Author: Yuanhang Wu

Export setting in maya.

Here I recommend exporting all directly, and nothing else needs to be set.

I can further choose in the engine whether to import elements other than polygons such as cameras, materials, animations, lights, etc.

For the export parameters of fbx, I suggest to use only the autodesk media and entertainment preset by maya.

But here you need to check the checkbox for bake animation.This will largely avoid unexpected problems.

now we comes to unity.

and here are some import setting.

Unfortunately there was a little hiccup: the size of the character was twice as large as expected. But we can fix it by setting the Scele Factor from 1 to 0.5.

Unlike other fbx, the character is humanoid, which means the skeleton mask is available on this character. Skeletal masks allow developers to blend multiple animations. For example, using a skeletal mask allows the player to look back while running forward. Because I can do it by blending the animation of running forward and turning back. There is no need to make additional animations of running and turning back.

Not only that, but the skeleton of the humanoid supports joint retargeting. Joint retargeting is to match the existing bones with the default bones of unity. The retargeted skeleton allows developers to apply the animation of other characters directly to this skeleton.

The above are all the points that need to be paid attention to in the process of importing assess from Maya into Unity.

I have used maya to complete the character skeleton.

The character skeleton also contains the hand rigging, which will allow the character to animate the grip .

In order to ensure the versatility of the bones, I still added 3 joints for the fingers.

The skeleton for the cape on the back was the last thing I added.

And the cape polygons are not merged with the body mesh. This means that the weight of the cape’s bones does not affect the body.

Then check whether the weight of each joint is ok.

Because the material of the character will be handed over to Zixuan Wang, the workflow in maya is all here.

This blog record has been several days since the last time, because I have completed most of the player build working in these few days.

I don’t use zbrush for digital sculpting, but use polygon modeling directly in maya.

My character model is the one with the hat on the left.

I removed the hat first because I could finally model the hat as a child of the head joint.

Then I used a smoothing command to increase the polygon count. Because I need to bind the character later. Limited polygon count will affect the effect of the rig.

Then it’s time to add clothing to the character.

I modeled and simulated the clothing with marvelous designer. Considering the rigging to do later, I made the costume fit the character as closely as possible.
But I left a cape behind the character. I will use the unity engine to simulate the swing of the cloak later.

Before rigging, I did some further processing on the model: I blasted the mesh under the clothes. Because if you do not delete the binding directly, the body mesh may penetrate the mesh of the clothes when the character moves. It is unacceptable for players to see pink skin through purple clothing.

My first major job was to create an in-game controllable protagonist.

The design draft of the character was given to me by Anqing Sun earlier yesterday.

It’s a pity that our game designer Anqing Sun didn’t graduate with a bachelor’s degree in art. Her art ability is relatively limited, but it is probably enough for the character design of an independent game.

So I started character modeling first.

some Game Design Updates XD

Thanks to the extremely high efficiency of our team and teachers, we completed the modification of the game design and finalized the final plan in just two days.

Our game will be a hybrid of 2D and 3D, and I’d like to explore the application of animation in hybrid images.

Below will be a reference to a similar type of game provided by Herman.

This game is called the pedestrain. This game realizes the interaction between the 3D world and the 2D world to a certain extent, but it is not enough. What we will develop is an adventure game that allows the player to travel freely between 2D and 3D worlds. This function will involve a lot of logic programming and graphics programming as well as 2d and 3d character animation.

But foBut fortunately, although I am not a senior technical artist, I successfully obtained the offer of an internship as a technical art engineer of NetEase Games in June this year through self-study on YouTube. And successfully entered the job in August for telecommuting, and just ended this summer internship on October 2 at the beginning of this month.

NetEase Games is a leadingprovider of self‐developed PC‐client and mobile games to worldwide users. During the internship, I gained a lot of knowledge and experience.

But our project is a 3D adventure game, if the player can freely shuttle between 2D and 3D scenes, we need a lot of pre-construction: the design of the protagonist, modeling, rigging, animation, and the code of the character controller that supports player control protagonist.

But fortunately there is still enough time until December 1st good ddl.

setting up project xD

There are three people in our project team. I am from 3d animation and the other two are from ma game.

here is the list.

Yuanhang Wu => MA 3D animation

Wangzi Xuan => MA Game

Anqing Sun => MA Game

After talking with David and herman, We roughly determined the size and type of the game.

Due to the 2021 TGA that just passed, the great success of the two-person formation drove us to also want to build a 3D adventure game.

Next, we will further discuss the direction and content of the project with the teacher. Anqing Sun will be mainly responsible for Game Design. Zixuan wang and I will conduct a feasibility assessment on the content and needs of the designing.

That’s ok, guys!

Let’s render them.

But just these birds and buildings, I don’t think are enough, so I added some narrative to the scene to make this video sense.

Character animation via Mixamo.

As for the video editing, it’s pretty simple, as there are only six clips in total.

Enjoy the video xD

I set the building to be visible first because I want to plan the bird’s flight path.

Next is to generate the volume from the curve. These volumes are used later to generate crowds.

Then I can generate points using pointsfromvolume nodes.

These points will be the agents’ positions we mentioned in week three.

Replacing the model of the man in the third week with the model of the pigeon gives the following effect.

Then I can export them to C4D as the alembic.

Because the crane to be imported is divided into two parts by me, I use a merge node to merge the two parts. (The merge node can connect multiple objects)

But I want the hook of the crane to move up and down.

So I used a group node to select the points to move.

Then I use a transform node to move the points selected by the group node.

But I need this hook to move up and down. So I used sin( ) to implement this function.

We all know that the value of sin is [-1,1]. And it keeps fluctuating as the axis X Increases.

The crane can now be raised and lowered over time.

Perfect! Now the crane animation is ok.

The next step is to place the cranes between the buildings. The next step is to identify the crane between the buildings. But because the structures are static, I only export the dynamic parts of the scene as an alembic, which can improve performance and reduce equipment requirements.

The next step is to add materials to the scene. This part is also what I am good at. I use the saturation of the colour to differentiate between static and dynamic objects. And in the material, I used a lot of gradients to make the highly saturated colours not look dull.

The octane renderer works well and is fast.

I used an hdr texture to enrich the sky.

Next week I will add birds to the scene.

I’m sorry I don’t have time to complete the task this week. Because I was busy doing a test for a game company this week.