Star Wars Project: Episode III: Revenge of the Diff (Against Have Revision) (We Love Perforce)

 Can also be titled:

Revenge of the (Trim) Sheets, Revenge of the Game Res, Revenge of the Rigs, Revenge of the Skin , Revenge of the Nick

Based on whatever gave you the most trouble on this sprint

Team Progress:

    The team worked together to migrate all the assets we've made to a new project in UE 5.4.2 instead of 5.3- we plan on taking advantage of the new animation, nanite geometry, and volumetric fog features 5.4 has to offer. Everything migrated smoothly and we maintained our project velocity through the change.

    While the 3D artists made progress completing the high res and game ready versions of their respective assets, the animation department (me) began rigging and skinning the actors in order to prep them for animation in Unreal.

   ( While skinning on the walker went relatively smoothly in Maya, the animation department (me) forgot to consider that in order to animate in UE, the skeletal mesh needs a Control Rig- which does not import over from Maya. Neither do constraints. Or IK handles. Or set driven keys. Or anything I set up in the last sprint's rig Range of Motion. )

    The Up-res walker was brought to UE to continue the rigging process, where I spent the next week and a half researching a way to combine an IK and FK set up in a Control Rig to make it useable for animation straight into unreal. This was very difficult and I had to do a lot of research (read- find a bunch of youtube tutorials) to make it happen.

First working demo of control rig

    

Rig Hierarchy in Unreal

Animatic Update: Version 03

    There are two different IK legs set up in the control rig that I tested in version 03 of the sequence: currently, the right leg is working much better than the left leg, but further testing is necessary (yay). 

Also featuring:

Updated first pass on lighting, including an updated HDRI/skybox, volumetric fog and a dynamic smokey fog material in the god rays render

First Pass of Lighting in Scene

Camera updates to focal length to keep the focus of the scene on the intended actor: camera no longer loses focus on the trooper that moves closer to the camera

SFX placeholder: right now it's ripped straight from Rogue One, but we intend to have a pass of sound fx once animation is more finalized

Animation test on the first 90 frames of the walker