"NO ZERO DAYS"

[Faeryl]

DATE: 08-APRIL-2023

Rearranged human female and male hierarchies to have them match skeletons. Main issue was IK chain needed to be move from root bones so they are embedded, and do not get exported to Unreal.

Wrote and sent out Easter sale email.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 09-APR-2023

Sunday is rest day, Esp Easter! Happy Easter!

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 10-APR-2023

Revised female rig in Maya checks out animation wise, but is still failing to merge bones with Male. Still looking into this after tests to share skeletons failed today.

Took a look at early blockouts of the dropship that need to wait on interior concepts before we proceed further.

Did Part 2 of the lyra animation system review for the new Em8ER Strider system. Part 3 tomorrow.

Did accounting stuff for corporation.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 11-APR-2023

Code review Part 3 of Lyra, next review is Thursday. GAS based ability system implemented for jump and walk as a test.

Got new female rigged model, much cleaner. Found more differences with male model. Will have to be fixed before we can merge skeletons.

Still tracking down UV issues with Swarming Kneebiters. Proving a bit elusive and lots of back and forth comms with modeler.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 12-APR-2023

Updated rigger of Male mesh with instructions to add missing lip bones and answered some questions.

Started to dive in C++ portion of Lyra movement system.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 13-APR-2023

Male came back. It merges with the female bones! Both models now have a unified skeleton and can share animations and a single animation blueprint seamlessly!

Did another dive into the code for Lyra and things are looking good. GAS abilities are working. Now it's time to do a test with our new unified models and see how it works with Em8ER characters!

More annoying accounting work. 3 hours of it. The unfun part of game dev.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 14-APR-2023

Em8ER female mesh now loaded into our new Strider Lyra animation system. Used existing Lyra anims, no custom anims yet.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1096461085235748945/2023-04-14_17-41-21.mp4

Lots of discussion about rig, discovered we might need some additional weapon IK bones. Also going to see if we can get facial mocap working with existing rig before we do final approval.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 15-APR-2023

Been thinking about mech customization. Reviewed some test idle poses we did with two different mech skins on the same frame.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/811258831870361670/1053774088579076238/0000-0360.mp4


https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/811258831870361670/1053774089858334770/0000-0648.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 16-APR-2023

Sunday is rest day!

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 17-APR-2023
(Posted by Grummz on 18-APR-2023 at 14:09 UTC / 07:09 PT)

We missed a post yesterday. Was a hectic day. Started with the school getting a bomb threat but everything worked out fine with no danger.

Female human was modularized into components. Also, swarmed UV bugs were fixed. Turned out it was a Maya material issue, UVs were fine.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 18-APR-2023

Footwork. High heels vs flat foot option for females. Gonna need separate anims to look right.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1097819522511159316/2023-04-18_11-42-05.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 19-APR-2023

Performance testing of new animation system. 100 characters on screen with no LODs:

Getting 35fps on a 2070s with no LODs, Adding just one LOD ups it to 45fps. Should be able to do more even with the 100 pilots on screen. Profiling continues.

Also started to look into stylized shaders for mecha.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1082548393324326922/1098455356205703168/shader_test.mp4

Not happy with these results which were pretty basic. Test file provided by a Japanese animation student for our use to improve. Now looking into better ways to achieve this effect. Still not decided on stylized or more realistic approaches to final shaders.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 20-APR-2023

100 females up to 125 fps now. Woot!

High heeled model option now working with IK, and over rotation has been eliminated. This will be fine for many animations but final walls will need high heel specific anims. You can see lumen lighting on the right [first video link], as orange from the block is reflected in the light on her legs. Looks beautiful. Def want a lumen on option for people with good rigs.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...2/1098821801615831160/2023-04-20_20-02-47.mov

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...2/1098821801968148530/2023-04-20_20-07-32.mov

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 21-APR-2023

We're looking at various plug-ins that will allow us to walk around on the Space Truck and Dropship. Many work but not all seem network friendly.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 22-APR-2023

First plug in didn't support moving platforms very well at all in network. 2nd plug-in also had problems. We may shelve this feature for the demo since it's not important to the gameplay.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1099419323673620571/2023-04-22_21-37-07.mp4

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 23-APR-2023

Sunday is rest day.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 24-APR-2023

Starting work on the swarmer now. It has unique challenges because we need so many on screen. But we planned for this and should be able to have something going!

Also did work on the new skin.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 25-APR-2023

Swarmer prototypes are interesting. Two methods being pursued. have 200-300 on screen in testing. Will share more later.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 26-APR-2023

Oh Lawd, they comin'

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1100507031019978843/2023-04-25_21-34-32.mp4

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachme...0/1100509458251137124/2023-04-25_19-57-45.mp4

300 kneebiters...doing tests on how to mass render a whole bunch (just in case)

The most promising test (in red), bakes the animations into static meshes before rendering. Getting around 140fps on a 2070s.

Fully deployed A-Luna in her permanent server home.

 

[Faeryl]

DATE: 27-APR-2023

Reviewed Strider movement system code for addition Em-8ER networking. We discussed how to modularize jetpacks and gliders and tying them into the new GAS based nodes in Unreal 5.1.

Fixed a problem with A-Luna's server deployment. She should not go offline as much. Will keep an eye on her.

Smoothed out swarmer animations add less hop and more lope.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/811258831870361670/1100861000229589143/0001-0120.mp4