Biped Animation

I've modeled one of my characters with Biped Bones. Although this is a fast way of generating an animation for a simple human like character I'm not finding it flexable enough so I'm going to continue to animate with my custom bones version.

Clarc Animation - 3D Studio Max Biped Bone Test from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

My aim is to have the character Clarc walk like Dog from Half Life 2 when he's excited or moving fast:


The character Clarc is a lifing robot so he will also be able to walk on just his feet when carrying heavy loads.

Clarc Animation

Here's a screen shot of Clarc with his Biped bones in:

Well i've done it again...

Like everytime before I've left things with one project to the last miniute after concentraiting all my efforts on another project (aka my UT Map). I have untill wednesday to get my animation done and it's going to be alot of work. Currently I have two areas for my characters to interact with almost complete. I'm confident that I'll produce work good enough to hand in and host a video online.

I think once I hand the project in I'll still put more work into it over the summer holidays. I've spent quite a bit of time into character development and I really like what I've come up with. I think my charcaters are well established and have great personalities. I just hope that I can put this across well enough with the time I have left.

All this being said I'm really very proud of how my Unreal Tournament map has turned out and I think it's some of the best work I've ever done. I've had a few focus groups of hardcore gamers play it now and I've had great responces. Also personally I really love playing it, being a quite hardcore gamer myself I find the flow and pacing of the level works also all the areas seem to have equal usage instead of just one area which everyone fights for controll over.

Well I should get back to work on my animation. I'm quite sure my animation will be to a good standard. I'm just ashamed of myself for not giving it more time. I'm really sure that if I had another week to work on it I could make something truely amazing.

Unreal Tournament 2004 Map Complete

I finally got it finished and i'm really proud of how it turned out. Here's a video of me playing it against adpet dificulty bots.

My Unreal Tournament 2004 Map from Jay Jackson-Hicks on Vimeo.

DM-Spectrum - Who said UT3 was just gray?

A new custom map was made for Unreal Tournament 3, and it has a great twist. The rooms are pitch black and the only way you can find other players is by the trail of light they leave behind them as they move across the map.

DM-Spectrum from Matthew Bradley on Vimeo.

For more infomation I recommend you check out the artical on Kotaku.

Unreal Tournament Map

I'm almost done with my map now. There is just a tiny bit of texturing to do and apart from that all I have to do is bot paths and lighting. I've placed all the static meshes I think I'll need.

Here are a few screen shots I took awhile back. Some rooms have been improved since they were taken.

Animation Trouble

I've been working on my animation recently and i've run into some trouble with the arms.


This is a picture of the hand when it is straight, all the joints are perfectly round and how they are ment to be.


Once i try rotating the joints though they warp and strech.


This problem is starting to concern me as I remade the hand once already to try and fix this problem.