Wave to the Black Knight

Meet Michael L.! He’s teamed up with instructor Shawn over at the Valley Stream (New York!) studio as part of Game-U’s Accelerate program. Michael’s all about 3D modeling and animation, and apparently medieval times too, because he and Shawn recently built and animated a medieval Black Knight.

Blender’s a powerful 3D modeling studio that provides Michael with the tools he needs to create characters. With a reference image as a starting point, Michael used Blender’s shaping tools to produce the Knight’s facial structure. From there, he moved on to model the rest of the body parts – including the hands, feet, and torso – and stitch them together into one object. Michael next combined the body object with some equipment models, including a helmet, a battle axe, a cape, and some shoulder pads, to make the character look the part of a knight. As the finishing touch, he renamed his project from Black Knight to Bad Guy – giving us a very good idea of this character’s role in any games he builds!

Besides modeling, Blender also allows for animation. Like ships, or theaters, character models use rigging to “suspend” models for motion. Michael rigged his Black Knight-cum-Bad Guy and gave him a few working animations to bring him to digital life. Check out the video to see all the pieces come together. Don’t forget to wave back at Michael’s work!

Hats off to you, Michael! That Black Knight will make a worthy, villainous addition to any of the games you design. Let us know when we can challenge him for ourselves!