For this game I was the lead 3D Animator. I animated our game’s main mech character inside of Maya. Some of the animations that I created include: idle, walk, run, strife, crouch, dash, jump, fall, and many others. I did many different revisions of each animation to get an accurate representation of the mech robot. I have experience animating organic characters, however as this robot was non-humanoid, it was a bit more challenging as I had to think about the physics and the principles differently. To do this, I studied droid and robot videos online and studied their calculated movements. It was challenging adjusting to this, however the result turned out to be realistic movements of a large and heavy mechanical robot that allows for smooth movement for the player. After creating sufficient animations, I had to switch roles as a Technical Artist in order to plug them into the Unreal Engine Animation Blueprints for our character. This took trial and error, as there were some issues with the communication of the nodes, however with perseverance, I was able to successfully add all animations and animation sequences into the blueprint.

During this game I did all of the visual effects for the main player and for the enemies. I created all effects with Niagara particle systems inside of Unreal Engine 5. Some of the effects that I created included bullet tracers, muzzle fire, telekinesis lightning, smoke, fire, explosions, etc. Creating these effects was challenging, as I did not have much experience working with Niagara before working on this game. There was also no one else on my team that knew how to do visual effects, so I decided to teach myself how to create all of these effects by watching various tutorials on YouTube. I learned a lot in the process and I now have a good understanding how different particles are created and maintained. After the creation of these effects, I had to switch roles as a Technical Artist to apply all of these effects to the enemies and to the main robot character. I worked within our game’s main character blueprints and did a lot of testing for the most efficient placement of the nodes. With a lot of trial and error, I was able to successfully visually script all effects to the main mech and to all of the different enemies. The results are realistic visuals that allow for fun gameplay that add to the game’s main theme of destruction.