Slava Baravik showcased his work.
Slava Baravik, Senior Technical Animator at Bloober Team, whose work we greatly admire at 80 Level, has released an in-depth video sharing his contributions to the newly launched survival horror title Cronos: The New Dawn, following his previous centipede rig showcase.
In the video, Slava highlights character rigs, procedural animation, mocap retargeting, and a range of custom rigging and animation tools, like Smart Layer. Alongside the finished work, he also included work-in-progress animations labeled as "tests" and "raw data".
According to him, to boost performance, enemy deformations relied on corrective joints and pose drivers with minimal bones (00:11). Multiple creature variants shared a skeleton, enabling real-time transformations (00:30). Procedural flinches via control rig enhanced weapon impact (00:35), while custom logic handled asymmetrical parts (00:50). Stretchy limbs and complex joint motions were rigged using a custom IK system (01:00):
Slava Baravik has amazing YouTube tutorials, for example, here's his guide on creating creature locomotion:
If you aren't familiar with Smart Layer, his custom Maya script, he also has a full series on how to use it:
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