THE DEV DIARIES #10 – Animating a hobo fly with 4 arms and a double-neck guitar
We’ve been very excited about one particular character for some time now, as he is going to stick out like a sore thumb. Please welcome one of the two insects that you’ll be able to see in Chicken Police!
“As mentioned above, Zoli (our character artist) and I have been looking forward to working on the Fly, because he’s such a different character! He sticks out visually, is in a unique situation compared to the rest of the cast (not going to spoil anything though), and animating him was quite a challenge!”
- Alex
Usually, our characters strike different poses for different situations, but that wasn’t the case this time. The fly proved to be challenging not because of his pose count (since he only has a single one), but the sheer number of layers that make him up. As a comparison, our average character is dissected into about 12-13 parts per state – that number in our Fly’s case was 57.
In an earlier developer diary, we talked about what goes into preparing a character for animation. To bring the character to life, however, its separated body parts have to leave Photoshop and enter Unity to have its body re-assembled.
The first step is adding all the layers to an empty shell that will be the core of the character. Then, you have to create the parent-child structure of the parts (e.g. the hand will be the forearm’s child, and the upper arm will be the forearm’s parent). This is usually a fairly straightforward task due to the low number of layers involved. However, in the Fly’s case, every single finger was added separately because of the nature of his animation, since there would be a greater focus on his hands than ever before.
“Once all that was out of the way, I moved on to setting the layer order for each part individually. This is an important step, because the parent-child layout is not the same as the order in which order the images should be rendered – you have to go from the topmost layer all the way to the bottom and give every single layer its very own number. It was a nightmare.”
- Alex
With the (layer) order restored, Alex can then move on to the fun part: animation!
[previewyoutube]FlyProcess.mp4[/previewyoutube]
Characters like the Fly are always welcome, as they bring a much-needed diversity, breaking up the usual formula that’s already more or less muscle memory for Zoli and Alex.
Thank you once again for reading all the way to the end. Keep your eyes peeled for more of these awesome Clawville-dwellers coming your way, and don’t forget to wishlist Chicken Police!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/
SOMETHING DIFFERENT
“As mentioned above, Zoli (our character artist) and I have been looking forward to working on the Fly, because he’s such a different character! He sticks out visually, is in a unique situation compared to the rest of the cast (not going to spoil anything though), and animating him was quite a challenge!”
- Alex
Usually, our characters strike different poses for different situations, but that wasn’t the case this time. The fly proved to be challenging not because of his pose count (since he only has a single one), but the sheer number of layers that make him up. As a comparison, our average character is dissected into about 12-13 parts per state – that number in our Fly’s case was 57.
THE PROCESS
In an earlier developer diary, we talked about what goes into preparing a character for animation. To bring the character to life, however, its separated body parts have to leave Photoshop and enter Unity to have its body re-assembled.
The first step is adding all the layers to an empty shell that will be the core of the character. Then, you have to create the parent-child structure of the parts (e.g. the hand will be the forearm’s child, and the upper arm will be the forearm’s parent). This is usually a fairly straightforward task due to the low number of layers involved. However, in the Fly’s case, every single finger was added separately because of the nature of his animation, since there would be a greater focus on his hands than ever before.
“Once all that was out of the way, I moved on to setting the layer order for each part individually. This is an important step, because the parent-child layout is not the same as the order in which order the images should be rendered – you have to go from the topmost layer all the way to the bottom and give every single layer its very own number. It was a nightmare.”
- Alex
With the (layer) order restored, Alex can then move on to the fun part: animation!
CHECK OUT HOW THE FLY WAS MADE:
[previewyoutube]FlyProcess.mp4[/previewyoutube]
Characters like the Fly are always welcome, as they bring a much-needed diversity, breaking up the usual formula that’s already more or less muscle memory for Zoli and Alex.
Thank you once again for reading all the way to the end. Keep your eyes peeled for more of these awesome Clawville-dwellers coming your way, and don’t forget to wishlist Chicken Police!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1084640/Chicken_Police/