Games in progress

Late 2021 I was lucky to be brought onto High Voltage Software to co-develop with Epic Games on Fortnite. While working on Fortnite my role was that of a Technical Animator. Me and the rest of the Tech Anim team on HVS side were part of the day to day with the Epic Tech Anim Team, integrated into their asset pipeline system, in the daily meetings, met epic level standards for our work.

While working on Fortnite, my responsibilities were as follows: Reviewing the geometry of the assigned character mesh to ensure its capacity for desire deformations. Planning and placement of joint chains to facilitate dynamic animations. Skinning the character mesh to the skeleton. Utilizing the 3lateral facial rigging system for the characters face. Implementing the rigged character into engine. Creation of “corrections” logic with within the AnimBP or utilizing ControlRig asset for more advanced corrections. Creation of dynamics for the character which would range from Anim Dynamics, Rigid Body Anim Dynamics, Cloth Simulation, WPO, Chain Harmonics to say a few. All while testing the character in gameplay to ensure desired behavior and no clipping of the character. And lastly, testing for low end platforms and creating low end friendly versions of the dynamics.

While working on Fortnite, I was able to work on 15 characters from start to finish, with a handful of pick-axes and backpacks, with however many other assets I helped refine with Jiras being assigned to me.

In 2024, coming off of Epic doing a massive re-structure of the company, the contract between High Voltage and Epic was changed and several departments were no renewed for the contract.

From this, our department went into Research and Development mode, where we struck out into avenues that we were interested in. My RnD focus was that of modern motion capture solutions. Having been trained to run a MoCap studio during my Masters Program on Vicon Blade systems, I was most interested in stand alone in inertial motion capture suits. Researching into several different companies and their products; Rokoko, Noitom’s Perception Neuron, Movella’s Xsens, and several video only solutions. During this research, I was able to get hands on these suits and put them through their paces. Recording a large variety of motions, and working through their software’s and pipelines.

Along with the Research and Development, High Voltage also began development of an internal game, Dragon Front: Adventures. A card based rogue-like, the player would progress through random generated levels fighting encounters, acquiring resources as they go. My work on this project was primarily setting up and fixing bugs with the characters and their interactions. The jewel of this project for me was animating the cinematics for the hero characters for this project. From rigging the hero characters, conceptual creation of these cinematics, actually animating the cinematics, bringing the characters and animations in engine, setting up Level Sequence for the cinematics, and working with VFX artists.

Coming out of Masters program, I was lucky to have landed a job at shiver entertainment, down in Miami Florida. Here I was the entire Animation department; If it needed to wiggle or move it was my responsibility to make to so; from rigging, animating, and implementation in engine. There was a brief stint in early 2020 where I was lead to some animations interns, but with the lock-downs that ended after a few months.

For the first project I worked on here, it was a spiritual successor to an old NES game brought into the modern era with a modern engine, features, mechanics, visuals, etc. Since it was never announced, I dare not say whom the inspiration was of, but I can speak to the broad strokes of our game and my work on it. The game was a top down twin stick shooter, where the player would load into an isolated level tasked with completing a few objectives. The levels would be themed, and the enemies of the levels would be based on that theme. The enemies varied greatly, from humanoid, creatures, bi-pedal, quad, no legs, flying and all had unique idle, attacking, death, spawn animations. There ended up being over 80 enemies in the game, including the bosses per theme. This was by far my favorite part of the project; there was such a wide range of characters to rig and animate. I had a great time experimenting and expressing these characters in many ways. Besides gameplay, I also animated the intro cinematics for the bosses and the cinematic cut-scenes for the story progression.

Which brings us to why I labeled this as un-announced/canceled. When I left shiver, Animation and art tasks were completely done and the only tasks that were left were on the programming side, specifically getting achievements working. I was told “just another six months till release”; I was told this same line every year after, until i stopped asking for updates. Since then, Shiver has been bough by Nintendo, so I suspect that studio priorities have changed and project was shelved, sadly.

