CH4SE - Hero Based Tag Game Games Development Project

Modelling-

The Trickster was the first character I made he is heavily influenced by Shaco from league of Legends however I did my best to give him his own personality. For the tassels on his hat I experimented with the Inverse Kinematics system built into block bench, this proved useful for this simple application and allowed me to be expressive with the animation for the character, collectively ma

Texturing-

I used Cel Gradiation treating every colour shift as a new cel to give the effect of panels in the cloth he wears. His face is a blend of tradition court jester and a porcelain harlequin mask, with a ruffled collar to match. I went for stripy beige accents to break up the amount of black and red covering the character to limit these colours to highlight areas inspired by the harlequin en

General Animations-

Personally, I love the Animation Set for the Trickster, no bones needed to be adapted to avoid any clipping, just adding a little something for the tassels. In particular I love how expressive the waist tassels can be as these are quite easily overlooked

Abilities-

The Tricksters first 2 abilities are quite powerful and therefore should have a charge up to use, I decided to make a Taunt that could be adapted in length based on game balance to fit here. His third ability is a place so I made an animation which was later also reused for the teleporter

Ability Animations-

Modelling-

The teleporter was the model which took the most iterations. I wanted her to have a clear silhouette with the ponytail coming out of the back of a biker helmet however the ponytail was hard to animate on an IK rig. I then experimented with a bushy ponytail but in doing so didn’t fit the helmet, I tried out what was probably the fifth iteration and gave her an Oni style mask which worked 

Purple Glow-

 Around halfway through the project Blockbench went through a major overhaul in texturing, this added animated textures and while these models weren’t designed originally with this in mind, I felt that a breathing effect would be a cool addition to this character. I kept much of the rest of the model in a grayscale to highlight this with a couple of other purple highlights in the extre

General Animations-

The Teleporter only has the Bone hierarchy coming from the RefModel with no new bones needing to be animated, this meant giving her the animation set was very easy. Unfortunately, this also meant that there isn’t much additional flair able to be hidden in the back of these animations, so she has quite a masculine feel.

Abilities-

 When setting an anchor, the teleport must physically stop and set up this strong piece of kit, this meant once again using the place animation we made previously, getting some good use out of it so far. Secondly the other major animation needed was the teleport itself, Dan suggested the Idea of a jumping pirouette where halfway through the jump the character would switch positions landi

Unique Animations-

Modelling-

He is heavily inspired by the iron giant. He has 2 large gears on his shoulders that I went through several iterations of the get the best feel, I ended up with the square shaped gears as the circles in the silhouette were giving off the wrong shape language for what I wanted the character to be. Another fun element of the character is his black hole “power source” in the centre of his c

Texturing-

The tank is a fully metallic character however I wanted his 2 metals to have a different feel to each other. For the highlight brass material, I wanted to echo the brass on the charger to emphasis the collective news of the universe these characters are in, this meant a deep gradiated cel shade with some nice highlights on the front. To give a strong contrast to this the Base grey colo

General Animations-

The animation set I created does have quite a heavy feel to it. This is something I was less happy with about my work for that but I feel like this was likely due to me making the heavy characters first and adapting them being at the front of my mind despite doing my best to keep bias out of the plan.

Another difficulty of the tank were his big rotating gears on his back as these

Abilities-

 The tank required 3 new animations for its abilities, the first of these, steel heart once again required a charge up to use it. I wanted to use this to bring the focus to the black hole at the centre of its chest as while showing sneak peaks of it I hadn’t yet actively shown this feature off simpler and spinning faster to show an effect had taken place.  

Unique Animations-

The steel barrier ability is a visual effect attached to the tanks forearm blocking a path to opponents at the risk of himself with reduced motion, I adapted the walk animation to this giving him a hefty feel. 

Finally, the Steel shot, this was a challenge as I needed both a throw, almost a shot put, a difficult kinematic motion to understand but also a leap for the accompanying t

Modelling-

The final model I made was the grappler with his enormous grapple Gauntlet; despite having a huge fist the character has a basic silhouette. to combat this I added a Roll cage based on the loader characters from risk of rain 2. For the head I knew once again I wanted a helmet Unfortunately, the texture for the character is quite basic however I did my best to shade areas to keep the th

General Animations-

Despite having the most new bones on top of the Reference hierarchy, the grappler didn’t actually needmuch adapting to fit, as once I had closed hi massive fist the only time it ever opens is during his abilities

Abilities-

The first animation the grappler needed was a throw animation for setup, this was adjusted from the tank steel shot animation, opening the gauntlet at the end to toss. For the swing I made a blend animation of a start pose as he goes towards an anchor to a low swing at the bottom arc of the swing to come out of it.  Finally, I made 3 aim animations to target the anchor to start the rope 

Unique Animations

Modelling-

The Ranger was a deceptively fun character to make, in raw modelling terms He’s easily the most basic character we have. The entertainment of the character came in trying to dress him half naked in furs while still having the depth of these furs feeling fluffy and not just painted onto him. His Bow is definitely the most striking element of the character and what defines his silhouette d

Texturing-

Given how simple the modelling for the character was I wanted to texture to really build upon this, so I chose to go heavily in detail on the anatomy and hairiness of this stone age man, even giving him blue veins across his forearms and trying to emphasise his musculature without actively modelling it which would’ve pushed the detail too far in my opinion crossing too far out of low p

General Animations-

The ranger probably had the most clipping out of any of the characters moving directly from the RefModel due to his large bow loving to poke straight through his shoulder, despite this after a little touch up he fits the whole theme really well, the only major change being in the run animation where I adjusted the whole left arm to reduce movement to emphasise the weight of th

Abilities-

Being the only ranged character, the ranger has the most of any in terms of unique animations. To balance the very powerful Rapid fire, the ranger must root himself to the ground and charge up this ability, then a draw while kneeling and finally 3 aim loops for which direction he is shooting in. both his second ability and usually tag used a draw animation to shoot an arrow. His third ab

Unique Animations

Modelling-

I started with the rough blockout from the tank to maintain a relative body proportion. During the early stages of development I toyed with the idea of using an Ik rigging system to make the legs digitigrade, as I mentioned during the midpoint review meeting this system still has flaws in Blockbench however the main reason I went against this direction was because attempting to attempt g

Texturing-

The texture for the Brawler is where I think this model really shines. I strongly graduated a cel shading approach combined with drawing in musculature for the armour pieces where I think these would be almost hammered into the design. The fur is all gradiated with a touch of roughness to alternate colouration. For his horns I wanted them to be more brightly coloured to clearly show agai

General Animations-

The group animation set works has for the Brawler, this character was one of the few that didn’t need any adaptation as he has no unique bones. The general feel is very hefty which fits his style very well, he has across the vibe of a character that’s difficult to stop

Abilities-

The brawler is a little lacklustre in the ability department as this is a character still in development on the game design side of things as we don’t yet know how he will play into things. I made him a simple aggro animation and I wanted to make a running charge for him too however unfortunately I didn’t manage to complete this in time as it was not a key part of the project and was a