JULES VERNE - LES MONDES FANTASTIQUE
CHARACTER 3D DESIGN / RIGGING / ROUGH TEST ANIMATION
CHARACTER presentation - animation test
Presenting the character design, as well as a very rough animation initial test, I wanted to get the basic shapes done first, like cloth, colours, sizes and how they fit within the character’s body. A low poly was kept in mind during the whole process, although there are still some details missing from the approved concept: the sleeve cuffs, a little bit of detail added to the gun, and maybe extend the boots until it covers the leg upwards a bit better (so no skin is shown after the skirt)
There is also some extra details to be adjusted, like the thickness of the belt, and the lenght and thickness of the arms. The arms in the concept are not so long, and look a bit thicker for instance.
For the head, the low-poly ideation was kept as much as possible, but I also wanted to add some finer details (even with lower poly count) so that, even on minimalist setting, game engine shadows can still reveal the presence of a face, regardless of the face displaying other features or not (eyebrows, eye spheres, etc)
RIGGING STRUCTURE
The rig created from scratch, was focused on simplicity and versatility, it has a more standard block (limbs/body in general) but it will also have secondary motion attachments (long cloths/scarves, etc)
The hand has a basic set of finger controls, that moves the entire 4 main fingers as a whole, but the thumb has a separate control, so it can efficiently grab and hold objects, and also climb if necessary.
The controller bones, will be restricted to appear only on Blender side, but the export will contain only deformation bones.
Depending on the results of the integration test (exporting the character for the game engine) it might be necessary to create a new set of bones, to work as child from the current deformer bones, so rotation conflicts and wrong axis can be more easily adapted.
