[November 16 - 28, 2023]

Animation Update (Idle & Movement)

Applying animations to the models has been one of the most complicated yet rewarding tasks that I have encountered during the development of the game. One of the main focuses that I wanted to tackle and fully polish was to properly apply animation on Lucy's rig because they will be center of the attention during the whole gameplay. The first attempt that I made to apply the animations that I got from Mixamo was the idle and running animation using visual scripting offered by Unity. There are multiple issues that I have encountered along the way, such as the optimization of the rig that Lucy has, the transition between the two animations, and movement "jankiness."

Though the visual scripts works, but this does not satisfy the animation we want for our gameplay. The motion is very limited and it only faces in four directions creating a very rigid movement and an unnatural feel for the players. I moved away from visual scripts and went back to making lines of code to have more specific changes within the animation. I achieved the goal of the animation by referring to the documentation where the object faces a certain direction of the movement, and not relying on transform angles of the object rotation. This creates smoother motion that covers the whole 360 degrees seamlessly and a subtle transition between the two animations.

Fine Tuning + Post Processing

Another thing added to this change is the post-processing in the visuals to match the color tone and effects in the initial proposed concept for the aesthetic direction. These additions include Bloom, Motion Blur, Film Grains, Chromatic Aberration, Color Corrections, Anti-Aliasing, and fine-tuned Toon Outlines.