What else can I do?
In addition to animating, I really enjoy writing Python and solving technical problems.
This video shows some of the rigs, tools and workflows that I created while working on XCOM 2 and Evolve. Details about my specific contributions are below, and more detailed information about all of my work can be found at my Tools page.
The Unreal Manager allows the Animators to view their shots in Maya as they are seen in Matinee.
After exporting data from Unreal and Matinee, the animator can import that information into Maya and work on polishing their shots.
The Batch Mocap Import tool simplified the process of bringing in mocap onto the XCOM 2 rigs. It removed several manual steps and enforced standards.
Additionally, up to twelve Maya instances could be launched so that multiple mocap files could be processed at the same time. This lead to massive time savings when working with multi-character, thousand-plus frame cinematics.
The Lurker is a monster that needed to support a very wide set of motion. The animators wanted to be able to walk on the toes, walk on the heel with the toes pointing forward and switch between bipedal and quadrupedal motion in the same animation.
The Lurker’s main weapon is her detachable harpoon hand. It was created to work with the existing FK/IK arms and it has a local/global space switch as well. Lastly, since she can walk on that hand when she’s a quadruped, FK/IK fingers were added.
I was responsible for half of the shipping Hunter character rigs as well as their 1st and 3rd person weapon rigs.
After placing joints for use with the auto-rigger, the remaining accessories were created by hand. Typically the accessories were items like satchels and holsters, however with two characters, entirely new arm rigs were made.
For all the Hunters, I created the in-game IK setup and the animator interface to drive it from within 3DS Max. The animators had a simple slider to control whether or not the IK was active. Additionally, they had an override mode that would allow them manual control of where the IK target would be in-game if needed.
Lastly the ragdolls were created along with dynamic objects like pouches and hair using CryENGINE’s dynamics tools.
The animation shown is by Geoff Hemphill.
The animators wanted to add leaning to their run animations so that spectator mode would look a bit better, but they knew they would not have time to author the assets. Bogus Banking was made in less than a day and creates the lean animations from the forward locomotions at the push of a button.
More information about Bogus Banking can be found here.