As I'm in charge of designing, modelling and animating the characters, I started at quite early stage. Now, there are 3 versions.
Version 1
This was done at a very early stage. During that time, I thought it could be easier for me to find some fruit models online and then add eyes, arms and legs to them. I don't want the head at that time but when I upload it to Mixamo for auto-rigging and animations, it turns out that the character needs a head due to I needed to position the point of the chin. As a result, I came up with an idea which is to place a round head and a very thin neck above the character, so that after Mixamo auto-rig and animating, the think neck will be somehow invisible.
Another serious problem came, that the rig Mixamo created will cause deformation in animations, maybe because the watermelon is too wide compared to its height. So after several days, I decided to abandon this one and find other models that probably can be used.
Version 2
One day, I came up with the idea to give the fruit characters their own professions and personalities so that it becomes meaningful when the players are choosing their characters to use, not only because they like the specific fruit. Combined with the different animations Mixamo provided, I quickly start to check how many different animations I could find on the Mixamo website, then decided on the personalities for the fruits.
For the choice of the 6 characters, I also can't decide them by just thinking. Due to my model adjusting stage, I found that many of the models have problems, some in texture and some in the surface display. At that time, I could only use the usable models and then allocate them to the personality animations.
There are some small problems but the overall outcome is okay. Here are the fruits, their professions and characteristics for the second version.
Name: Miss Peach
Profession: Celebrity
Characteristic: Girlish
Name: Mr Orange
Profession: Athlete
Characteristic: Energetic
Name: Miss Pineapple
Profession: Student
Characteristic: Enthusiasm
Name: Mr Grape
Profession: Ninja
Characteristic: Impulsively
Name: Mr Watermelon
Profession: Dancing King
Characteristic: Loves dancing
Name: Ms Strawberry
Profession: Bartender
Characteristic: Loves drinking
Version 3
The second version was done in a hurry due to the submission, so I planned to have another version (the final version) that is modelled totally by myself. As for this version, I don't have the limits caused by the quality of the models online, so I can choose whatever fruit I want for the game.
I started with pineapple and before modelling, I looked online for reference images. Also, I and Tim had a meeting to decide on the fruits and their professions. Although I'm the person who is doing the modelling and animation job, I would like to hear advice from him as well. After the discussion, we decided this way:
capture from Miro board
There are many challenges I faced in this stage as this is my first time modelling characters.
First of all, after the modelling process, when I finished adding the materials to the body parts of the pineapple, the outcome was quite satisfactory. However, when I export it and upload it to Mixamo, the colours started to change and looked more ugly than what I saw in Blender(images below).
model in Blender model in Mixamo
I thought that was the problem with the materials I applied in Blender because I only created the materials and didn't bake them, and then I learnt how to bake materials. Another problem arrived, I found out the model on the Mixamo website is still like the previous one, I assume that was because there is default lighting in Blender but no lighting in the fbx file. As a result, I tried to learn how to bake lighting. While doing that, I thought I could import the previous fbx file into Unity and check the colour in Unity directly, as I remembered when creating the animations for version 2, there are colour differences between the Mixamo colour display and the actual colours of the models. I happily found out the colour in Unity looked way better than it was on the website! So I stopped spending time on light baking and continued the rest of my work.
A vital problem appeared later, my model can't be rigged successfully on the Mixamo website, perhaps due to the model is not a human-like structure. Therefore, I started to learn how to rig in Blender. Luckily, I successfully created the rig for this pineapple character and it worked well on the Mixamo website!
After asking for the needed animation list from our Programmer, I found the animations on Mixamo and sent them to him.
The final design for the pineapple is like this:
capture from Blender
He is a barber, so I decided to put combs on his 'hair' and add the hair dryers on his hands, these are also his weapon.
In conclusion, although I've been through many challenges during the whole process, I really had a sense of accomplishment and learnt a lot from them. I begin to enjoy the modelling process and will continue working on other characters in the following days.
Some funny outcomes on Mixamo : )
References:
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