Pokemon Unreal Animation Project

Today I’m starting a project I have been planning for a while. It’s a simple animation project that will make it’s way into Unreal.

The end goal is to have a playable character with a Pokemon following it. Mainly to show off my animations in a more practical way (Being used in engine rather than looping in Maya.) I’m also using this to gain more experience at working on finalizing a project and working on more than one area of development. To begin with it will be simple, but who knows what it could grow into.

Just finished rigging the main character.

Step 1 complete!!
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Update!! **

I just wanted to make it clear that the trainer model and any Pokemon models I use are taken from the Pokemon X/Y games and I have no ownership over them. I will be rigging and animating them and getting them into a game engine purely for portfolio reasons and I will not be claiming them as my own.

Update 001

Quick update. Got the basic animations done for the player character (Idle, Walk, Run) they need some work but I often find getting it in engine shows you a lot more than watching over and over in Maya. Going to get the Pokemon rigged up over the next week so i can get that in engine following the trainer around.

This is my first time rigging a quadruped, got the bones setup. Will finish the rigging today and get it animated and in engine as soon as possible. Eevee will be the Pokemon that follows the player around the world with it’s own set of animations. Some of the extra features I may add down the line is allowing the player to choose from a variety of Pokemon to follow them. It would be a nice feature and allow for more rigging and animation at my end.

Eevee rig is setup. Decided to show off a quick pose. It is one of my favorite Pokemon so it feels great to be able to work with it, Will start animating tomorrow. Once again this is the first time I have rigged a quadraped and I have to say I am pretty proud of it. It has taught me a lot which should make future rigging a whole lot easier.

Another quick update. Just been testing some of Eevee’s animations in Unreal. The bouncy one is unfinished but I wanted to get a feel for how it looked. I’m also thinking of redoing the run for the Player character, anyone got any good tutorials or reference?? I’ve looked at a few and I just can’t get it right.

Another quick update, Just spent the past few hours getting Eevee to follow the player and with the help of a couple of friends it is working quite nicely. Going to really pick up the pace over the next week and make improvements to the player animations.

Made a quick video with voice over to explain the changes I have made with this update. Pleased with the progress, now I am going to start looking into the environment and some of the technical art aspects.

Started working on the Pokemon center. This is my first time modelling in over a year and my first time modelling in Maya. It all seems to be going OK, something always goes wrong eventually with 3D modelling!! Also had a mess around with foliage, it’s all placeholder for now but progress is progress.

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Looks super cute, and the animation is top notch! Did you animate all that yourself?

Thanks a lot :smiley: Some of the animations need some work still.

Yeah I have made everything apart from the 3D models. Any Pokemon or Characters I use are from Pokemon X/Y. Any other assets, animation or rigging have been/ will be made by me.

Started blocking out a basic town for the starting area and I finally got the Player Characters run animation to look good.

There is Copyright problem. I am not sure you can use any game models to promote your portfolio or promote your demo.

Hmmm, Well I am not claiming them as my own and I am not making any money from it so I assumed it would be fine. I have seen a few projects that do similar things.

If however that is the case then that’s one massive bummer.

Today I am putting the Pokemon Project to an end. I started this project to improve my rigging and animation skills as well as getting something running in engine. I achieved all of that and I am pretty happy with the results. I am now however moving onto another project, me and a friend of mine are making a mobile game in UE4 that will be entirely of our own creation. I won’t be showing anything soon but be sure to keep an eye out in the future.

Thanks to anyone who checked out the project and anyone who sent me messages or gave me feedback.

wooooooow! This is beautiful! I love reading through your journey! I was wondering if there was any way you could send me your files so I could study them?! I’m currently trying to learn how to rig characters that mostly look like pokemon and I’d love to reverse engineer your stuff! If not, whatev :wink: But great job! Looks fantastic!