The bows were pretty straightforward, it simply needed to move freely where it was designed to move and he restrained in movements where it would collide with itself.

The only special touch that has been added was to have the bow conform to the strings and it's pressure on it. When the bow was animated, it was then possible to put some resistance in the wooden parts of it.

The piano hammers were most likely the easiest part to rig and animate, for there is only one way to make them work.

I was tempted to automate them, but in the end simply animating them by hand came to be more cost effective in this timed production.

This was the tricky one!

I came in the project later when some of the modeling had been made. Unfortunately for me, the modeler had not kept an earlier version of it to make the rig conform to the shape of the bed, so I had to improvise!

I've made a universal "key rig", where you would basically duplicate it , then align (snap) 3 control points on the square ends of the keys or pedals. That would automatically be position the bone and controler in the right angle, ready to skin and sych to the melody!

This music box was driven entirely by expressions to get the final speed to sync with our soundtrack. Once I had a good timing on the metal carrillon, I simply duplicated that bone and timed it to the song with minor adjustments.

The xylophone needed to be automated and the proper notes played in the right order. It also required a visual feedback of the notes being pressed and the balls being squished. Added a visual feedback on the tie in front of the camera where it would react to the keys being pressed.

Wolrd Cultures - Professionals

1st Place: Best Film North America
2nd Place: Best Film

Award of Recognition

Experimental Student

Brief overview of the animation controls.

This flashy mess is all that drives this character, as a rule of thumb, the colors of the helpers and bones is related to the features.

Blue: FK, Orange: IK, Green: Right side, Purple: Left side. Other colors are for their own features.

This is the skeleton that is exported to the engine, it is constrained to the rest of the rig to prevent conflicts, it holds the character skin and also doubles as a Motion Capture rig. I can pull the Motion Builder data from this rig and reapply it to the controllers.

A few of the effects that were required for the game.

A "myhthical dissolve" when the player would die and respawn at the last checkpoint.

A frost that would gradually cover the player when it would go through blizzard areas.

This is a project that is currently on hold, a group effort to make a mythical corgi and integrate it in the Dota2 Workshop!

This was the first version of the Ascension character in the prototype that preceded it. The character was used here in there out of context and ended up being a fine mascot!

This one is old, but still reliable, the simplest rig I've made and somewhat functional, it's center of gravity is at the "pelvis" but the front works independently which made for easy animation.

This is the final version of Raziel integrated in the engine. Complete with cloth simulations and the wings are physically simulated bones.

Raziel was built off a 3ds Max Biped, with aditional bones for rigid bodies and simulation. some basic eye control was added to at least give him some expressions.

The use of NVIDIA Apex cloth was put on the essential parts of the model.

The wings were boned in a way that the torn part would always be simulated and weighted in a way that they would be rigid enough when gliding, but otherwise as flappy as the original title on Playstation.

Raziel was built entirely in Unreal Blueprints to drive everything from basic controls and abilities to the handling of post process effects.

The shaders were straight forward, this is a sample in-engine towhat was possible. The artist would decide if he needed the material to have custom "spiritual" effects, and could override the default maps with any that would suit the material better. The handling of the spiritual switch was done in a Material Parameter Collection and tied directly in the gameplay blueprints for a global gradual swap.

When the player toggles world, the post process effects of the camera will smoothly switch between states, modify it's FOV in the same way to give the spiritual world an eerie feel. The shaders on the environment are also toggled. The blue glow is vertex painted by the artist as needed.