Inner Circle Update for August 15 2019!

Hey guys!

We've made some very good progress on Onyx's rig and the animation pipeline since the last update, and I'm now in the middle of creating test animations so we can get the game back into a playable state.  I have a few fun examples to show off, as well as new models from Limbo.  

Mr. Kittyhawk's animation code is working exactly like I'd hoped so far.  I still have to finish the rest of the Splicer and Onyx's animation sets so we can fully test combat, but things are looking really promising.  

Animation Stuff

The majority of our work since the monthly update has centered on animation pipeline for the 3D characters.  Above are some images showing off our progress!  I'll try to explain what we've achieved in the least detail possible :D.

• Animation Exports - It's been a pretty agonizing troubleshooting process but we've now got a solid procedure for getting animations from Maya to Unity with the most functionality and best performance / file size.  The next goal is to automate this since it's super not fun to do manually.
• Face Rig / Expressions now work in Unity
• Saving/Loading Poses and Animations 
• Cross-character animation compatibility -  Animations will play on different characters. We've also verified that our animations will work on future versions of character rigs. 
• Character Instancing - An example of this is that if we have three Splicers in a Maya scene then our tools will recognize which one we are working on, and not apply poses/etc. to all three)
• Stepped Animation - I mentioned in the last update we were looking at introducing stepped animation to bridge the gap between the look of 2D and 3D.  This now works in Unity (shown in the kick animation at the top of this post).

• Screenshot 1 Hi Res 
• Screenshot 2 Hi Res 

Attack FX

Another great advantage of moving to 3D is that we'll have a much easier time with FX animations.  Mr. Kittyhawk and I spent a day researching options and discovered a great asset pack that matches what we're after.  We attempted to auto generate attack trails but determined manually modeling them into the animations would produce far better looking results.  Hopefully I'll have some examples to show off in the next update.

Biohound Model 

Limbo has finished the first version of the Biohound model.  He had originally designed different variations of this guy, but I think a unique idea would be for the front of his body to transform for tentacle based / vore H attacks.  This will be be tougher to achieve however.

The tentacles have to be modeled straight by the way -- they only look like tentacles once they are rigged and animated :D. 

Splicer Boss Model Progress

Limbo's also started on the Splicer boss' models.  He'll take a little longer to complete, but out of all the enemies I'm most excited to see this guy in 3D.  We're planning on changing his proportions to be a little more tank-like and stylized as in the original concept.