Adding assets to every enemy -- Owen Meyers

     As with every game, it is very important to have assets to denote which enemy is which. Being able to tell at a glance what enemy you are encountering before receiving a face full of buckshot is incredibly important. The issue for Project [REDACTED] is that we didn't have any artists working full time to deliver assets for the enemies. Thus, it fell upon me, the designer of the asset pipeline, to acquire assets for every enemy. This led to having to fix models and integrate animations, with each problem being subtly different.

    Take, for example, the shotgunner model. His original model was designed for an OpenGL renderer, and was flipped 180 degrees for that very reason. In addition to this, he was also placed halfway in the ground, likely due to something required for that game's collision to function. Fixing this model to function for our renderer required that it be re-rigged and most of the animations acquired from Mixamo. With the help of Kris, and several hours in Maya, the model was fixed, but it was quite the headache.

    Other models weren't so simple to fix. The Mutant boss, for example, was also made for an OpenGL renderer, however, he only had a single animation from Mixamo. Thus, it made more sense to turn him around programmatically, except in the moments where he is using the Mixamo animation. This leads to a strange setup, where a hack forces his matrix to be rotated 180 degrees for one animation and one animation only.

The newly fixed shotgunner model, as rendered by the Windows model viewer.


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