Unexpected Old Spice Deodorant Reference For Gameplay Animation
More insights into the making of Psych Rift.
Whether you're drawing or animating, it's hard to work without references, no matter how skilled you are. It's the best way to capture real-life movement accurately and avoid mistakes that can come from relying on memory alone. The most interesting part is seeing what ends up becoming a reference. Sometimes, it's the last thing you'd expect.
Since the beginning of the year, we've been sharing progress on Ablaze Interactive's Psych Rift, which Control and BioShock fans might enjoy. It's a supernatural action-adventure game where you use a telekinetic glove to fight your way through reality-bending worlds and their monsters, while trying to escape a research lab. The developer often shares behind-the-scenes looks at the game, from how the wall transformation works to the custom occlusion system, and this time, he showed how a bottle that looks like Old Spice Original became the reference for the healing injection.
"In this case having a reference video helped not as much for posing, as it did for timing the keyframe animation, and I always try to have a reference when animating.
Compared to the other animations for the arms, which are dynamic and based on IK, this one works differently because the two arms interact and have to be in sync.
This animation is integrated in the blend tree as a OneShot override applied only to the arms, along with a CopyTransformModifier3D to lock the ribcage rotation, so the arms don't swing sideways while the character is moving and remain forward relative to the camera angle.
This red one here is a healing shot, but there will be more with different effects on the player."
We highly recommend checking out the official YouTube channel for more close-up showcases of the game's features. This diegetic map is especially beautiful.
For those looking to get started with game development in Godot, The GameDev Tavern's tutorial series and GodotGameLab's content are great resources to check out.
Wishlist Psych Rift here, and don't forget to subscribe to our Newsletter, join our 80 Level Talent platform, Discord, and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Telegram, and Instagram, where we share breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.
Are you a fan of what we do here at 80 Level? Then make sure to set us as a Preferred Source on Google to see more of our content in your feed.
