Frag Games (awesome memory)

After finishing my contract at Creative Village in March 2013, i joined a Game Studio named FRAG as Lead Technical Artist. Being a young company, my job was to primarily work after assets preparation. This includes Rigging and Animation for Project named SR (Sorcerer's Ring). Working in games after 8 years was definitely fun. Lot has changed since then. This was first time,i had a chance to work with unity. As i have to deliver finished animation files in unity.
Few game animation videos from frag vimeo channel are here(on which i worked) all assets were offcourse prepared by wonderful team of Artists ( Kabir Talib, Jawad, Sana , Nada, Shuja).


As we were reaching near end of game project, couple of free week, i worked on small cinematic in AE, for which Artwork was done by Sana.

Reason for awesome memories, other than cool work environment

• Product and Game Design thought process and refinements.
• Closely observe and learn agile workflow.
• How team of tallented ppl possibly can create fun and beautiful game.
• One of most interesting thing, i had a chance to do at that time was. Do all in game cinematic animatoins in unity. At that point in time, two famous cut scene editor plugins were available and i picked one of them named () .unfortunately, i never find time at frag to compile that by anymeans...

motion builder study ( quick one )

recently i had chance to study motion builder for few days to help an old x collegue. output shown below was done in few days while studing almost all aspects of motion builder, which makes it unique from other similar products (actually dunno any other similar product).

what i really liked / amazing / cool features

1- keyframing difference
its actually little different conceptually, comparing to max biped, where while keyframing, i need to care about feet keys in terms of plant / slide / free. where as in motion builder all such features are for my ease while posing. it has nothing to do with keyframe data, as most of time, its saving and interpolating this in real time.
another decent thing, i really enjoyed is default interpolation seems quite good and produces better result

2- camera / storyWindow
ahh, its so good. i am amazed why such features are still missing from max/maya. amazing to shoot action from switcher. its totally like actual filming, where i can add as many cameras as i like and switch back n forth automatically while playing and viewing final output. too good. i really loved this feature

3- Animation Mixing / NLA
another decent one. easy to use. more intutive than max mixer/ biped NLA stuff.

4- Physics
quick / fast / entertaining / fun to explore and enjoy variations.

Conclusions

• when i found more time, i should test this software more and try to produce better results. specially if possible testing it with combination of endorphin. togeather these two will help a lot to produce better quality quickly, while making it fun
• motion builder for sure is better replace of biped. no worries about where animation data is. its always few click to retarget-load to new rig / character.

weekend exercise

me and two of my friends/collegues at evolve (raja and noma) decided to do some character based quick excercise on friday evening. purpose was to do little quick speed tests for different things we used to do in daily life.

we finalized 2 characters from book "DOT DOT DASH" (thanks to nida, for not asking that book back) credit for character design goes to artist who has done those.

day 1:

raj did that green guy (builder one) and noma starts boss guy.they handed me over base meshes(lowpoly form) to start on rigging after 2 hours. final models looked like.i finished rigs with CS same day.for day 1 ( 8 to 12 hrs) we were done with basic models and rigs.

day 2:

raja moved to character morphs and textures

i started with noma at reference for animation / scenario, we finalized monsters inc. shot where mike is training sally. after that, noma did all the animation body version, meanwhile i updated rigs with morphs to be animated.

day 3:

i refined all animations, even we knew there were so many errors / issues. but i rendered them with basic lighting / shaders and you can see the video below:

3dsmax to motion builder and back again

recently i had to work with x collegue to solve this issue. it had been discussed on lots of forums but not concluded in precise fashion. below is process for my own memory so when i have to redo this i can save time.

before you start keep in mind
2 exporter version are there (fbx200608 | fbx200611)
process differs for motion builder7.5 and ext2. Because in ext2 autodesk has given a template for max biped and prcess becomes really simple. lets first discuss this

process 1: (motion builder 7.5 ext2 with latest exporter)

1- make sure system units are centimeters
2- export scene with all default options >> y up , centimeters
3- import scene in motion builder with import / merge fbx
4- drop max biped template, characterise, create cnt rig, animate , do enjoy
5- when done animating, plot your character from navigator ( i think its kind of baking process, but not sure)
6- export anim or do save file as fbx with all normal options
7- open same max file (which you used to export)
8- do exclusive merge while importing new fbx, all baked animation should come back to character

process 2: (motion builder 7.5 with older version of 3dsmax)

tip: process will be same as above but heirarchy & naming convention changes will be additional.
1- make sure system units are centimeters.
1b- select clavicals and neck joint, link them to last spine bone (changing biped heirarchy, don't worry, it won't harm)
1c- select both legs thigh joints and link them to pelvis
1d- rename all biped bones as motion builder. open MB and see that list, eg Bip01>Reference, Bip01 Pelvis >Hips etc. this may take time. i was thinking about writing a simple script to automate above mentioned points if needed again.
2- export scene with all default options >> y up , centimeters
3- import scene in motion builder with import / merge fbx
4- drop character template, characterise, create cnt rig, animate , do enjoy
5- when done animating, plot your character from navigator ( i think its kind of baking process, but not sure)
6- export anim or do save file as fbx with all normal options
7- open same max file (which you used to export)
8- do exclusive merge while importing new fbx, all baked animation should come back to character