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UNITY ANIMATIC PROJECT

Duration: January 2019 ( ~3 weeks )

After I finished The Adventure of Khaoneeo & Mamuang Project, I saw a Unity South SAPAC Competition, which required you to make an animation in the SEA theme using the newly released Unity tool. At that time, I was riding a feeling that I could use Unity to create a 2.5d-ish art style in my head. During that time, there wasn't anyone doing this art style much yet ( this is in early 2018, I found only Okhlos: Omega game, but later that year, Octopath Traveler release ), and I wanted to experiment with it more, so I decided to participate with almost a month left till the deadline.

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Summited video that got an award

DEVELOPMENT PROCESS / TOOLS

This project required you to use Unity's new release built-in tool called Cinemachine & Timeline. It was a little bit of a struggle because there's a little tutorial available & a little Unity documentation; plus, the tools are a bit buggy. So I did a lot of research and experiment with the tools, praying to a god of game development, hoping the tools wouldn't be too bug and make my project crash ( which it did a couple of times ); in the end, I've managed to finish it.

Tools

Unity
- Cinemachine
  - Control camera movement along with Timeline.
- Timeline
  - Manage individual animation files assigned to each object with the Animation Component
  - Manage transition between each Cinemachine Camera
- Post Processing
  - Assigned Post Process Effects differently between each area
- Animation
  - Make Animations file for using in Timeline
Photoshop
- Create pixelated assets
- Create concept art
Magica Voxel
- Create 3D assets

CONCEPT ART & DESIGN

Concept art time! Besides the need to use Cinemachine & Timeline, the overall theme of the animations requires it to be in SEA ( South East Asia ). Luckily, I just recently visited Vietnam, so I've got lots of inspiration from their city. I scribbled many ideas onto my notebook and then translated them to a digital version to get a targeted mood & tone. Though I expected myself to create more concept art, I only gave myself a time limit of 1 week because I needed to get into the production process fast since there were a lot of tools I didn't know about.

Some of presentable concept art in traditional and digital

ART ASSETS

Making loads of assets! This part is as simple as it looks; I make lots of 2D pixelated art required in the scene according to concept art and also for the animations. So it's just a more laborious work process.

2D pixelated art assets

These are animated sprites, which are animated individually with animation components tied to them. With this technique, we can drag that object around the scene with separate animations recorded in Timeline and can even assign pre-made individual animations to that object. With this process, the whole process of animation is more convenient.

Example 2D sprite animations

CINEMACHINE, TIMELINE & POST PROCESSING

After the animation process above, I just need to assemble everything in Timeline. A Timeline is like a big animation controller, which works almost like a typical video editor timeline. I've used a timeline to activate each animation asset, environment, and Cinemachine camera.

Camera position diagram

Each scene activation using Timeline

Multiple camera activation along with audio

ENVIRONMENT ASSEMBLING

Assembling is simple, as the title says; after collectively creating lots of assets and making them prefab, the next step is assembling everything in a scene as planned. Add some lighting, bake light, and boom; you're done. The thing to be looked out for is placing light probes; thus, some assets aren't static, such as moving cars, people, characters, etc.

Some screenshot of environment

My Conclusion :

Reflecting on what I've done, this is a passion project that I probably couldn't do again with my current circumstances as an adult with responsibility. Being a student with no responsibilities plus a fire-like passion ( because I just graduated high school and haven't gone to college yet ) is a perfect circumstance to wrap up this big project in 3 weeks. I could do it again and better. If I was unemployed, I had no worries that I'd make it till the next paycheck.

I couldn't be thankful enough to Unity Singapore for giving me this opportunity to visit Unite Convention Melbourne and supporting me throughout the whole trip; plus, I got the chance to speak ( technically mumbling 😭) at Unite Bangkok. Big cheers to the Unity Singapore team!

Photo taken with Ms.Xin Yu from the Unity Singapore team; though I was very shy at that time, I'm very thankful she took care of me well during the Melbourne visit.

photo taken in Unite Bangkok 2018 by Natachanan Lumpikanon ( Thank you P.Nattyboy! )

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