GRIMSTONE ENEMY OVERVIEW
Grimstone Valley sees the player contend with the aftermath of a doomsday cult's ritual gone wrong. The once peaceful valley has been warped into a nightmarish hellscape overrun with eldritch monstrosities. The player will come up against three of these abominations over the course of the game: the pick-handed Scab, the gun-headed Snipeling, and the Wroughtboar, the game's final boss.
I was tasked with translating the concepts created by our 2D artist into fully modeled and rigged 3D characters. I modeled each of the enemies in Blender, where I also rigged and animated the Scab. I rigged the Snipeling and Wroughtboar in Maya, the program our contracted animator preferred. Finally, I imported the models and animations into Unity, where I set up each enemy's animator.
FROM CONCEPT TO MODEL
Grimstone Valley's enemies were designed by the team's main 2D artist, Connor Dunn; it was my job to translate these characters into 3D. One of the game's main artistic inspirations was the animated short The Backwater Gospel, which inspired the more segmented models and the planar 2D approach to elements like the clothing.
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SCAB
The Scab is the game's basic melee enemy type. There are several variants of this enemy throughout the game, but all use the same model, rig, and animations, which I created in Blender.
While creating the Scab's model and animations, I kept our game's distant third-person camera perspective in mind. To make the enemy and its animations easier to read from that distance, I exaggerated the most important aspects. As an example, I made the pickaxe arm much larger than in the initial concept since it plays such a crucial role in communicating the Scab's attack animation.
- MODEL RIG ANIMATION ▲1418 🦴30
- ANIMATION BREAKDOWN
SNIPELING
The Snipeling, known internally as Gunhead, is an evasive ranged enemy; it focuses on keeping its distance and attacking from afar. I modeled the character in Blender, and then rigged it in Maya before sending it over to our contracted character animator, Andrea Krebbers.
Similar to the Scab, I exaggerated the Snipeling's revolver head by making it larger than the initial concept called for. This change helped make the character more readable from our game's camera perspective.
- MODEL RIG ▲1568 CLICK TO ENLARGE
- ANIMATOR BREAKDOWN
WROUGHTBOAR
Part train, part boar, the Wroughtboar is Grimstone Valley's unrelenting final boss. As with the Snipeling, I modeled this character in Blender, rigged it in Maya, and passed it on to Andrea Krebbers for animation.
The Wroughtboar is special in how it features some procedural animation. Instead of being keyframe animated, the Wroughtboar's tail will respond in real-time to how the enemy moves. This extra touch helps make the character feel more organic and believable.
- MODEL RIG ▲1403 CLICK TO ENLARGE
- ANIMATOR BREAKDOWN
UNITY ANIMATOR INTEGRATION
- ANIMATOR BREAKDOWN CLICK TO VIEW ALL
In addition to modeling and rigging, I was also in charge of importing the enemies and their animations into Unity, where I then created each enemy's animator.
I was able to use the same general animator setup for each of our enemies. I worked with design to plan out our enemies' different states and what priority these states took. This then allowed me to build and arrange the animator's different layers. For example, the enemy's death state takes precedence over all other states, so the death override layer has the highest priority in the animator, overriding all other animations.
The animator breakdown videos at the end of each enemy's section also show these animators in action.
RENDER GALLERY
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