This week’s prototype is about placing and moving the character legs via code and executing a nice looking flat shading.
Instead of manually animating the walk cycle of the character, I wanted to generate the movement of the legs procedurally. The root position of the character is moved freely according to the player input. I ground one foot to the floor. The position of the other foot comes from its relation to the grounded foot and the vector of movement. I switch the grounded foot according to their relative position and the distance between them. The knee and leg rotation come from inverse kinematics calculations.
The other problem I was interested in tackling this week was of achieving a pleasant look using flat shading techniques. I created a color palette master texture for the prototype. Then, I configured the shaders, render, and post-processing in a way that the output image still preserved 1:1 match with the palette after the lighting and shadow were applied.