The Mecha-Engineer looks like someone in an giant Engineer mascot costume....


I felt as if the first "Puppet Stuff" video didn't really capture just how great Doc's puppet script was, so I made a better example.

The Demoman's walk cycle is a .dmx from SFM Box that is for the Soldier. He's being puppeteered by a Solder directly above him and out of sight. The models on the left are being puppeteered by the Heavy, who's doing an animation from "Team Service Announcement: Compression Blast." Models on the right are being puppeteered by a copy of the first Heavy under them.

In short, I did no real animating, or at least no animation in this session. All of it was the puppet script. As you can see, it's not perfect, as the models have to be in similar poses when the script is applied for more accurate movements, and it dosen't work as well if the models are facing different directions, but for the most part, it's amazing. If I did this by simply copying and pasting keys, most of the models would be stretched out to match the Heavy's body, and custom models would become jumblemeses of their own body parts.

I can finally animate my love of synchronized dancing with ease. Hell, I could even redo one of my movies with different models.

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Music:

MC Chris - Hijack