Props, dynamic objects, and radifications

Been a while since I posted anything, but there is a good reason! Over the past few months I've been working at Next Level Games on "A project" as a prop artist, or technical prop artist. So far it's been an interesting venture and I've really been able to get in touch with my art side, making both low and high poly objects, then integrating them into the game.

Obviously I can't mention anything about this project, yet... No art styles, settings, time periods, etc. sorry ;) But I can talk about the props objectively, and some of the various tools I've been thinking about writing to help me out.

One thing I've noticed that I can't do is animate an object using modifiers, such as using path deform, with object space or world space. At least make an animation that will transfer to the game. The motion path constraint does work, but I can't change the type of key framing, so all motion is linear from one key frame to the next.

While this works, it's no ideal. So I've started thinking about a script that will look at the percentage-along-path of the modifier Path Deform, and apply it the object with the path constraint motion every frame. In this case there really will be a need to brute force my way through.

While something like this would definitely work for one object, it becomes more difficult to apply the same motion to objects ahead and behind the target, which are suppose to share the same animations. An example would be a roll up door, or a tank tread where each segment is a unique object.

In this case I think I may just settle for manual tuning of values, and once I find the appropriate offset it becomes a simple case of multiplying the offset for each object.

Quick, easy, simple :) Now I just need to find some time to write this ;)