ECHOES
2023 - 2024
Isometric roguelite action adventure.
MY ROLE:
Technical Artist
VFX Artist
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TEAM SIZE
20+ USC Advanced Game Project
PLATFORM
Windows
Echoes is an isometric action roguelite where you attack by dashing through enemies.
Play as Beira, a fallen fae queen. Explore ruins and fight your corrupted subjects. Get stronger by collecting items and regaining memories...
My Responsibilities:
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Designed and implemented VFX for character abilities using particle systems and custom shaders.
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Authored Editor VFX utilities for designers for fast iterations.
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Led creation of 3D character models and rigging hitting concept art standards and performance requirements.
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Created technical documentation for artists to perform rigging and animation retargeting.
GAMEPLAY
RIGGING & RETARGETING
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Character meshes are sculpted in ZBrush and imported into Maya for additional modeling and adjustments.
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Creating skeletons, IK joints, skin-weight painting, and animation retargeting is done in Maya.
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For Soldier, I implemented aim-constraint for the chest blade to auto-lock onto the player in Unity.
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Mage used a combination of smooth-weight painting and mechanical rigging techniques for correct deformation.
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The cape physics is completely based on joint deformation. Each side of the cape is weighted correspondingly to the left and right cape arms.
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In Unity, I set up Damped Transform on the cape arms to achieve the chained motion. Optimization could be done using Vertex animations instead. But the current effect looks pretty cool still :)
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I incorporated the image projection technique for rendering Bren the Merchant.
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Since Bren will be mostly stationary in one pose standing inside his shop, I created UVs through camera view projection, and then mapped the concept art of Bren onto the model. With further adjustments on the textures, it actually looks very decent from the game's orthographic view with a rather flexible viewing angel.
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RIGGING DOCUMENTATION
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Please use the link for the best viewing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/10epRQV1ItNbHCyTTETBIt-hBUPPfgtoBC-NGL6h0ZaE/edit?usp=sharing
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MAYA TOOL
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I created a Batch Renaming tool using Python to help with the repetitive naming of joints and other large-quantity renaming operations.
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This tool supports multiple joint selections and customizable number padding according to the user input.
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Automatic left and right name filling and switching.
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HEAL VFX
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The blooming flower of the healing effect consists of several layers:
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Flower blooming is created by stacking layers of flower texture on a plane with distortion controlled by custom data.
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2 different sprite graphics from an Atlas for the rising sparkles.
DASH VFX
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The dashing VFX must depict strength and agility. There are a handful of components combined together to achieve the final looks of the effect:
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A proxy mesh of Beira is spawned with a dissolve shader controlled by custom data.
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Dash trail with sprint line and fireflies effect.
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Dash burst and air turbulent effects.
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Impact ring effect.
TARGET INDICATOR VFX
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A magical orb target indicator emerges when the player selects a ruin that enables dashing:
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A breathing shape-shifting orb source with flares.
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Vortex particles.
When intersecting with enemies:
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The indicator line will be highlighted.
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The enemy base rim will be highlighted.
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VFX EDITOR
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Visualizing and exposing easily adjustable parameters of Enemy VFX for designers to art direct in real-time.
