was done for the Idle, walk, run, jump, kick and punch. I built the level in Unreal Engine, the Warehouse was modelled by Emilee and Ljay. Once everything was placed and set up, I built the collisions for the Warehouse so the character doesn't fall through the floor. The Character had to be programmed to respond correctly with the keybinds I had to add for combat and jumping. It was fairly simple, but the animation bled shapes and the animation blueprints were a bit difficult to do, Once the Character was completed, the gameplay with it was running really well, but the animations were a bit choppy, but it was the first time I used Unreal for a Decent game.