UDK begins...

I remember, before even writing up my final brief that if I were to do an environment I would have to make it third person, and doing a little research I was quite put off by the look of Unreal script. I didn't want to tamper with anything outside of my comfort zone. But recently I've been thinking, that maybe 3d character art just isn't my thing - I find it incredibly boring. Whereas I usually find environments inspiring.

So basically there's a change of plan to my FMP pipeline, and that's perfecting the character I've already made, then using him as a third person player in a full fledged environment. I was put off, until I managed to get it working...
(note that everything you see is placeholder esp. animations (minus the Idle are just edited motion capture files I did in Max, Id rather try traditional)

Idle (player start point) A pretty basic stand still motion, but needs work

Running away - Another consideration; Facial Rigging in UDK
otherwise he'll have that permanent derp face

Jumping!

Needless to say I think I'll enjoy the revised project, but don't worry, if I plan my time accordingly I can actually fulfill the 3D character side of my brief by completing it after the environment. But I'm going to solely focus on making something cool in UDK. Once I get Penguin rigged 'perfectly' I'm going to begin on the environment.

Anyway, going back to the Third Person setup I managed to figure out, there are a few things I need to tweak - which looks like more script. The camera controls the looking direction of Penguin, on a XY axis, which in a way is okay but the camera feels very rigid. You can rotate it up and down, but ideally I want it to be able to orbit Penguin without him moving with the camera. The second thing I need to tweak is the movement backwards, because upon release of 'S' or back, or whatever, Penguin snaps back to face forwards (the 'Idle' animation which is facing in the X direction). My theory is that I can plug in some extra nodes into the Animtree to work around this, its just probably going to be a bit of trial and error.