Last month, we gave you a look into the audio and music with Joel Schoch, the musician and composer of FAR: Lone Sails, and FAR: Changing Tides. If you missed it you can check it out here.
This time, we have Animation Artist, Martina Hugentobler to talk us through the animation and modelling of the characters and animals in the FAR Universe.
Let us know in the comments if you have any other questions for Martina!
What got you into Modeling characters and animals?
I have loved games and making art for as long as I can remember. In my game design studies, I specialised in game art and have been doing that ever since. There's something magical about making digital characters and creatures and bringing them to life with animation.
What do you prefer to model, characters and animals? And why?
Anything can be interesting to model, but characters and animals are definitely my favourite thing to make. I also enjoy the challenge of it as making them combines many different aspects of art with technical knowledge. For example, it already starts with the design which has to make sense in regards to anatomy to be believable, even if the result is something fantastical or cartoony.
What was your favourite thing to model and animate for the FAR games and why?
Bringing the characters of both games to life was one of the best things. They move very differently and it was really cool to give them both their own personalities and individual characteristics. And I loved making the creatures like the caribous or birds, they are lots of fun to animate.
What tools and software do you use to animate and model?
For modeling I use Blender, and for rigging and animation, I work with both Maya and Blender.
Does the fact that characters such as Toe, have exaggerated or altered anatomy help or make it harder to model, and animate?
In general, I'd say it always depends on the design. In Toe's case modeling him was fairly straightforward since our art team created a character sheet that shows him from all sides.
When it came to animation all I had was Toe's backstory and personality, so I developed the way he moves based on that information, his current circumstances, and the items he wears. A realistic animation style, for example, would not have fit him due to his proportions and stylization.
Toe was not the easiest character to animate, his huge pants could look off in motion so they had to be posed like any other part of the character. On the other hand, his overly long sleeves were a lot of fun to experiment with, and the giant diving helmet was extra neat to work with!
The animals in the game are beautiful, what is the process behind turning these from concept art into models in the game?
Thank you! When starting a 3D model I roughly block out the main shapes and limbs to get the proportions right. Afterward, I start refining and adding the definition, and finally add in the details.
Reference images are important to get things right, and an understanding of anatomy helps a lot when making creatures so you know for example where muscles and bones go. Making a clean topology is another part of it, in other words thinking about how to build up the model so it can deform well in the animation stage later and look natural.
To follow from the last question, once these are modelled, how does this affect the way you animated these animals?
The next step after making the model is rigging, the process of creating a digital puppet of the model so you can pose and animate it. Personally, I enjoy making rigs as it allows me to build up the creature exactly the way I need it.
Part of animation is understanding motion and character intention. Also acting out as much of the action as possible helps, and video reference is crucial: No I'm not goofing around and watching random animal videos on the internet, I'm working here! Did I mention animation is awesome? :)
In FAR: Lone Sails, you had to make things seem real and alive on the ground, how has it been adding the underwater element in FAR: Changing Tides?
The overall process remained largely the same. With a different environment, I just had to imagine there is water around the character when animating. His helmet made for a nice contrast, often a burden on land but speeding him up once submerged. For the underwater creatures, Tim and Teodora from the art team collaborated with me so together we could create a variety of them, which was super cool.
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