Status update: I’d been working a design contract for the last couple weeks that hadn’t left me any time to work on gamedev/art stuff, but now I’m back! I wanted to write up a quick summary of where I’m at with this project, both for my own good and cause I like when other people write about what they’re working on.
This character (wolf? coyote? I should know these things) is pretty close to being rigged. I’m at the scary point where something that looks good as a static model ends up looking awful once it’s rigged and posed, but I’m trying to get past my fear of mediocrity so I can get to the fun of animating walk cycles and bringing those into Unity. I haven’t done any weight painting yet because there are a few things I want to change about the rig, and I think I might need to remodel the mouth for more expressiveness. I’ve been following this tutorial ($50 but it’s been on sale twice recently) while learning rigging, and it’s been really helpful.
As for Unity, well… I’ve never used it before, but I’m pretty familiar with UE3 and there’s some overlap in concepts. I followed along with the first half of this tutorial (free) for the foundation of a 3rd person character controller + camera, though to be honest I didn’t really understand what I was doing on the coding side of things. I might just try to use Unity’s stock 3rd person setup, but I’m really not sure what the best approach here is going to be. I’ll cross that bridge when I get there, but obviously it’s going to involve a lot of C# study.
I know everyone says start simple, but… shrug. I’m having fun, and if it all crashes and burns then I’ll have still learned a lot that I can apply to my next project.