Hyper Light Breaker Launches in Steam Early Access January 14!

During Day of the Days: The Game Awards Edition, we announced that our open world co-op rogue-lite Hyper Light Breaker is officially set to launch in Steam Early Access on January 14, 2025 for $29.99. The trailer above covers an in-depth overview from Hyper Light Breaker Lead Producer, Michael Clark, of what you need to know about the new Hyper Light adventure before the game enters Early Access next month.

“We’re thrilled to be a part of Day of the Devs: The Game Awards Edition and finally reveal that Hyper Light Breaker will be launching in Early Access in just a month,” said Alx Preston, Heart Machine Founder and Creative Director. “From all of us at Heart Machine, we really can’t thank our community, friends and colleagues enough for all of the support over the years and sticking with us as we’ve worked on our most ambitious project yet. Launching Hyper Light Breaker in Early Access will be just the beginning, as we want the community to be part of the game’s development journey. We really can’t wait for players to join us in the Overgrowth to bring Hyper Light Breaker to its full potential.”

Those who embark on this new adventure will be able to experience multiple challenging playthroughs solo or with fellow Breakers via online co-op multiplayer, explore the vast, ever-changing worlds within the Overgrowth, and die and retry as they face hordes of deadly enemies. Hyper Light Breaker will continue to evolve throughout the course of Early Access, as we have plenty of content planned, including new Breakers, Crowns (bosses), gear and more. We developed Hyper Light Breaker with Early Access in mind as we’ll be setting our sights on taking community feedback to heart to balance the experience and evolve the game before it enters 1.0 launch.

Wishlist and follow Hyper Light Breaker today: https://bit.ly/3Zrbws5 Join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/heartmachine Follow: https://x.com/HLBreaker Like: https://www.facebook.com/HyperLightBreaker

Hyper Light Breaker - Roadmap!! And new content incoming.

Breakers!

The moment we've all been eagerly awaiting is finally here! Today, we're thrilled to lift the veil on the Hyper Light Breaker Development Roadmap! We've been working hard behind the scenes to ensure that your journey through The Overgrowth becomes even more thrilling, and now you can get a sneak peek at what's on the horizon. From new Breakers to play as, unique Crowns to defeat, and tons of secrets and story content to uncover, an exciting future awaits us in Hyper Light Breaker.

And that's not all! Mark your calendars for the February Monthly Update set to release on February 18th. This update will bring a fresh wave of content, including new gameplay mechanics, balance tweaks, and some surprises we can't wait for you to discover.

So gear up, get your hoverboards ready, and stay tuned. The Overgrowth is about to get a whole lot more exciting. Your feedback has already been invaluable in shaping the future of Hyper Light Breaker, so please keep it coming!

- Heart Machine Team

16 Hours Remain to get Hyper Light Drifter FREE w/Hyper Light Breaker Purchase

Our launch bundle + discount for Hyper Light Breaker ends in ~16 hours, at 10AM PST! So if you've had Hyper Light Drifter on your wishlist for a while, or if you've been on the fence about picking up Hyper Light Breaker...this is your last chance to pick up both games at the best price: $30!!

After 10AM tomorrow, Hyper Light Breaker will be full price ($30) and will not come with Hyper Light Drifter ($20) for free.

GET THEM NOW

Heart Machine is on Patreon!

Why are we on Patreon?

Games are the greatest form of expression and entertainment that we've ever created. There’s a common saying in games development that it's a miracle that any games are made, let alone good ones. Now, it’s even more brutal.

Over the past two years, the industry has rapidly changed, flipped around and turned upside down. Funding for new projects is sparse, even for successful devs. Everything is far more expensive to make. Paths we used to be able to take to create projects no longer exist.

You’ve likely heard about this on some front. It’s grim. 30% of all games developers have either been laid off or had their roles significantly reduced or affected over the past year alone. Studios have closed. Many have left. We at Heart Machine are not immune, having gone through layoffs in November of this year.

Since the old models are not enough, we have to adapt. So we're asking for support to help us continue to not just survive, but adapt and thrive. To help us prototype and build new projects, to help support us when the state of the industry has made it so much harder to exist.

We've always been big on talking directly to our audience. We think this Patreon is an opportunity for us to do more on this front while also benefiting.

