I worked at Naughty Dog from 2003-2006 on Mark Cerny's ICE Team. We were a secret team inside of Naughty Dog that was tasked with building the base PlayStation 3 engine for all of Sony's PlayStation 3 Launch Titles. As the team artist, I was responsible for all art related development tasks, as well as working with each studio to address their specific game art needs. This ranged from modeling techniques with advanced LOD creation, animation systems, materials/lighting, physics simulations and training all of the studios on the new tools and techniques. In the beginning there was somewhere between 13-16 studios we were working with, and I was the primary art contact between our team and each of the studios. None of these assets were used in a game, only for training and R&D purposes. I am unable to show a lot of the work and documentation due to the work being the property of the individual studios.
I was given a rough sketch of George: The Treebeast so I built this. He was meant to be an old forest creature that has started growing mold and saplings on its back.
George was an example of multiple secondary animation types. Hair based splineIK curves with curve blendshapes to deform the branches with physics. A joint based muscle system, and an advanced Progressive Mesh LOD system.
This was a splineIK test to add muscle deformation and jiggle. The splines were turned into physics hair, constrained the ends to the joints. Can get automatic jiggle with just a couple joints. Plus you can add blendshapes to the curves for added control.
This built on the lessons leaned in the previous video. It is subtle, but there is movement along the pecs, legs and arms that gives more secondary movement to make things look less stiff.
Even works on clothed characters. The secondary movements just adds some weight and follow through to the movements.