This project was carried out during a freelance mission for SteakMachine, an independent game studio created by students from Campus ADN, some of whom I had previously mentored. My responsibility was to identify the main production bottlenecks while focusing on the integration of animations and cinematics and tying them to gameplay.
Building an animation and cinematics pipeline between Notion, Maya and Unity
Problem
There were many animation assets (models, rigs, cameras, audio, etc) to integrate and they all had to stay up to date as the artists progressed. We also needed to track the project’s progress and ensure good communication between artists, production and programmers.
Workflow
- Artists create their animations in Maya.
- They export the files into a folder synced with Perforce.
- They enter the file path into the appropriate place in the Notion database.
- In Unity, they press a button to synchronize the assets with Perforce, update them, and import them into the engine.
Developing a cutscene creation system and all related gameplay logic
Problem
The game is similar to chess, but the player can choose to move like a pawn, knight, bishop, etc. To do that, they draw three cards that each represent a chess piece.
They can also perform several moves during the same turn and trigger visual effects depending on the number of enemies eliminated during that turn (combos).
Workflow
- The tool creates a sequence for each department (VFX, SFX, camera, animation, gameplay), links them to a main sequence that represents a card, and generates one main sequence per combo level.
- The sequence for combo n is reused in combo n+1, starting from combo 0 as the default cinematic to avoid redundancy.
- Cinematic-specific assets are then imported into the sequences, and it is possible to preview them directly in the editor.