Rigs for games

I have been researching some free rigs that I may use for my animations.

The Abertay Grunt rig is an obvious one and the Digital tutors rig is also simple to use.

After some more research into rigs ive decided to use the Kila rig which is overall easy to understand and has a variety of controls for body movement and facial features.

The free Kila rig was made by Anthony Ward who has wrote some books on creating game characters.

Approach to animation

I've been looking into what is needed for game animations.
Main points:
- Overall believable, polished and accurate animations
- Cycled animation that can be smoothly looped
- Set pieces

-Fairly simple rig

Other things to consider:
-Using layered animation (shown in Skyrim)

Some of the technical research I've found:

http://www.peachpit.com/articles/article.aspx?p=22801&seqNum=7 - An article that outlines some important areas in game animation by George Maestri.

http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1016323/Animation-methodology-for-Battlefield - a presentation on the animations used in battlefield 3 that shows how DICE approach there animation pipeline.

http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97447 – people’s opinions on what’s needed in animation. Some people feel that being good at general animation is the most important skill. You can then apply this knowledge to game animation.

Bioshock Infinite Research

I think Bioshock Infinite is a good example of a game with a large variety of animations. The main character Booker's companion, Elizabeth is a good example she has several animations that change based on her mood. General animations: idle, running, walking, pick locking, inspecting objects throwing objects to the main character. They also have many in-game set pieces and cut scenes.

I wont be using there methods, but the video shows the kind of animations they used.

League of Legends Research

League of Legends introduces new Champions to play every month and each one has unique animations.
The animations include idle, 1 or 2 basic attacks, critical attack, run, taunt, laugh, dance, joke, 4 different abilities and teleport. The characters may also have different animations and sounds based on new skins(costumes).

For my animation show-reel I could take this approach and create animations based around a single character. I would have to design my own character traits or could create them based around new animations for an existing character.

Examples of animations:

I will be researching Animation for games and will start by tying some basic tutorials on Digital Tutors.
Here is an example of there Rig i will be using from DigitalTutors.

Final 11 second club animation

Here is my final 11 second club animation. I felt my animation was good for my first 3D animation, from feedback areas a need to improve are, more accurate animations, the motion of the full body and how different motion effect other body parts.

Week 4 - 11 second club rig and storyboard

i have decided to use a robot rig for my 11 second animation, mainly because i couldn't find an alien rig that i was happy with. I have also refined my storyboard.

Week 2 - 11 Second Club

I want to work in the computer games industry, therefore I have chosen to base my main animation project for 3rd year on many short animation cycles suitable for a games, although I don't plan on being an animator learning 3D could be helpful for group projects.

The 11 Second Club - my idea was to go with a humorous animation.

IDEA 1- Aliens or robots on there spaceship experimenting on a random object. The object could be a fruit or vegetable that they have taken from earth and are confused by it.

IDEA 2 - Aliens or robots have landed in someones garden from there space ship and have encountered a vegetable. The vegetable could be a Jack O Lantern (works with the October theme) that they are probing because they think it is a creature, there instruments then backfire causing the pumpkin to explode.