LogInMatthias Pressler celebrated the end of 2023 with a collection of incredible technical animations made using Cascadeur and Unreal.
A week ago, Technical Artist and Designer Matthias "Maze" Pressler, known to many for his experiments with Houdini and Unreal Engine, celebrated the end of 2023 by sharing an impressive demo showcasing a series of fluid door interaction animations set up for a stealth game, currently in development.
As some of you may already know first-hand, creating doors for video games is often considered one of the most challenging tasks a developer may encounter. It requires ensuring that the doors seamlessly integrate with their surroundings, make logical sense, and look visually appealing, typically involving collaboration from entire teams to achieve a satisfying result.
Similar to the experiences of other developers, Matthias found setting up realistic door animations to be a challenging endeavor, describing the process as "surprisingly tricky" and "straightforward to start with, but hard to master". Nevertheless, the final result, embedded above, was well worth the effort, closely resembling how a person would naturally interact with a door in real life.
According to Matthias, his fantastic door interaction animations were created in Unreal Engine using Cascadeur, an AI-powered 3D keyframe animation software that lets artists and game developers create physically-accurate animations quickly and easily.
The setup features a modular system design, adaptable for various interactables, animation implementation via data tables, and directable Hand-IK placement for scene-aware positioning using Control Rig. Furthermore, it includes a "Walk to Location" feature with a slowdown effect, along with Motion Warping to enhance character transitions.
A month ago, Matthias also joined 80 Level to explain how Unreal Engine's Procedural Content Generation (PCG) framework helped him create the procedural garden generator and discuss the role packed level instances had in the project. You can read the full interview by clicking this link.
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