Fish Animation

 When I discovered that I could add components to certain collectables I started wondering how I could alter/add more to my models. I used the tankard as my test and chose to animate the fish swimming around in the tankard.

I had to separate the fish from the original mesh and export it as it's own fbx to get started.

To have the fish move in a looping motion I decided the easiest choice would be a spline. I drew a basic loop that had the fish avoiding obstacles in the tankard by swimming over the chest and behind the seaweed.

To ensure the fish didn't snap when reaching the start/end of the spline I had to place two spline points in exactly the same location and have the arriving and leaving tangents the same too. This meant that the fish would always start and end the animation in the same place and orientation.

By creating a timeline and plugging in the information from the spline I was able to create the basic swimming animation to the fish mesh. Similar to the light for the tankard, the fish mesh and animation are only ever working on the tankard mesh so to not destroy the framerate again.

The result is simple but effective and opens up quite a large amount of options for future productions.