Game Development - Crab Animation

Once the concept was set, I began modelling the crab itself in Maya. 

I was lucky that the entire design was symmetrical, meaning I only had to model, rig and weight paint one side, and then save time by mirroring it to the other side.

I wanted a separation between the top and bottom of the crab shell, so ended up
creating two different objects and merging the edges together

Added the eyes as well as placing the area for the pincer

Design of the pincer. The bottom pincer has a more rugged shape for a more rough
feel

Modelling legs and merging to body.

Finished half of crab as well as checking how the legs would
fit the plane.

When I mirrored the geometry, we noticed the very...interesting topology which had to be
simplified. I initially thought that you had to extend everything back to the
center vertex which led to an overloaded number of edges to the "supposed to be" low poly model.

Went back to before I mirrored the geomtry to clean up the topology.

 

I realised I forgot to add the cross on the middle of his shell so after adding half of that,
I mirrored the geometry again for the final crab model

Using the Auto Unwrap UV tool, I also went and smoothed out the UVs so they had as little
distortion from the original model as possible. I decided to go with a red crab because it would stand out
from the overall environment along with the pirate. (Red also can signify danger! >w<)

Crabby finished with the UV textures! 

Also did the same half -> mirror for the joints as well to keep it consistent throughout the
entire model.

Jerwin actually told me about a multi-chain IK handle which would be
useful to moving my legs rather than having to move each individual joint. A normal
IK handle didn't really work because of the multiple joints within the leg instead of
one.

Joints finished along with the controls being added. Good thing there were tools
custom made by the college which helped with auto control. (Just had to make
sure the rotation axis was correct)

Weight painting process...

Final animation for walk cycle

I was supposed to also do a death animation for the crab where it flipped over onto its back and had one leg twitching but I ended up taking a lot longer just for the initial crab itself. Also, Ethan had a code already inputted into the Unity file which made the crab disappear after the player killed it. Ethan would have had to change the code for the death as well when we were all running low on time so we ended up cutting it out. T_T