Video Games ----- Resume ----- Email rogerberrones at hotmail

John Woo Presents Stranglehold was Midway's first Next Generation game using the Unreal 3 Engine. I stepped up as Lead Animator on this project and help pave the way for Midway's next generation animation pipeline. This was a very valuable learning experience for me.

Responsibilities and Accomplishments

• Lead and mentor animators; schedule, assign and critique animations
• Document animation standard operating procedures and best practices on internal twiki site
• Create shot lists, cast talent, and direct motion capture sessions including markering talent for best targeting of motion onto character models
• Apply motion capture data to character models and help finalize FBX animations for game
• Create each character's FBX setup files after each motion shoot to insure consistency with motion data
• Create next generation Unreal 3 engine animation pipeline
• Invent custom rigs in MotionBuilder to supports specific requirements of animation delivery for game engine
• Write custom MotionBuilder Python scripts to streamline animation delivery
• Experiment with Havok animation compression and arrive at optimal settings for the various types of animation
• Create anim set strategies and finite state machines in engine to connect, overlay, and tune animations in engine
• Update art director weekly, maintain animation status reports in twiki site, and participate in strike team meetings
• Institute a weekly PAD meeting (Programming, Animation, and Design leads) to insure tasks, deliverables, and requests were clear and on target

Early in the prototype phase we were trying different ways to interact with the environment. This animation was one of several we tested for the wall-evade mechanic. Although this move did not make it into the game, I present it as an example of animation that I massaged in MotionBuilder Story tool. I used the start of another wall evade and then mirrored it to blend into him continuing up the wall. I finished it by blending into a backward flip.

Here is a combo attack animation we tested early as we were defining the special moves for Tequila. This is another one I liked but did not make it into the game.

This is the same animation as above except this is presented on a static camera.

This is one of my favorite animations in the game. This move plus other variants are used many times when executing a dual gun "teqila bomb". In this example, I tweaked it for the user interface. In the game, we time dilate this animation to enhance the experience.

The dives were some of the first motions we started creating for the prototype. We went through several iterations to arrive at a dive that felt good as we played the game.

Here is another wall evade we tested. This was used when approaching the wall at a 45 degree angle.

The hit reacts in this game were much fun, and we had a lot of hit reacts. Each major joint in the body had several hit reacts that we triggered as the enemy was shot. We also had special critical hit reacts that were more over the top. This is one I completed.

This is an idle motion I edited for one of our product reviews.

Here is one of many ROM (Range of Motion) setup files I created. The setup file is the calibration of the motion data to the character model. Tuning each character's setup file allows the motions from a given shoot to be compatible and easier to animate with. These files are also useful for tweaking the weights of the character model.