Page 2

Week 15
Rick Raymo speaks on the focus of B2 and other cool stuff

Week 14
Jay brings us up to date on Blood 2's development

Week 13
Schlegel teaches path-finding class

Week 12
Bill V takes us through level creation techniques

Week 11
Jay takes a tour through a Cabal meat factory

Week 10
Dan talks about the soundtrack using IMA

Week 9
Eric shows us how to paint happy clouds

Week 8
Greg talks about possibilities of weapon modifications

Week 6
Ben shows a day in the life of a Fanatic

Week 5
Andy talks about the interface and menus

Week 4
Kev picks the Blood movie actors

Week 3
Schlegel talks about AI

Week 2
Bill shows how to drive

Week 1
Jay gives a tour

This week we'll take a look at what goes into incorporating motion-captured moves and some texture mapping for our models.

Motion-Capture

Click to enlarge

First thing to usually do is to make the motion captured moves loop. This task usually takes the longest when dealing with the mocap files. Because human captured moves are so natural, no one position is ever the same. The beginning and ends of a run have to be cleaned and tweaked a bit before it will cycle properly. So I get to play around with all these funny little function curves.

Click to enlarge

After the character is modeled in Softimage I put him into a neutral position and then add the skeleton. I tweak a few parts… rotating and moving the joints into position, till the model lines-up with the skeleton.

Click to see Video

Once our character is positioned correctly, I envelop the character onto the skeleton. Now after a few tests I can determine if all the joints rotate properly. Once this is done I can now add any mocap move we have captured for that particular character, or any other move we have available in our vast library.

Click to enlarge

Some creatures have extra appendages. So I add extra bones and tie all the new pieces together with the base character skeleton. This will allow us to use any of the mocap moves we've captured for this dude. At the same time the new bones are constrained in a way to allow them to move in conjunction with the motion-capture, eliminating a lot of hand animation.

Click to see Video

Since this particular creature moves upright like a human, we are able to use motion-capture for his moves. The actor studies the creature's 3d model and 2d concept art, and then transforms himself into the creature, and acts out his wildest fantasies.