Did a few more finishing touches to the shifting stage and the bosses. Added a gem into the boss’ head so as to hint to something. And added a new voice line I recorded for one of the special animations that the boss has.
Jumped over to the animation video I had saved. Thankfully it uses a blender and a free add-on I have been using for months now. But it has been awhile since I updated either so I downloaded the new blender and installed the latest add-on for it to work. There’s a lot going on that I don’t understand for sure but I get the gist of it.
The tutorial was simple enough to give me the ropes of how to add keyframes to the animations and then creating ways to make the animations smoother and natural. After testing and experimenting with some of the shortcuts I decided to try and make a new animation from scratch.
I didn’t like how the healing animation looked and I thought it would be good if I used it only for saving the game. I was able to create a fairly simple animation that looks passable. I can definitely make it better and take a lot of time making sure I create the best animations to my ability. But as I continue to develop there are aspects of this project that I need to just get done. It is certainly an important animation but there are other things that are more vital. It always comes down to what I think it necessary and what I know I shouldn’t be wasting my time with. I love working on it, but the more I learn the more complicated it gets. If I limit myself than I can actually have a product I will be able to finish instead of work on without an end goal.
With that said, animating is very hard and there is so much I can learn, and I’m sure I am breaking a lot of core tenets. As long as it looks okay in game and it works to communicate a certain action without looking extremely janky, then I will use it.
After I imported it I was getting issues with the way the character turned, then I remembered it is because I had the animation take over the left arm if the lantern is “out.” So I created a new variable that was strictly for when the player was in “lantern mode.” That way it won’t get in the way of the healing animation or other animations that will have the lantern arm moving around. I tested it a few more times and the healing animation fit pretty well. The legs aren’t perfect but this is one of the cases where I’m fine with leaving it as is.
I did one final improvement by adding an extra animation where it puts back the lantern.
I tested another animation that is still very rough. This will be used in the cutscene that marks the transition point between levels. If I have to make a unique animation for every boss that may take a lot of time. So I’m still considering just making one animation and leaving it at that. But it will look really boring every time. Lots to think about.
This is one part of my plan to create a cutscene. I should have learned the part where I actually insert the cutscene into the game, but I was too excited to get back into animation. I will learn how to make a simple cutscene so I can plan out what kind of animation I need to create if it is within my means.
GoldenGratus Games 