Making an Animation for my 3D Pixel Art Game

One of the benefits to making my pixel art game in a 3D game engine is the ability to very quickly build and iterate on animation assets. Among other things, it allows the player model and weapon models to be swapped very easily.

Animating convincingly in this style is a little different from typical 3D game animations, but with some guidance and experimentation I think I found some techniques that look promising.

I still have a lot to learn and improve on when it comes to character animation, but my current abilities should be enough to begin prototyping the gameplay ideas I have in mind.

Timestamps:
0:00 intro
0:24 references
1:38 animation first pass
3:16 importing and previewing
4:05 smear interpolation
4:47 animation second pass
6:03 secondary motion and tweaks
6:57 final animation
7:05 conclusion

Chinese subtitles generously provided by twitter user @hugo48224093

Music:
lofi geek - give me
lofi geek - souls
lofi geek - real

[gweatgawivarietydunk]

"Relative Beginner" youre doing something unique and absolutely beautiful, keep at it!

[RegahP]

this guy literally first time programming procedural stylized smearing like it's second nature... i'm so jealous, i aspire to be this determined to learn and accomplish goals and also be efficient like this, please don't stop doing these videos, it gives so much insight and also greatly inspires me

[PandaBazookaWarz]

The fact that the pixel art of the character and it's animations look hand drawn says a lot about the quality of your shader. I'm really excited about where this project is headed and something tells me you'll be at 100k subs in the near future. Just keep up the good work man. 👌👌👌

[AdamCYounis]

Amazing, as always. I'm so excited to watch your game come to life!

[froggouk]

I honestly can't wait to play this, this is sick.

[aaroshdas]

I feel like you have been asked this a lot but, I really like the pixelated look you get in your previous videos and this one. I don't really fully understand many of the descriptions of your past video and although creating that pixelated feel in 3d is simple, you do it in such an awesome way and it looks so nice (the trees and the grass especially). If you wouldn't mind making a tutorial, I think many of us would be grateful.

[iankelley]

This is, without a doubt, the most unique game dev I've seen. Incredible job!

[jeffy]

I'd play this just for the art, this is so sick, underrated channep

[Jelkeludo]

These are such a joy to watch! I'm definitely excited to see where this project is going to

[DonQuichotteLiberia]

Wow, you are a complete badass. Arts, engineering, math, all comes together so naturally in your videos. Great work!

[NotWillGorman]

These workflow/devlog videos are easily one of my favourite things on YouTube. Keep it up!

[supermuffinbros]

7:04 The transition from animation software to game was very smooth.

[logeryx]

This looks SO COOL! When this game comes out, I'm buying it straight away. I love pixel art and I always thought that 3D pixel art doesn't look that good, but DAMN! This is perfect. (Speaking about all of your videos)

[rift]

Two things I learned from this:
- Cascadeur is awesome. I never heard of the program before this video, and the AI-assisted keyframing sounds very interesting. I'll definitely give it a try.
- At 6:18, it's ok (and in cases like these encouraged) to keyframe raw joints alongside bones we designate for handling/assistance/master controls. I was always under the impression that I'm making my keyframes too data-heavy by doing this; that I'm doing something wrong with the way I set up my handles as I must rely solely on their keyframes to animate the object. Thank you for clearing that misconception I've had.

[choppedandspewed]

you just gonna throw in that perfect transition at @7:05 like that and not mention it OKAY FRIEND I SEE YOU

[BlackIndigenousPosse]

I've been playing video games for almost 30 years, and I can count on one hand the number of upcoming games that I've been content to just LOOK at. You've got lightning in a bottle. I'm certain that your success is just a matter of time.

[TheCobyRandal]

Your passion project is coming along beautifully. It's always cool to see the updates you post for it, so thanks for sharing.

[kfogo]

Man, this is so awesome! I always get a huge urge to return to my game project when i see videos like yours, but at the moment i have no time for free stuff like that unfortunately. Thanks a lot for sharing, i love low resolution and stilized visuals tremendously and you did a great job with the animation, too!

[eboatwright_]

I know this video is older, but I just wanted to say how amazing it looks! It looks so crispy but smooth at the same time. Great work!

[stylextv]

Wow! That looks so awesome. Great job!