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| [ goodies | dev diary | chapter five ] |
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| #5 |
Boggy B Lives! |
Perhaps one of the most significant and visually important tasks on our hands was the transition of
our well-liked, 2D cartoon characters to fully 3D, lit, animated models for a 3D world.
There was a whole style about the 2D stuff (Worms 2 onwards) which was developed by Danny Cartwright
(no longer with Team17) and since people have been staring at this stuff for 5 years, people have
become accustomed to it and therefore it was a tricky step to try and make a seamless jump into
3D.
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back to the
drawing board |
First up the character had to revisit the concept drawing boards and Patrick (not the inflatable one)
had the task of planning the character, drawing his range of emotions and understanding what we'd need
to do with the 3D character in terms of animation.
About 30-40 different worm poses were drawn, re-drawn and re-made for the character which took on the
style of the 2D game but expanded it and made it more flexible. Since the character would be in 3D,
he'd need more detail, more animation and as a result be a little more complex.
At the same time, Andy M (Luther on our forum) began investigating techniques and concepts to animate
a worm, how it would move, interact with the environment, see what facial expression could be done,
etc. The first series were using a default Worms model (which has long since been lying in the recycle
bin) but it was important to get the movement and inertia right. Some animation problems in Maya (fixed
in a later release) held things up for a little while, but things moved at a steady pace as Boggy B began
to take his first steps in terms of moving and reacting to a new world.
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here's what Andy
has to say |
"Animating the worm is an unusual challenge because of the simplicity of the character's
construction. Boggy B is essentially a big face with a short tail attached. His only 'secondary'
features are his floating eyebrows.
This means that the animator has very few dynamic props on the character to work with to get any
particular idea across. Long, floppy hair or a trailing cloak would be an animator's dream when it
comes to making a walk cycle or a back flip jump. Luckily Boggy B's face is extremely expressive
and his eyebrows can be (and are) moved to anywhere on his body when needed.
Those floating hands are pretty useful at times too. Patrick's concept art is fantastic and really
helps me to define Boggy B's character through his exaggerated facial reactions.
Animating a character for any game involves a lot of technical restrictions and thus a huge amount
of planning and prototypes. I currently have just under 200 separate animation clips just for Boggy
B and it will probably be double that number by June. I work with three programmers (Steve Eckles,
Paul Scargill and Martin Swaine), each implementing different classes of weapon and worm behaviour.
The biggest challenge for me (aside from mastering Maya) is following the excellent 2D work done by
Danny Cartwright on Worms 2/Armageddon. I've tried to preserve as much as possible from his 2D
animations, keeping the actions punchy and easy to read. The Team17 forum community has been
enormously helpful and supportive in the planning of the worm's animation, even if some of their
dafter ideas would take several decades to implement.
So far I've had the most fun animating the Super Sheep. After 200 worm animations it's a nice break
to work on something with legs :) I'm really looking forward to getting my hands on the Mad Cow and
Old Woman in the next few weeks too. My favourite object so far is the new Jetpack. I could happily
fly that thing round for hours."
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| influences |
Once satisfied with the 2D concept artwork of the 'new' Boggy B, Patrick set about modeling the worm
in Maya. The worm had to be right, very tightly modeled and efficient in terms of its polygon usage,
texturing and boning. The reasons for this are that up to 16 worms can appear, so that can bump up the
polygon count very quickly, the textures have to look good on all platforms and each additional 'bone'
in the model (joints, if you like) takes more memory and processing time. The worm had to be able to
perform many expressions, move its head, eyes, produce hands when we need them, as well as fully
manipulate its mouth, tongue and eyebrows for expression.
This process took a few months before it was finally ready to texture, which Patrick also did. Andy
used the new model with his new techniques and animation paths and Boggy B soon began to come to life,
first Boggy B was walking, observing mines and objects, then performing facial animation... pretty soon
the 2D character was brought to life!
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| [ goodies | dev diary ] |
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| Development Diaries |
We plan diaries right up until the end of the project and they will
appear every week or two, so keep popping back for updates. The great
thing about the diary is that so much just isn't written yet!
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| overview |
The graphics and images shown in the diaries so far don't come anywhere
close to where we are currently in terms of visual style.
The first few chapters merely serve to bring us 'up to date' to how we got
where we are. It's envisaged that we will catch up with current progress
by Christmas and the diaries will then mirror recent developments rather
than things from the distant past.
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Patrick's concepts 2002
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Adding the bones
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Animating in Maya
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.avi animations 2002
right/option-click and
'save target as'
Decompress using
Winzip/Stuffit or similar.
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