Happy Holidays from The Cowzy Game! 🎄🐄
As the holiday season is in full swing, so are the villagers.. literally! .
I created 3D animations in high school and University, but I haven't practiced in almost a decade. I've now taken the opportunity to create a cheeky mining animation where our villager takes a full swing!
A New Mining Animation: The Overhead Swing
This week, between the hustle of the holidays, I spent my week creating a simple overhead swing. I dived into the animation process and learned:
Keyframing the Movement
I keyframed the animation to reflect an exaggerated movement to bring more life and goofiness to the NPC
Sockets for the pickaxe
To ensure we can animate with the tool correctly, I added in a socket on the right hand so we can attach the tool during the animation process to ensure the hands are positioned where they need to be
Resizing our imported tool.
Our pickaxe is an imported asset from Cropout, a free sample project from Unreal. As a temp asset it works great... except it was too large. I navigated the asset and found a way to change the pivot and resize the object to better suit our needs.
While it’s still an early prototype, I’m proud of how it’s coming together. Animation is an art I’m still learning, and each step feels like a mini milestone in my game development journey.
Learning Through Iteration
One thing I’ve come to appreciate is that early prototypes are a crucial part of the learning process. The animation isn’t perfect—there’s room for smoother transitions, more exaggerated in the hip area, more polish, etc, but for now, it’s a step forward in bringing life to the townsfolk and their daily tasks.
What’s Next?
Heading into the new year, my focus will be on:
When the animation completes, I want the villager to collect a resource from the stone node.
The resource is stored in the villager inventory
Implement energy that changes during work.
Day & Night to regenerate villager energy!
Thank you for following along with my journey into game development. Stay tuned for more updates, and happy holidays from me and the cows! 🐄🎅
Got feedback or tips on animation in Unreal Engine? Let me know—I’d love to learn from your experience!
Commenti