This week I developed a character avatar for my game prototype. I used a pre-made "Sorceress" asset by Explosive featuring a character model and levitating animation. My goal was to customise this asset and create a humanoid elemental composed of natural debris such as rocks, dust, and plant matter. I began experimenting with particle systems and emission types to try and spawn a rock mesh on the asset skin. Although many others have created characters and effects which feature particles emitting from the character skin, these were usually looping particle effects, eg. flame which is continually produced from the character skin, and which disappates after a few seconds. Since I wanted my rock "particles" to persist for a length of time, I had to update the position of the particles to the character's vertices. I could not find a way of doing this within the particle editor itself, and so had to code a system which spawned and updated the particles (see attached code). I will have to experiment further to see if I can get the particles moving more dynamically within the character volume; I added some variability in the movement so the rocks would not simply "stick" to the characters vertices (using sin waves to slightly modify their position, relative to each particle), however it still looks a little stiff. I will continue to experiment with these movements and also try more natural "meshes" in the coming weeks, and actually place Gale within my pre-made scenes, skinned appropriately (composed of rocks and dust in "barren" scenes, and leaves and plant matter in "grassy/forest" scenes, etc). Furthermore, in the coming weeks, I will develop two new scenes from my planned game prototype, as per my production plan (see last image attached).
ASSETS USED
- Sorceress asset by Explosive: https://assetstore.unity.com/packages/3d/animations/warrior-pack-bundle-1-free-36405
About This Work
By Natasha Vranic-Peters
Email Natasha Vranic-Peters
Published On: 10/05/2020