Game Character Rigging and Animation Demo

Examples of characters I’ve animated in Cascadeur and imported into Unreal Engine as well as the rigging process used to prepare models for animation for use in Unreal Engine.

Animation Breakdown

• Cascy dance animation
  • Character model and rig shipped with Cascadeur and imported into Unreal
  • Materials created in Unreal
  • Animated in Cascadeur using reference and imported into Unreal
• Midnight Witch backflip animation
  • Model and rig for Shadow Fight Arena 4 game provided by Cascadeur on Renderhub
  • Rig prepared in Maya for Chaos cloth simulation
  • Cloth simulated in Unreal
  • Animated in Cascadeur using reference and imported into Unreal
• Standard Model Male breakdance animation
  • Model shipped with Cascadeur
  • Rigged in Maya using mGear and the mannequin template for Unreal Engine 5.3
  • Animation is mocap that is retargeted from UE mannequin and cleaned in Cascadeur
• Std. Model Male silly dance animation
  • Animation is mocap that is retargeted from UE mannequin and cleaned in Cascadeur

Rigging Breakdown

• Joints are bound to the meshes and weights painted (not shown)
  • Weights are exported
• mGear UE5 mannequin template is used to start with but is modified significantly, limbs recreated to suit a T-pose and 2 fingers are all that is needed for this character.
• Guide positioning - Guides are positioned, rig is built and tested repetitively to ensure accuracy and usability
• Rig building
  • Limbs are built separately to optimize for performance
  • The entire rig is mirrored and built at the end of the process
• Rig testing
  • The character rig is removed
  • Guides are built
  • Skin weights are imported
  • Deformations are tested
  • The same process is repeated for each mesh bound to the skeleton
• Refinement
  • The rig is refined by repeating from an earlier stage of the entire process
• Control Shaping
  • The control curves are reshaped to maximize animation ergonomics

Unreal Engine Game Dev

Videos of projects I’ve made using Unreal Engine.

GAS Top Down RPG

GAS (Gameplay Ability System) RPG created using C++ in Unreal

Features

• Health and mana attributes
• Effector actor for testing application of gameplay effects
• Game UI
  • Health & mana globes
  • Enemy health bars
  • Broadcasting and listening for attribute changes
  • Dynamically update attribute menu
• Gameplay effects
  • Instant
  • Periodic
  • Infinite
  • Level scaling
• Gameplay tags
  • Combat abilities
  • Vital attributes
  • Damage types
• Gameplay abilities
  • Projectile spell
  • Click to move
  • Auto running
• Ability tasks
  • Motion warp towards projectile target
• RPG character classes
  • Hero and enemy character classes
• Multiplayer
  • Play as listen server or client
  • All abilities and effects replicable

Fortnite Building

Recreates the build system in Fortnite in blueprints.

Features

• Inventory of fun new building materials and their attributes such as cost and health
• Detailed UI with health and inventory indicators
• Destroyed objects add their materials to the inventory
• Retargeted character animation

Testing Grounds

A game that implements its own streaming level system with actor pooling. Focuses on optimizing game assets and procedurally generated game levels.

Features

• Streaming levels and actor pooling
• AI Enemy programming, EQS pathfinding, and animation

Killer Karts

A go-cart racing style game that focuses on state synchronization solutions for multiplayer.

Features

• State synchronization with an authoritative server
• Cheat protection
• Lag compensation

Puzzle Platforms

Allows players to connect to a multiplayer puzzle platformer over LAN as well as Steam.

Features

• Multiplayer over LAN network via VPN
• Join multiplayer lobby and game session over Steam
• UI development
• State synchronization

Maya

Videos of projects I’ve made using Autodesk Maya.

Character TD Demo

Kaylee is a cartoon-style character I rigged from start to finish. Her face rig has a high level of fidelity for being only a joint driven rig–we were on a tight time budget and I did all the work pro bono while being employed full time. She was animated in a few previs sequences in the short-film Hephaestus before the project came to abrupt halt, and many of us were whisked away by our careers in the industry. –RIP Doug

Breakdown

• Fully rigged cartoon-style stretchy character
• Body part visibility for the anim mesh
• Fully scalable
• Rigged goggles and hair geo (by Raj Bajracharya)
• Custom UIs for character setup and control for animation

FX

Videos of FX and workflows I’ve created and supported using various packages.

Lightning “Crawlers” for Thor: Love and Rockets

I used Houdini Engine with Houdini, Maya, and Katana to provide the capability to import, animate, export, and render lightning effects in Renderman used on the project Thor: Love and Rockets.

Breakdown

• Automated Import rigged Houdini Asset
• Animated the lightning effect for mjolner and lightning bolt
• Automated Alembic caching of the asset via export UI
• Debugged render artifacts using Houdini, Maya, and Katana

Demo Reels

Demos of my work in the Games/Animation/VFX industry.

Technical Animation / TD Show Reel