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FORTNITE · FLIGHTSCHOOL
When I first started on FORTNITE there were only three full time animators on the project. Save the World game mode had just launched and we were gearing up to do the Battle Royale mode. Someone was needed to do the skydive and paraglide animations, so I volunteered. I don’t think anyone could have predicted how big the game would get at that time, and I thought this would just a be quick one time task. It took some effort to get the initial pass done, which was about 6 weeks if I remember correctly. This included player dive and glide modes and two gliders, the parachute style glider and the victory umbrella, all of which required unique animation and setup. While there was programmer support for what we needed, this was mostly driven by animation behaviors I setup in the main player animation blueprint. I only had about six months of exposure to UnrealEngine and blueprint at that time but managed to mostly get a usable system working with lots of animations blending together.

After the first version shipped, I started adding as much polish as possible to the current system. This included things like additive drift animations, transitions, lauchpads, overall blueprint fixes and whatever could be done when time permitted. As the game mode grew in popularity, it became apparent that we’d be making more “gliders.” This started slowly, but quickly grew into a full time task to create new glider animations for the unique concepts and behaviors as well as optimize and maintain the system. Over time I streamlined the process to allow for more animators to work on gliders. This included documenting the process from maya to in-game, setup scripts in maya to get people started quickly, templates so the rigs would have some consistency, and in-game blueprint templates and functions to help speed production.

I never imagined I’d be working on one system for so long and the material is not as easily demoed or documented by simply showing animations. Many of the animations are similar with the standard turn and lean behaviors, but the unique deploy animations take quite a bit of time, and the in-game setup for custom behaviors on creature style gliders or even turrets on ship like gliders can be a tricky endeavor. It would be a bit repetitive to just show each glider’s final animation and behaviors (though I do have that as well), instead I put together this video documenting the entire process. I mostly did this for my own satisfaction and archive, and while it is much longer than videos I usually create, I tried to make it as entertaining and informative as possible.

< FORTNITE Flight School Trailer