Armed with its trusty High Velocity Slugthrower, The TW-01 ARASHI is a giant, 28 metre tall mech designed for close combat against combatants on land, in the air, and in space.
Based on the many, many mecha anime I watched growing up, the ARASHI is my own personal take on a giant combat mech. This mech features a fully modelled cockpit, transforming face, folding wings, as well as complete control over its motion with a fully realized rig.
Modelled and Rigged in Blender, Textured Using Substance Painter
Setup to give the animator as much control over the movement of the Arashi as possible, the rig has several built-in constraints to ensure that none of the joints are able to move in ways that are impossible based on the construction of the model’s geometry, while still giving the mesh a huge range of motion.
Animated in Blender, Brought To life in Unreal Engine 5
To show off the character and the rig that I developed, I decided to create a short cutscene of the Arashi catapulting into space. To facilitate this, I put together a scene in Blender of an elevator and launch tube, as well as the exterior side of a spaceship for the mech to deploy from. I then painted the environment in Substance 3D painter, and brought it and the mech into Unreal Engine 5.
The Sweet Spot Between Realistic and Stylized.
My main goal when animating the Arashi was to capture both the massive scale of the machine, while still making it’s motions feel snappy and responsive, like the Gundams and other 2D animated mechs it draws inspiration from. To accomplish this, all of its movements have a lot of follow through to convey the sense that tons of metal are swinging around at high speeds. At the same time, I made sure that none of the mech’s major movements felt too drawn out. I also had to include at least one dramatic pose of the mech firing off its primary weapon into space. Animation of the VFX and material settings were handled in Unreal’s Cinematic Sequencer.
Mechanical Things in Motion.
Two of my favourite parts of this project were rigging up the launching sled and implementing the transforming face. The launch sled uses built-in constraints so that the body of the sled can move vertically with the rest of the elevator, but the elevator doesn’t move when the sled travels along the magnetic rails. The rail components are are also integrated into this rig, and move horizontally in tandem with the rest of the sled.
When animating the transforming face, I wanted the motion to feel really mechanically complicated, so I gave the entire head of the Arashi several moving parts. I wanted to capture that same “wow” factor present during the suit up scenes in Dead Space 2, where Isaac Clarke’s helmet unfolds out of his armour suit and over his face. The Arashi’s face has over 10 different moving components that shift and move over the course of the animation.