There are a few key goals we have in mind for this Patreon:

1. To give a more thorough and deep insight into our process and what it takes to make games. Sharing exclusive write-ups, videos, concept art, design documents and prototype gifs from all of our projects past and present.

2. To share more about the issues in the industry driving this state of turmoil. E.g. corporate consolidation, overspending, accelerating costs, and a changing market.

3. To reach a bigger audience with more transparency in an otherwise notoriously opaque industry in the hope we can share and do our part to help others to better navigate and survive.

We all love games. We’re here because it’s an industry driven by passion. But it’s never been easy. We've been making titles we are extremely proud of for 10 years now, and we want to make sure we can stick around another 10.

Approaches like this Patreon are part of what it takes to make sure of that, to get through the toughest times and come out ultimately better.

We hope that you enjoy the content and inside access that we’ll be providing here.

Thank you so much for your support.

Hyper Light Breaker - Early Access Coming Early 2025

Hey everyone,

We’re so grateful to all the members of the community who have expressed ongoing support and enthusiasm for Hyper Light Breaker’s Steam Early Access  launch. After much evaluation and many conversations with our publisher Arc Games, we’ve decided that we need just a little more time to get the gameplay experience polished to our standards.

Therefore, we’re now looking at an Early Access launch date of very early next year.

We don’t want to ship a project, even in Early Access, that we’re not satisfied with on a number of fronts. Especially in the current state of the industry, we need to put as good a foot forward as we can.

As always, we believe in maintaining a sustainable pace of development for our team, which means taking care of the mental and physical health needs of everyone first, rather than burning the team out trying to hit a specific set launch date. This will enable the team to offer better, more responsive support to community feedback during the Early Access period itself.

Trust that we REALLY want to put Breaker out there, and see people engage with a game that we’ve all worked so hard on. However, we also REALLY need to make sure that the core foundational units of the game are as strong as they can be, so that we can build on them during the Early Access period.In the meantime, we are confirmed to be showing Breaker at multiple events to get your feedback as we continue getting Breaker ready for Early Access launch! We’ll have a demo of Breaker at PlayNYC + AnimeNYC in New York City, XOXO in Portland, and Media Indie Exchange in Seattle. We’re also currently planning additional public demos at DreamHack in Atlanta and MAGFest in Maryland. So, if you absolutely can’t wait to get your hands on the game when it launches in Early Access, you can at least catch us out in the wild at these events and give us feedback on how the game is shaping up so far!

Thank you everyone  for your continued support of our games and the people who make them.

For the most up-to-date info on Hyper Light Breaker and our other projects, follow us on social media or jump in our Discord.

- Alx Preston, Founder and Creative Director at Heart Machine

Where would we be without our incredible community leaders and mods?

The World is Drowning

We’re excited to announce our newest project, Possessor(s), a brand new story and world we’re crafting with the support of our publisher Devolver Digital. As with all our games, this is a piece of work from our hearts that blends our signature aesthetic with new ideas, creating an experience that is both deeply personal and visually stunning.|

A Message from Danny Moll, Art Director

We have carefully calibrated the overall aesthetic and tone of Possessor(s) and are proud of what we’ve come up with. Inspired by games like INSIDE, Signalis, and Control — and TV shows like Severance, we’ve created a world that feels both familiar and hauntingly surreal.

Imagine a post-apocalyptic sci-fi landscape, influenced by weird fiction world-building in such works as Jeff Vandermeer's Area X or the Annihilation film.

It’s “sony-walkman retrofuturism” in a game.

A Message from Alx Preston, Founder & Creative Director

You’ll notice that Possessor(s) shares DNA with Hyper Light Drifter, despite being an entirely different world and story. As a studio, we’re eternally applying valuable lessons from our past successes and mistakes to our present work. We’re carrying those lessons forward, and transforming them into something unique with this game. We hope to continue to build on our legacy while pushing the boundaries of what we can create.

At its core, Possessor(s) is a game about relationships – specifically, the ones that hurt us and how we navigate through them. We wanted to explore the idea of getting out of toxic traps and the difficult journey of self-improvement. Our characters are trying to change for the better and struggling to stop punishing themselves. The theme of possession ties into how we heal from these emotional wounds.

The world of Possessor(s) is an unsettling place where beauty and decay coexist. It’s hopeful, it’s dark, and it’s waiting for you to explore it.

