Hi!
November Dev Update.
I've completed another bipedal mech.
Here's the concept art for my next model, the "SIGVERN".
The "SIGVERN" has unique turret locations, which should provide benefits in close-quarters combat and urban environments, where angles are narrow and views are obstructed.
I spent most of the month testing animation approaches for the bipeds.
-The first approach was to create all the animations manually. But this way, I ended up with many rigid animations that couldn't be easily tweaked for future skeletons. Hence, while the skeleton for bipeds is the same (number of bones, etc.), the angles of the bones are different, and the main key animations would need to be redone for each new upcoming mech.
-The second approach was to generate them procedurally. In this way, I identify the key parameters for the entire animations and then easily tweak them for the new skeleton. And for most parts, it worked. But it had a very unnatural look in some ways.
In the end, I settled on a mixed approach: manual animations + procedural animations.
Here's a funny bug from the process:
-just add boosters, and here we have flying GUNDAM or maybe it's VOTOM?
Thank you!
-Alex