The CGAMES 2013 conference is "Technically Co-Sponsored by IEEE Computer Society" and is in Technical Co-Sponsorship with the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee who endorsed this conference.

AI, Animation, Mobile, Interactive Multimedia, Educational & Serious Games

Professional Techniques//WORKSHOP & TRACK INFORMATION

Professional Techniques for Budget Game Development
Nicholas B. Zeman – Assistant Professor Media, Informatics, Northern Kentucky University

NBZ

Brief Biography: Nicholas Zeman is currently working as Assistant Professor of Media Informatics at Northern Kentucky University.  Nicholas previous work experience has been as a game developer and character artist/rigger for Sony Computer Entertainment America (1998-2004) and 2K Sports (2005-2010).  He has published over 14 titles and my credits include NFK Gameday (2001-2004), Socom 3, and NBA 2K (2008-2011).

Abstract:

Large, professional studios and giant game development companies such as Electronic Arts and Microsoft have the advantage of years of tested techniques to create, capture, and manage art assets on a huge scale.  Smaller studios and emerging developers do not have the advantages or resources to produce as many assets as quickly and cleanly as the larger studios, who rely on optimization and practical experience to minimize the time and cost of making new games.  This workshop takes 2 techniques, which are simple and extremely powerful in creating scalable assets for game production. The workshop will cover theoretical explanation, instructor demonstration, exercises for participants, and instructor assistance for individuals. There will be a follow-up question & answer session.

Participants will need to have a copy of Maya 2013 in order to participate.  It is available free to anyone with an educational email address.

Part 1: Edge Loop Modeling

Edge Loop Modeling is the most efficient way to quickly generate organic models with the least amount of polygons.  It’s especially adept at creating difficult-to-model areas such as mouths and eyelids for low polygon characters.  By using edge loop modeling you can quickly create vivid character models with various levels of detail for Mobile to Console games.  It is also a great technique for scalability, where entire edge loops can be removed to optimize polygons for tight poly budgets in mobile platforms such as Android, Windows 8 and iOS.  Learn how to create Radial Edge Loops inside of Cross-Section Edge Loops and generate great looking, professional creatures and characters.

NBZim1NBZim2

Part 2:  Low Budget Motion Capture with a Kinect, Maya’s HumanIK, and Animation Layers

Character animation is one of the most difficult part of creating a game that relies on bipedal motion.  Keyframed animation is relatively inexpensive, but extremely time consuming.  Motion capture is a great solution, however it is expensive and time consuming in terms of setup and cleanup.  Generating usable data sets of looping and connecting animations is time consuming and difficult.  There are several new tools that are in production which create a useable workflow for budget motion capture and easy retargeting between characters using only a Kinect, MotionBuilder, and Maya. Unity 4′s Mecanim will also be integrated it into this part of the workshop.

Use a Kinect with Brekel’s device capture to capture the initial motion in MotionBuilder, using the Brekel plugin.  That motion can then be transferred to Maya via an .fbx file, which in turn will be plugged into the HumanIK system from Autodesk.  This HumanIK system allows you to transfer the animation from one bipedal character to another with a few mouse clicks.

Once the motion is transferred to the desired character, the motion capture can be cleaned up and edited in a non-destructive manner, using Maya’s Animation Layers.  A new layer can be created and an individual node can be corrected or tweaked without changing the base layer of animation.  The entire finished result can then be baked back onto the original data.  This entire workflow allows the developers to capture one piece of animation and transfer it to multiple characters quickly and easily, with the ability to individualize it per character while keeping the original data intact.

NBZim3

Publications/Presentations:

  • PCA/ACA (Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association), Presentation Entitled “Teaching Game Development at the University Level”, March 2013, Washington D.C.
  • Joint International Conference of the Pan-American Mobilities Network, Presentation entitled “The Human Interface”, March 2012, Charlotte, VA
  • Game Developer’s Conference, Presentation entitled “Using Bones for Facial Animation”, 2005, San Francisco
© Copyright 2012 GameOn®
Go to Top