Hyper Light Breaker: Meet Dro

Who was Dro?

Whoever she was, she is now transformed. What does she want?

And what is the pain behind her howl?

A glimpse into our wordless storytelling.

Hyper Light Drifter was a game well-known for its wordless storytelling. A quick Google search will yield dozens of videos and articles discussing the art of worldbuilding without words.

As Jake Theriault artfully describes in his analysis of the opening sequence of Drifter:

While Hyper Light Breaker will not be entirely devoid of text (there will be UI and some loadout descriptions), we have made the decision to lean back into our strengths and reveal our world and mysteries therein through illustrated vignettes.

There is so much about the Hyper Light universe to discover. With Breaker, we’re excited to share more about the history of the world that led to the events of Drifter.

Our Character Artist, Isaak Ramos, has established a house style for our studio, inspired by the works of Katsuhiro Otomo.

Some key aspects include:

And reasoning includes:

Let us hear from you!

What do you think about this return to wordless storytelling? And our panel art style?

And what’s going on with Dro?

Hyper Light Breaker: Meet PB

PIVOTING TOWARD CHARACTER-BASED STORYTELLING

A while ago, we shared that we were developing Hyper Light Breaker with a limited form of character creation in mind - our player “characters” would be specific species, all following the same character archetype. The goal was to reduce animation scope down significantly by sticking with the single archetype.

As time went on, however, we discovered that a specific story was taking shape. And it needed to be told through a discrete cast of characters with their own backstories, motivations, and personalities.

We are now pivoting away from broader character customization, in favor of enriching player experience and empathy through highlighting each of these unique characters and their journeys through the world. We are still retaining customization in the form of offering near limitless loadout options, hub options, and other ways for players to have agency over this world.

With that said, please meet…

PROTOBREAKER

PB was featured prominently in our Announcement Trailer, but the character’s identity and role in the Hyper Light universe has been shrouded in mystery since. We’re now ready to share a little more about her.

You meet PB in the Hotel Lobby of the Hub, the launch point for all of your ventures into the Overgrowth. A former highly skilled Breaker herself, she now works a desk job where she assigns and oversees Breaker missions.

PB has a long history in this world. But she is generally reserved, and minces few words. It is up to you to uncover her past, and play a crucial role in writing this new chapter in her story.

PB IN THE WORLD OF HYPER LIGHT

PB has a unique role in Breaker’s narrative. The abandoned wilds of the Overgrowth are shrouded in mystery, and PB has been here since they were first sealed away from the rest of the world.

Within the Breakers, PB is your commander, so she passes along your marching orders from Breaker HQ. But like you, she’s curious about the Overgrowth’s mysteries. In particular, she wants to learn the goals and motivations of the Crowns—why do they fight the Breakers? What are they protecting, and why?

PB knows many secrets about this place, but she’s not quite sure which of them are relevant to the mystery. When you discover some brand new information about the Crowns or the Overgrowth, you’ll bring those stories back to PB. She’ll share her own memories with you, and help you put the mystery together.

PB has a few secrets herself, too. She’s been living in the Overgrowth for a long time, and she seems to have a strange personal connection to the Crowns. If you help her discover more about the Overgrowth, she may share some of her history with you!

LET US HEAR FROM YOU!

How do you feel about our character-based storytelling process?

What do you think happened to PB?

Blaze

0 notes

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF HEART MACHINE

A Decade of Creativity and Community

A decade ago, we began a journey that would lead to the birth of Heart Machine - a game studio committed to crafting immersive, vibrant experiences that resonate with players on a profound level. As we celebrate our 10-year anniversary, we reflect on our history, achievements, community, and the exciting future that lies ahead.

THINKING BACK

Glitch City, Kickstarter, and Hyper Light Drifter

In 2013, we took a leap of faith and launched a Kickstarter campaign for our debut project, Hyper Light Drifter. Little did we know that this campaign would not only secure the funds needed to bring our project to life, but also ignite a beautiful connection with supporters, players, and community members who believed in us from the outset.

Fueled by a need for camaraderie and knowledge, we spent those early days of Drifter’s development as a part of Glitch City, a then-small collective of independent game developers, artists, and creators all working together out of Alx’s basement. Those early days and (often) sleepless nights vision were critical in defining our design philosophies, studio culture, and grassroots community connections - setting the stage for what was to come.