Speaking of potentially shelved games, now we more onto the second internal project! Once again, it was never announce so I need to be vague. The second game was a quick, casual, deathmatch style game, with players, weapons, resources scattered around the map that players would drop into. For the players, they would unlock a wide range of unique characters to play as. These characters all used the same base skeleton, so animations would be shared amongst all. The interesting thing for my role here was that all the characters had different dynamics to rig and create in engine. Anim Dynamics, Rigid Body Anim Dynamics, Trail controllers, Cloth simulation, all sorts. By the time I left, this game was roughly half way complete, with more planned characters for creation and features on the table to complete. As with the first project, the state of the game is unknown and may very well be shelved.

Besides internal projects, Shiver was also known for porting games to the Switch platform. One of which that I worked on that I can actually say by name is Hogwarts: legacy! My role for this project, was to devise a pipeline to convert blend shape based facial animation setup to joint based ones for the face assets. As well as creation of switch friendly robe animation system instead of the expensive cloth simulations for other consoles.

ScrapBot is a FIEA cohort 15 capstone team who requested my consulting with Motion Capture Animation. Once a week, I would meet with the team’s animators to guide the students of the use of AutoDesk Motion Builder. Teaching them the user interface of Motion Builder, workflows, troubleshooting techniques, and data cleaning and manipulation practices. Later in their project, I was requested to assist with the motion capture animation workload. I would complete the cleaning of several animation takes and acted in several motion capture recordings.

·         Teaching Motion Builder user interface, workflows, data cleaning and manipulation.

·         Troubleshooting and problem-solving student issues as the arise.

·         Assisted with overall animation workload by completing several animations.

·         Directed and acted in several motion capture recordings.

The Haunting Hour was a game I had a chance to help develop while I was working for gGasscats LLC. The Haunting Hour Is a co-operative, VR escape room with a stylized Halloween environment. Players have an hour to work together in solving puzzles.

While working on this project, I responsible for a variety of assets.

·         worked along with another animator to maintain animation style cohesion.

·         I conceptualized many of the animations for npcs to populate the environment,

·         I worked in tandem with design team to concept puzzles and the animations required for conveyance.

·         I assisted the team’s art lead by creating a variety of 3D prop and environmental assets using Maya.

The Haunting Hour is available on steam. Working for GlassCats has been a great opportunity for me.

The Great Emu Wars is quirky take on real world historical events. Players choose to take part in the famous first and second emu wars, choosing to join the Australian military or the Emus freedom fighters. Specifically, the game is a third person, asymmetrical objective based arena game. The Great Emu war is available on steam.

·         I animated several of the emu character animations along with several of the human animations.

Scamp is the second capstone project that I was able to work on during my time at FIEA. Scamp is an adventure platformer set across several fantasy worlds. During my time on the team, I had the pleasure to work with many talented and passionate developers.

I was tasked to serve several roles, that of an Animator and of a Character Rigger.

·         I created the control rig for the Miner Wizard character. Working along with the character modeler who ensure proper topology for range of motion.

·         I developed all of the animations for the Miner Wizard. Working along with designers, and conceptualizing on my own.

·         Collaborated with other animator to ensure animation style cohesion.

·         Created custom animations for use in cinematic cut-scenes.

I had the chance to be a part of one of the most successful capstones teams to have been produced in FIEA. Scamp is available on steam.

Hyper vital is an immersive survival horror puzzle game set on a crumbling space station. This project was one of the two capstones projects I worked on during my graduate program.

·         I developed the control rig for main character.

·         Projected animation list of main and Monster character along with gameplay designers.

·         Directed the motion capturing for main character using Vicon Blade.

·         Retargeted and cleaned motion capture data of main character using Motion Builder.

·         During mid pre-production, the decision was made change player point of view to be first person.

·         I was responsible for all of the monster’s animations.

·         Using Animation Blueprints in Unreal engine, I designed a joint by joint masking of monster tendrils. Creating one animation for overall tendril movement to be layered over any other animations later to be developed.

During early pre-production, the decision was made change player point of view to first person. Due to course corrections for the project and the changing of animation scope, I was available to join another capstone team and split my time amongst the two teams.

Math Fighters is a 2D fighting game, where you solve math problems for a desired action. This project is of note because I taught myself how to clean and use motion capture data in all of two weeks while maintaining my workload with all my other FIEA courses.

·         Created a simple character model of main character

·         I used Autodesk’s Human-IK for the Control Rig and cleaning of data.