Announcements & Thoughts

So, I just wanted to address a few points for anyone who may be wondering about the short animation project and Witch character plans we made.

I had planned to work on a short animation, but that was assuming that the Rokoko Gloves arrived for hand motion capture. They were supposed to arrive this December, but I guess they weren't able to make their deadline. Also, as we voted on solving the Anime shader first, we pushed back our ability to purchase & experiment with facial motion capture. So, in short, I'll be waiting until we have figured out an efficient workflow with the full body MoCap Gloves & Face before I attempt to create any short animation tests.

I think we're all excited about our plans to create an RPG character set for the community lol. I know, it's something I'm definitely looking forward to as well!  And, I also think the creation process of it will be both interesting and fun for the community to take part in -

The Witch will be the first character we design, and will very likely be our TEST-Run character. We'll use her to find the most efficient workflow between Z-Brush > Rigging > Substance Painter > And Unreal -

Specifically we'll try to figure out the following points with her:

1- From Sculpting > What is the fastest/best way to Retopologize?
2- What is the most efficient workflow to quickly texture in Substance Painter?
3- What is the most efficient/streamlined Rig that can export to Unreal in FBX format. We'll be testing Blender vs Houdini vs Maya and see which software has the best Rigging & Animation tools for character creation -
4- What sort of Animation system is most efficient and easy to use in Unreal.

The Witch will basically be a giant experiment in finding our workflow lol. Once we understand our workflow, we'll be able to confidently create and animate the rest of the characters :)

Once we start focusing on Character Creation, I'd like to stick to it and flush it out. So, this means that, if possible, I'd like to finish the Unity Programming Tutorials first. Well be using Macrophage as an example project to go alongside the Programming Tutorials. And, as soon as the Programming tutorials are completed, that's when I'll officially start moving away from 'Game Developer' to 'Character Creator'. In this way, Macrophage will be the final project I create with Unity -

So, that's the general gist of what we're going to be aiming for next year. I know it's a lot, but I think in the long run it will be the worth finding a clean, fast, and easy method to pump beautiful animated characters from Z-Brush to Unreal :)