Prep to Show and Tell at Bioware

As an animator, its our job to make the characters move and come to life. Animating is kinda like playing with toys, you pick up a toy and give it personality.

Here at bioware we have several types of characters we animate humans/robots/creatures. Each one of them have their own types of actions and behaviors. Breathing / walk-run / attacks.

-open up human_with_saber.max-
Here we have a character holding a light saber. And with this light saber he can do different types of attacks, LIKE.
-show some animations-

We use 3d studio Max to animate our characters. Each character has its own set of animation controls, which controls the bones of the character. So I am able to move around the controllers to pose out my character. Move Arms,Root,Pelvis.

Real quick lets make an action pose, together.

Okay once we have the pose its time to animate. So here we have a time slider, moving the slider will tell you what frame your are on. In 1 second there is 30 frames. So in 3 seconds we have 90 frames. We can set an animation key on a frame to give that controller movement.

-animate a bone press play-
-what would you like to move?-

Once we are done animating, we will render out a video to show others.

-show videos-

Now we have to work with the programers, to get this animation working in game. They are the guys who works close to the game system and are able to connect the player's control to an animation.

-----Quick-----

What does an animator do?
What do I do here at bioware?
Show few examples of saber attacks.
Talk about how to animate.
Lets animate.
Show renders.
When animations done then how do you get it to game?