RigB The Last of His Kind.

DONE! Autodesk, The Rookies Rig.B comes to a close! Let's hope the wondering warrior finds his home and creators one day, also don't worry about him. There's very few things that can hurt him :) Thanks for the rig and animation! Learnt some new workflows while using it.

Finally figured out the issue with the background explosions and added more elements to it to make it slightly more realistic and three dimensional, like rocks, tiny rocks, dust particles etc. Thanks to God for the push because I was basically tapped out but He helped me go that extra mile. It's too bad because you barely see the explosions' beauty within the shot haha, but we move

Some other final changes I made were adding a third explosion in the background, correcting the depth of field and refraction, I also changed the scan VFX as I felt the previous one was a bit too much so I made it simpler. Also changed the glow amount of his hard light gun, reduced it a bit. Some other stuff too but it's just tiny things.

Created a sci-fi hard-light blaster  on RigB's arm...probably my favorite thing I've made (well the shield and portal are kinda cool too.) It doesn't look menacing yet you also don't wanna get hit by it...unless you want to turn into hard-light cubes that is

A closeup

I made all the meshes for the blaster in Houdini

How it looks on the skeleton's socket.

Added this thing that's kind of the in world reason as to where or how the shield is made, basically from tiny hard light particles, it's basically one of those blink and you'll miss effects though (Pay attention to his left arm before the shield activates!)

Added some enemy hard-light bullets, it's those blue streaks you see flying across the screen

The impact vfx for the enemy hard-light bullets! You'll see em go boom brrzzzppp ccrrcckkkkzzz vvwoop haha

Scan effect in action

Using the skeleton of the rig, I created a socket above the wrist and spawned the scan effect there

How it looks in Niagara

Created the mesh for the scanning effect in Houdini, gave it a "HUD" look

A few more touches then I can call this bad boy done!

The shield's formation!

Finalised the look of the shield, really like the colors and stuff!

The material setup for the shield inside UE4, nothing crazy but it looks goooooooooooooood

Also added this cool ting using a "wireframe" node from the shield setup's...uh wireframes. Too bad the animation happens so quick you probably won't see it, but we move

Wireframe only without the shield, the wireframe uses pretty much the same shader as the shield!

A better look at the explosion

This is how the explosion looks in the scene...it's got this flat look to it...hopefully I can find a way around that before time runs out

I then exported everything out using the ever useful Labs Flibook textures nodes!

This was the setup for the fire, I used 3 layers, credit to Rohan Dalvi for his awesome "Kaboom" explosion tutorials!

I wanted to add an explosion behind Rigb to kind of signify he's found himself in a hostile planet. The blue streak is the bullet that is shot by this unknown entity, it isn't even firing at RigB himself, he just happened to land in its path I guess 

How everything's looking so far

The shield! Finally, along with an alt version I was thinking of, these may not even be the final versions...who knows

Shield animation inside Houdini, I did it here because I could simply use a "copy to points" node so the shield looks like it's coming out of RigB's arm. I could use pivot painter for this part....we'll see how this version goes first though!

References I used for the shield's design and feel

Modelled some small rocks to add some more life to the portal.

You can see the small rocks here, it's those brown pebble things around the portal!

By the way...did I ever show my references for the look of the portal? I wanted something that looked like it broke reality but also didn't...it's kind of weird but cool.

His color now changes according to his mood, so you can guess what red means! 

RigB! The portal along with him coming out

Closeups of the portal VFX 

The niagara system for the updated portal

Some closeups, you'll also notice my wip of the portal he's coming through.

Continuing from yesterday, adding some more vfx to complete his mechanical look. Some hexagons, some lightning and sparks incoming!

03 April 2023

New Update, finally did something! Including texturing him and starting on the idea I have for him in mind...I guess...watch this space?

Transition from invisible to visible WIP.

RigB's textures, almost possibly maybe perhaps the final for now :)

These were my references for RigB's look along with the feel I wanted for his VFX and stuff.

Put it inside Unreal as that's where I'll be creating the vfx and rendering. I also did a base material test just to see if Unreal would play nice with a model that uses udimms...and the answer is yes, yes it does.

I prepared the model inside Houdini, deleted the prop VFX so I can add my own on top!