Animation Chronicles - Episode 6: Rigid skinning

Preparing a new article for the UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK series, I had to rig a non-organic object (read: not a character) in order to test the animated object pipeline with something simple. It also gave me the opportunity to make a skeleton from scratch and learn about skinning (or binding, in Maya language), which is the topic of this article.

For a number of reasons that don't need explaining, I chose to rig a vehicle, an helicopter to be precise. I took the Black Hawk from the CryEngine 3's sample assets. However, it wasn't rigged, so I had to it myself as I wanted to try and export this model into UDK. Good exercise.

Naomi Alderman on video games

I happened to catch that on the radio in my car yesterday (yeah, I do listen to Radio 4)

BBC iPlayer - Front Row: Naomi Alderman on video games

Rare to hear about that topic on the radio (at least in a good way).

Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Interesting article on how to know when to say "stop, no more", and how to use the golden ratio in game design.

Gamasutra - News - Tips from a combat designer: Fibonacci game design

Articy:draft

Earlier this week, a co-worker let me know about a tool aimed at helping people write branching story lines, mainly for games. It's called Articy:draft and allows you to define the flow of your story, the conversations (even handles multiple-choice dialogue systems). You can also create annotated maps of the various locations. It's multi-user and integrates with version control systems. It looks really cool, but the benefits/price ratio will make it hard to convince anyone to buy licences.

Regardless, it's worth checking it out:

UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK: Custom geometry

Today, I'll take a look at the pipeline for getting your own meshes into the editor. I will focus on "normal" meshes (i.e. those that are not rigged).

I won't spend any time explaining the actual process, the documentation (UDK, CryEngine) does that well enough. I'll be pointing out the restrictions and peculiarities that rule the way the artists should work. I will then go over geometry export, collision export, and material export.

Note that as I'm a Maya user these days, I may talk more about Maya than about Max.

Why should I care?

I want to know how quick it is to get a new model into the game, and how quick it is to update it.

UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK: Object manipulation

As I was testing things out for the article on whiteboxing, I realised that each editor has its own set of nice features that makes your life easier when placing meshes and various entities in the world. I thought it deserved an article of its own.

Why should I care?
Well, because the easier it is to mess about with level's objects, the faster I can work.

UDK vs CryEngine 3 SDK: Whiteboxing

Today 's post is focussed on the whiteboxing tools available in UnrealEd and Sandbox. And I've just realised I haven't written a glossary entry about whiteboxing, so I'll quickly explain what it is. Whiteboxing is the process of producing a very crude version of the level's layout. It focuses on the playable space and its purpose is to evaluate things like scale, navigability and timings. 

Why should I care?

As an evaluation tool, a whitebox level will be modified many times, and sometimes started over from scratch. This is why whitebox geometry must be cheap to produce and easy to modify, so people (especially artists) don't feel like their time is wasted. Ideally, the whiteboxing tool would be simple enough so you don't actually need modelling skills to create those basic shapes, allowing level designers to completely own that stage. That's why the tools must be easy to use and their result easy to modify.