Egg (1)

[sinusoid]

Idle
hatching
and the .blend file

Blend file contains several animations for the hatching, and a draft of the pain animation.

If I'll get a dretch model, I can mark up how the spawn will look like (requested by Ishq).

Please give me any suggestions. I'll try to work on some gibs in a while (still wrapping my head around it), and once I catch gavlig on irc, I'll ask if it's possible to make the egg disappear after spawn. <-Gavlig, if you're reading this, I'm asking you

[Viech]

Hey, the movement of the egg body to the side during hatching is too strong as it would leave the bounding box and potentially reach into a wall. Apart from that it's a very strong and interesting animation. I'm still not sure how exactly the complete spawning process should look like. If technically possible I'd love to see the inner egg disappear in a splash and have the dretch appear there. The egg would close once the dretch left. That way we could try to give the egg two different bounding boxes so that projectiles and players don't magically go through its body.

The idle animation could be a bit longer and have more variation so that the egg really looks like a live organism. The current idle would be too predictable for that effect.

[gavlig]

Hey sinusoid!

Hatching animation looks a bit harsh, basically, I agree with Viech. Idle is too intense, keep in mind that model will play that animation most of the time, take a look at my idle animation and you'll know what i mean.

About making egg invisible. I see it two ways: first - hide it inside that stem(trunk?) in one frame, second - give it invisible shader programatically.

cheers :)

[Viech]

I think we can just hide it via shader and play a splatter particle effect at the same time.

[Ishq]

We should avoid doing it progmatically if possible and look for ways to deform it out of view in the animation.

[sinusoid]

Ok, to sum up:
-reduce side movement not to leave bounding box
-find a way to deform or disappear egg core after spawn (I'll just re-bone vert groups so that I can collapse it)
-fix idle for more variation

[gavlig]

maybe you can find my version useful as reference

https://www.dropbox.com/s/2b2aeqypensdc ... vlig.blend

[sinusoid]

Gavlig, thanks! I've been referring to those already

I decided to do very exaggerated movements, because in most coditions you get restricted visibility of the egg. Fast pace, guns firing (switching light conditions), projectile impact effects, extreme FOV/rapid movement on aliens, dark maps, always looking around... It's not very likely someone is going to admire them by themselves. At times, it's going to be pretty good if the player will be able to see the silhouette at all.
And such fast animation is very forgiving - the mesh and rig you prepared deforms and blends wonderfully, so I can get a lot of stretch and squash, anticipation, exaggeration... make it really explode into someone's face. (yeah, a lot of inspirations there from The Thing and Alien)

Researching gibs now, would like to have animated texture on stretched verts, will be much better than particles alone, if you have any suggestions please tell!

[Viech]

You have a point, yet you should try to stay consistent with our current set of animations. We have a lot of different artists working on this project but the product should be a coherent world with recurring elements. Usually the first artist working on some area gets to set the general style and for alien animations this has turned out to be rather subtle.

[sinusoid]

Viech: Yep, not questioning it I'll be staying within guidelines. Had a busy few days, will redo animations asap.