I’m looking for an animator/rigger for the indie game project, to help me in making the main character (s) come to life, in order to create a vertical slice. This is a freelance project, but I would prefer to work with the same person on a regular basis, as there will be lots of work both before and after the game gets funding (until then, it’s self-funded by me). If I’m lucky enough to find a professional reliable and stable as that, I would like to hire him/her for a 2-3 years project.
Please note: The final output isn’t going to be 3D. I.e. the final animations will be exported as png sequences and each frame will be turned into painting using the rotoscoping technique. Although it doesn’t mean that the animation should be of a low quality, but some of the minor defects can be ignored.
Here’s the list of the tasks I need to get done for now:
Rigging the character using Mixamo armature (the one that contains finger bones, to create the hand poses for the pose library). Current Mixamo auto-rigger doesn’t contain fingered armatures anymore, but some of the downloadable Mixamo characters do.
Rigging the cape (Wiggle bone addon) and parent it to the character (using any method you prefer). Character has a sword, bow and an arrow quiver on his back, which means that the middle part of the cape should have less dynamics. So the the rig bones should rotate only below these items, the upper ones should be locked via bone constraints (needs to be tested). The bone constraints should be used on the rest of the bones as well, to limit the amount of the rotation, so that the cape couldn’t penetrate the body. Please keep in mind, that the cape animations should be looped and turned into cycles. This is the reason I don’t want to use the cloth simulation (as the mesh cache modifiers are too complex and problematic). I assume, the first and last frames of the cape in each cycle will have to be keyframed, to create a loop. Othewise, wiggle bone addon might continue moving cape after the cycle has ended and the start and finish of the loop won’t match, I guess…
Rigging the mantle. It should just a regular rig, possibly parented with automated weights and a minor tweaks made after that. But just some parts of it, mainly the lower part of the mantle, which is closer to the ground should behave a little bit similar to cloth, which I guess means that that part should have Wiggle bones and so on. I’m not going to use the mantle for dynamic animations, like sprint or fight etc. Mostly walking cycle, slow running, picking/interacting with items, speak with people and so on. So the mantle rig and the way it behaves doesn’t have to be perfect in a way, that it looked natural while performing a complex fight choreography moves etc.
As for the animations, I need to use a mixture of 3 different sources:
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Mixamo (for basic animations)
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Custom motion capture data (mostly for swordfighting), which I’m planning to order to London based motion capture studio. As far as I know, they are using Xsens technology for tracking.
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Horse rider animations, which I’m going to buy online (The one that I’m thinking about contains the fbx animations created primarily for 3Ds Max, which I hope will possible to convert to blender supported ones, by just checking automatic bone orientation while importing to Blender: https://streamable.com/6vmazi) .
I need Xsens data and Horse rider animations to be retargeted, to match Mixamo rig. Supposedly with Auto-rig pro Blender addon (Or using any other method you prefer).
Adding the animations to the character I most likely handle myself, but I might need some help here as well, especially in positioning the weapons correctly in hands (swords, bow) while character is performing actions.
*A note: There’s no facial rig on a character, but I’m planning to use Shapekeys + Rhubarb Lipsync addon, which makes the shapekeys follow an audio, imported in Blender, by controlling the shapekeys via bones. Let me know if that can possibly get in conflict with any aspects of your work.
Although there’s only 1 body mesh, with different textures and some accessories/equipment (headdress for example) it turns into 3 main characters. So, basically there’s only 1 character, that needs rigging and a couple of headdresses and scarfs in addition to it, which belog to different characters.
Write any questions you have regarding further details by email.
I’m a visual artist and I know how important It is to be protected while working online. So I’m ok with any methods of work, whether it’s signing an online contract, milestones, paying on freelance websites, like Upwork etc. (Would be prefer to avoid freelance website though, as I’ll have to pay service fee for everything).
Just please keep in mind, that the project is on an early stage and currently self-funded only by me, so try to not treat me as a studio which already got funded or has a publisher / financial donor / sponsor J
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