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BATTLEJUICE ALCHEMIST DEVLOG
Unlocking Character Selection
Hey of us,
as you are conscious, we’re a small staff devoted to BattleJuice Alchemist. With our mixed efforts, we (that is Patrick and myself) primarily have the workload of 1 single full-time artist masking every thing from 2D and 3D work, together with modeling, texturing, and animation. Moreover, we create each asset ourselves, foregoing using marketplaces or asset shops. This poses a problem for a complete RPG, and right this moment I would prefer to make clear a magical device we use so as to add variety to our characters regardless of these constraints: animation retargeting.
Within the picture above, you see three skeletons of various sizes. Upon nearer inspection, you may discover that they are not simply scaled variations of one another however have distinct proportions. Given our restricted sources, creating particular person animations for every character is impractical. That is the place animation retargeting turns into invaluable.
Should you simply slap an animation onto a personality with out retargeting, issues can go fairly incorrect, as you may see right here (picture from the Unreal Engine wiki):
Animation retargeting in Unreal Engine is like taking dance strikes from one character and instructing them to a different with a unique physique form. It saves us loads of time by reusing animations for numerous characters, even when they do not have the very same proportions. The method includes organising a translation of actions and rotations to suit the brand new character’s construction, making certain that the animations look good on completely different in-game personas. This enables us to effectively use and share animations throughout numerous NPCs, like these two very completely different characters:
Here’s what the teeny-weeny Leprechaun appears like in-game compared to our participant character:
As we navigate the challenges of creating BattleJuice Alchemist with our lean but devoted staff, animation retargeting turned out as an important ally, permitting us to breathe life into numerous characters with out overwhelming our restricted sources. Finally, we plan to individualize animations increasingly. For instance, a large ought to stroll with extra gravity than a Leprechaun. Nevertheless, it’s stunning what number of animations work nicely, particularly from our top-down perspective, when shared. I consider it is a sensible method to our work, and it has change into certainly one of our prime directives: We should select our battles correctly by including element solely the place obligatory.
Thanks for studying and have an important weekend!
Alain
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