Our Heartfelt Gratitude to Our Early Contributors

To date, thanks to the incredible support of our community, the Kickstarter for Hyper Light Drifter remains one of the most successful game projects on the platform. It smashed through the initial funding goal of $27,000 and ultimately raised over $600,000.

To our early backers who believed in us and our vision, and those fellow devs who helped us through endless rounds of playtesting and feedback, we extend our deepest gratitude. Your unwavering support enabled us to bring our dreams to life and emboldened us to continually push the boundaries of game design.

Special shout out to core Drifter team members: Alx Preston, Beau Blyth, Teddy Dief, Casey Hunt, Rich Vreeland, Akash Thakkar, Sean Ward, Lisa Brown, and Cosimo Galluzzi.

The critical reception following the release of Hyper Light Drifter was incredible - beyond our wildest expectations. We never could have anticipated the accolades and recognition it received, or the impact it made on players far and wide. It was humbling, and affirmed our dedication to continue to make great games to share with the world.

Moving Into a New Dimension

We started development on Solar Ash about a year before the multi-platform release of Hyper Light Drifter. Early on, we joined forces with Annapurna Interactive, whose expertise and resources facilitated our exploration of 3D game development. Over the next five years, Annapurna's support played a pivotal role in bringing this ambitious project to fruition. The vastness of the game's ethereal landscapes and fluid movement mechanics opened new avenues for worldbuilding and storytelling.

To date, Solar Ash continues to engage new players and inspire returning ones to create beautiful works inspired by the game. It is following in the footsteps of its predecessor and is now available on a a wide array of game platforms for a worldwide audience.

All of the positive reception that followed Solar Ash’s release proved that our community was ready to continue along this new aesthetic path with us. Just as Drifter smashed through its initial Kickstarter goals,  we are poised to once again smash the boundaries of possibility with our upcoming projects.

HEART MACHINE TODAY

Reimagining a Familiar World

As we celebrate our 10-year milestone, we're thrilled to now be well underway with our newest title set in the familiar Hyper Light Universe. This new project, Hyper Light Breaker, builds upon the foundations we've laid, evolving our creative vision in unexpected ways.

A Shared Journey

Our journey would not be complete without acknowledging the invaluable contributions of our community. From community leaders who pave the way forward with creativity and kindness, to creators who challenge us with incredible skill and passion,  to modders who continuously breathe new life into our games, to wiki writers who meticulously document every detail, to speedrunners who push the boundaries of possibility – you are the heartbeats that keep our worlds alive.

Over the years, we've had the privilege of connecting with our wonderful community at conventions and events across the digital and physical world. These gatherings allowed us to share our passion, hear your stories, and learn from your insights. Your presence and enthusiasm continue to inspire us.

We’re so grateful to: Polare, Lukas, Durtle, Clark, Yrrzy, CornMayor, Aza, Andreas, Conscy, Perfectly Mediocre, Thunderbrave, Bryonato, Utsu, NicowithaC, Covert Muffin, Sylvi, among many many others who make our work worth doing.

Our Company Vision

At Heart Machine, we've built more than games. We've cultivated a company culture that values kindness, inclusivity, and pushing the envelope. Our mission has always been not only to entertain but also leave a lasting impact. This dedication has enabled us to support and grow a thriving studio of some of the most talented, thoughtful, and fun people in the entire industry.

Our ethos revolves around fostering a work environment that prioritizes professional advancement, mental and physical health, and employee happiness. This commitment takes shape in various dimensions of our culture. We proudly offer Heart Machine University (HMU), a collaborative peer-teaching initiative where we cover everything from how to LARP or make sculptures out of driftwood to environment, concept, and tech art techniques. We also organize activities like group gaming and anime sessions, provide access to networking and learning resources, and support social and charitable initiatives to reinforce our team’s sense of purpose. As a studio, we strive to hang our culture on a framework where each individual can flourish and achieve their own growth and learning goals.

It’s no accident that the trajectory of these past 10 years has led us to forming the team we have now. We have always and will continue to adhere to our culture of high quality standards, emphasis on creative innovation, and heart-first leadership practices.

