sonder
Rigg, Animation & UE5 Implementation
Winner of Gamer's Choice 2024
After the games release on Steam, Sonder recieved a lot of praise. With over 250k Steam Library Claims and overwhelming positive feedback we decided to try our luck at the Swedish Game Awards SGA. Sonder ended up winning Gamer's Choice as well as getting nominated in the Best Technology and Best Audio categories! ✨
Project Overview
​​​This was a team project done over the span of 10 weeks. I was the sole animator of the team and all the riggs and animations presented here were done by me in Maya.
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All 3D-models were provided by our 3D-artist Nora Gate, check her out here!
Rigging
For this two player co-op game I rigged two main characters, as well as enemies. The rigs had IK/FK switches for added control in the animations.
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Animating
For the animations I had to create roughly the same sets of animations for both characters - idle, run, jump, basic attack etc. - but I wanted to make them as distinct as possible. The characters were polar opposites and I tried to show that through their unique movements.
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My favorite was animating the run cycle for Soul (the yellow blob character) with the arms dragging behind.
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In Engine
One of the features in this game was the grappling mechanic for the Robot (the character with a TV for a head). The arm of the Robot needed to stretch in order to reach the grappling hooks.
I worked closely with Emil Lundström, one of our skilled programmers, and did some research into different solutions. After experimenting with control rigs and different nodes in the Animations Blueprint, we ultimatley landed on placing the hand joint on the target location. Through some ✨trigonometry✨ we calculated the angle and rotated the joint accordingly, so the arm would appear straight.
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Mo-cap
During this project I also got to try out working with motion capture. I learnt about planning the mo-cap shots, retargeting and lastly cleaning up the animations for use in game.
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The mo-cap animations where used in the cinematic cutscenes of the game.
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Shoutout to our great level designer, Hannes Lemberg, for the great mo-cap acting!
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