Medhue Animations

Well, maybe not everywhere, but definitely in Secondlife, and in any Unity game. Although, I did learn, in the process of creating these snakes, that I have rattlesnakes in the woods around me. I live in Michigan, and was very big into mountain biking through all the back woods of my local parks within an hour of me. Never was I informed that there are rattlesnakes in Michigan. I'm not sure that I would have been so reckless, speeding through the woods, alone, and only 1 mistake from major injuring, after crashing massively, which happened many times. At least I did wear a helmet, lol.

 

On to business.... In the past couples of week, I have released a number of different snake products. I was asked, by a client, to create a rattlesnake for their game, and considering what is possible in Unity today, I decided that it made sense to not only make a rattlesnake, but that same model could morph into any snake possible. In theory and in practice, it was possible, but not quite as straight forward as it would seem. When creating all the different snake heads, such as a cobra, or viper, or python type of head, there can be some major differences. I simply altered the scaling of the bones of the head and jaw, to create the different head types. This creates problems, because whether I include scaling of the bones in the animations or not, Unity's engine reads it. This being the case, I had to create different animations for every snake type, which I guess isn't such a bad thing, as snakes do not all move alike.

http://www.medhueanimations.com/collections/frontpage/products/medhue-snakes-for-unity3d

 

These snakes are not really low polygon, but also do not have excessive geometry. Snakes bend and twist in pretty extreme ways, and require more polygons and bones to be able to bend in those ways. The snakes are low enough that it should not be an issue for most games. Here's a look at their wireframe:

 

There are some snakes that are more popular than others, 1 being the cobra. I have separated the package out into some individual snakes that developers might want or need. Currently, you can purchase a cobra, rattlesnake, python, or buy the full package, which includes body and types of 6 different snakes, head types of 7 different types of snakes, and textures packs for 9 different snake skins. The full package includes an anaconda, black mamba, cobra, coral snake, king snake, python, rattlesnake, and viper. Using all these different morphs(blend shapes), you could create almost any snake possible.

http://www.medhueanimations.com/collections/frontpage/products/medhue-cobra-for-unity3d

http://www.medhueanimations.com/collections/frontpage/products/medhue-rattlesnake-for-unity3d

http://www.medhueanimations.com/collections/frontpage/products/medhue-python-for-unity3d

 

I have also created a Youtube video that shows off the snakes and the full package in Unity.

 

 

In the virtual world of Secondlife, I have used the cobra version of this model to rig it to the Secondlife skeleton. Not an easy task, and very limited in bones, but I still very much enjoy being a cobra in SL. Plus, Secondlife has many very cool features, like gestures and animations triggered by voice that really makes being a cobra an interesting and unique experience for both you and your friends.

https://marketplace.secondlife.com/p/Medhue-Cobra-Bento/10549161

 

Have fun!

Medhue

 

 

 

Written by Robert Lopp — September 17, 2014

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