LOOKING AHEAD

As we stand at the threshold of the next chapter, we're excited to announce that Hyper Light Breaker will be arriving in Early Access in 2024. This project represents our ongoing commitment to pushing boundaries, taking risks, and creating experiences that captivate and challenge players in our specifically unique ways.

Beyond Hyper Light Breaker, we have other projects currently under wraps that will continue to define us as a studio. We can't wait to share these journeys with you as we forge into this next decade.

Thank you thank you thank you for joining us on this incredible ride. Heart Machine wouldn't be the same without each and every one of you. Here's to the many more adventures that lie ahead!

With love and gratitude,

The Heart Machine Team

Hyper Light Breaker - Early Access in 2024

New Hyper Light Breaker dev update! To bring the game to its full potential, we need a bit more time. We're delaying Steam Early Access to 2024.

The development of Hyper Light Breaker has been an extraordinary journey, as we’ve set out to make this new Hyper Light adventure the best possible version of a truly wild idea. We've made remarkable progress and the game has come a long way since we started development. Taking this additional time to focus on development will allow us to bring the game to its full potential and we are incredibly grateful for the support from our community that’s been with us every step of the way. We thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to deliver a new adventure that lives up to what fans expect from a Heart Machine title.

We will will continue to give fans a look inside Hyper Light Breaker’s development, in the lead up to Early Access launch in 2024.

To keep up with all the latest updates, please visit: https://www.hyperlightbreaker.com/ or get updates via X, Facebook, and the Official Heart Machine Discord. 

Embracing Accessibility and Diversity: The Vital Role of Remote Presentations in Game Conventions

In recent years, the gaming industry has witnessed an unprecedented surge in popularity and innovation. This phenomenon is often celebrated at large international conventions like Gamescom / devcom, where developers, enthusiasts, and creators from around the world gather to showcase their latest creations, share insights, and explore new horizons.

However, as the gaming community continues to expand, so does the need to ensure that these conventions remain accessible and inclusive for everyone. Enter the concept of live remote presentations – a powerful tool that preserves diversity, fosters representation, and empowers those who might otherwise be excluded.

During the pandemic, many conventions like GDC, Gamescom, Gen Con, etc. decided to go remote rather than cancel their events outright. Now that COVID-19 is under control, these same conventions have decided to return to an IRL format for the obvious benefits of fostering greater networking opportunity, spontaneous collaborations, personal branding, cultural exchange...among other advantages.

We were very fortunate this year that even though Gamescom / devcom was one of thsoe conventions that returned to an in-person format this year, they were able to accomodate our Founder / Creative Director Alx Preston's remote talk From Pixels to Polygons – Bringing the Hyper Light Universe into the Third Dimension. They decided to make an exception to the in-person only format this year due to Alx's specific health considerations.

But maybe a hybrid format should be the norm, and not the exception?

The Power of Representation and Diversity

One of the most valuable assets of the gaming industry is its diverse and passionate community. Gamers, creators, and developers hail from various backgrounds, cultures, and perspectives, enriching the industry with fresh ideas and innovative concepts. Embracing this diversity fosters creativity and leads to games that resonate with a broader range of players. But for this diversity to flourish, the voices and viewpoints of all members of the community need to be heard.

Accessibility as a Cornerstone of Inclusion

International conventions like Gamescom attract attendees from around the world, turning them into melting pots of ideas and creativity. However, the barrier of physical attendance can inadvertently lead to exclusion. Not everyone has the financial means, the physical health, or the time to journey halfway around the globe to participate in such events. This exclusion can inadvertently stifle unique perspectives and novel insights that could otherwise contribute to the growth of the industry.

The Crucial Role of Remote Presentations

Live remote presentations offer a solution that bridges the gap between physical presence and accessibility. By allowing speakers to present their ideas, projects, and perspectives remotely, conventions can ensure that individuals who might not be able to attend in person can still contribute meaningfully. Here are a few compelling reasons why this approach is essential:

Looking Ahead: A More Inclusive Gaming Community

In conclusion, the gaming industry's continued growth hinges on the cultivation of diverse ideas and perspectives. International conventions like Gamescom play a pivotal role in this process by providing a platform for individuals to share their insights. However, it's crucial to acknowledge the limitations that physical attendance imposes on accessibility and representation. By embracing live remote presentations, and offering a hybrid format, these conventions can pave the way for a more inclusive and vibrant gaming community.

In a world where technology connects us across continents, it's only fitting that the gaming industry utilizes these tools to break down barriers and amplify voices. By making remote presentations a staple of game conventions, we celebrate the richness of our community while ensuring that everyone has a seat at the table, regardless of their location, resources, or physical abilities.

Thank you so much to Nico Balletta and the devcom / Gamescom team for giving us the chance to share our projects with the world. Here's to an amazing Gamescom 2023!

Hyper Light Breaker is coming Fall 2023.

Pangea: Creating A Multiplayer Rogue-lite With Endless Open Worlds

We’ve shared extensively about our tech art strategies and proc gen processes in both a recent Heart to Heart with Len White and Christian Sparks as well as on our dev blog. We’ve also discussed our environment art works in progress in a different Heart to Heart with Will Tate and on our blog as well.

That was all months ago; often, a few months can mean a lifetime in game development.

Original Vision

Years ago now, when Alx was ideating on the design pillars of the game, the question that came to mind was “what would you do in an open world you’d never see again if you die?”

With that in mind, we made decisions in the early days of our game to try for a more reasonable approach of this idea as we built our systems, since it seemed insurmountable. So, we created an adjacent version, something that captured parts of this design ideal. We had a large, open biomes, but they were segmented in a stage-by-stage format to make it more feasible for us to build.

Over the course of development, we found that, as we continued to build the technology needed for these smaller open-biomes, that we could actually leverage the tools to make the original vision a reality. Thus, we shifted away from the more limiting and (ironically) more complex version of a stage-to-stage progression, and started on a “Pangaea Shift”.

The Shift

Pangaea is used as a code name, as we were essentially merging all of our stages into one larger map to create an open world.

This shift meant that we would mean that we lose some time up front reconfiguring some parts of the game to function in the ne structure, but gain time on the backend and a much more exciting game format to dive into. We were excited and scared, all at once.

This shift yields us:

An open world you’ll only see once

It’s a thought that leads to a lot of questions and exciting ideas. How much do I explore this world? How much time do I invest, knowing I could die at any turn? What are the pressures driving me forward in this world? What’s new, exciting, different this time? What’s coming next?

These are all questions we ask and answer for development, and ones we are excited for you all to see the conclusions of for yourselves in Early Access and beyond!

Wrap Up

What do you think of our process shift? Share your feedback!

See you next time, Breakers!

-The Heart Machine Team

Hyper Light Breaker: Production Process

Check out our latest stream about our production process behind Hyper Light Breaker, with Senior Producer Lesley Mathieson.

Some takeaways from the December 9th Heart to Heart stream

Hyper Light Breaker: Animation Process

Our wonderful Lead Animator, Chris Bullock, shares some in-depth info on our animation process and what’s involved in getting our Leaper to this point:

What is Rigging?

Rigging is the process by which we take a 3D model and give it the ability to deform over time.

Most often this is done by giving it a virtual skeleton (or armature in sculpture terminology), and then attaching controls that allow the animators to move the skeleton, almost like strings on a marionette. But now there are also other techniques that have been used in Film, TV, and Commercial work for years that are starting to make their way to games. For example: Blendshape deformations are where the 3D model’s deformation is sculpted manually, then blended between the base model and the Blendshape(s).

The Bone Rig / Skeleton Hierarchy

Here, we can see the character mesh’s points (vertices) in magenta, edges in dark blue, and then the polygons shaded in gray.

As we can see, here, a character’s mesh is made up of a series of points (a.k.a. vertices) as the fundamental building blocks (magenta dots in above image), along with edges that connect the points, which are then filled-in with polygons. By adding a hierarchy of special objects called “bones” (or “joints” as they are, technically, more accurately called in some software packages) that often roughly resembles an actual skeleton for the character or creature, we’re able to get the model to deform and animate without having to move every single point on the model by hand every frame of an animation. It’s easier to move a few dozen to a few hundred bones on the character than it is to animate tens-of-thousands to millions of points on the mesh.

In order to do this, we need to tell each point on the model which bones it should inherit its movement from, and how much influence each bone has on that vertex. There’s a lot of math that goes into how these transformations are actually carried out, but fortunately, we have tools at our disposal that we don’t need to assign all of this data one point at a time, which actually makes this “skinning” process more of an artistic process than a technical one—defining which parts of the model move together, to give it more of a solid feel, and which parts have a “softer”/”fleshier” feel to them.

Here we can see our bone objects in yellow and magenta along with our base mesh.

The Animation Control Rig

To make things even simpler to animate the bones, rigging will often involve adding Animation Controls, which allows animators to manipulate a series or collection of bones together as a single “system”, or to isolate movement of a bone in a non-hierarchical manner, or in a different manner from the way the bone hierarchy was setup (more on this below). The time saved during animation, when multiplied across a team of animators and total number of animations needed, well offsets the extra time it takes to setup this animation control rig.

Currently, this is most often being done in separate software from the game engine: software such as: Blender, Autodesk Maya, Autodesk Motionbuilder, Autodesk 3D Studio Max, SideFX Houdini, etc. Game engines, such as Unreal Engine 5, are starting to allow the Animation Control Rig to be created directly inside their own editors.

Here, we can see the animation controls (in blue, red, cyan, magenta, orange, and yellow) along with the base mesh and skeleton.

FK – Forward Kinematics – We use this term when talking about a collection of objects being manipulated in a direct parent-child hierarchical manner. Let’s say we have two objects: Object A and Object B. Let’s say that Object A is Object B’s “parent”, and Object B is Object A’s “child”. This means that whenever Object A is moved, Object B will move along with it, keeping the same offset from Object A as it did from the start. However, when Object B is moved, it has no affect on Object A’s position in the scene. We can see this demonstrated in the video below with the Red chain of bones. You can see how as each object in the chain is selected and manipulated, it only affects the objects below in the hierarchy. This is the way that the character’s skeleton would animate if we had no Animation Control rig. So, moving the hips would mean that we would have to move the limbs the opposite amount if we wanted them to stay planted while the hips move. This is called counter-animating, and is something we will often go through great lengths to avoid doing.

IK – Inverse Kinematics – With body parts such as the arms and the legs, we often find it easier to deal directly with the positioning of the ends of the chain of bones, and want any bones that are between the ends to automatically bend in order to achieve the positional goals of the end bones. This is done through a computation technique known as IK. This is demonstrated with the blue chain of bones in the video, below. Notice how we have two control objects that we manipulate directly, and they indirectly control the chain of bones.

These are just the two most common of the myriad of ways of controlling the way that something animates. The number of ways that objects can be controlled are near limitless, and new techniques are being discovered/invented all the time.

The Game Engine

Once we have our character modeled, rigged, and animated, we need to get all that data into the game engine, somehow.  This is done through an export/import process.  Typically, the character mesh and skeleton data is exported separately from the animation data.  The character’s mesh data and the skeleton (including the skinning relationship) typically get exported together.  In our animation source asset files, any animation data is stored on the Animation Controls.  However, the only thing that the game engine cares about is the animation that’s applied to the skeleton hierarchy—it does not care about the Animation Control data at all.  So, often what happens is that the animation gets “baked” to the skeleton as a part of the export process—i.e. it just sets a keyframe for every bone in the skeleton hierarchy for every frame in the animation timeline.  In the game engine, the animation data is then re-applied to the skeleton, which, in turn gets applied to the mesh, which makes our character move, finally!

We’re also able to setup relationships between bones inside the game engine, which allow us to drive the motion of certain bones based on the movement of other bones.  In Figure 2, for instance, the bones in magenta are controlled by the bones in yellow.  The reason we do this in the game engine, instead of animating them, and then exporting them, is to allow those bones, specifically, to react to the way the character behaves in-game, rather than adhering to prescriptive movement (a.k.a. “canned animation”)—this helps makes everything feel a lot more alive and reactive.

Wrap Up

This covers some of the basics of the rigging process, and why it’s so important in a modern game production pipeline.  Without this process there is no way we would see the quality of deformation and animation in the games we love.

Let us know…

What do you think of the animation / rigging process as a whole? Is it art? Is it math? Does it seem fascinating or boring?

Heart 2 Heart: Hyper Light Breaker Animation w/Chris Bullock + Sean Ward

Some highlights from the August 12th Heart to Heart stream

(thoughtfully compiled by Polare)