A Levitation Spell

Continuing in the same vein of the previous post, I've been adding more details to the spell-casting UE.

In total, these details are as follows: 1) The broom animates when enchanted, 2) The sunlight grows dim, 3) The broom emits light and particles, and 4) a sound effect plays (although you can't hear it in the screenshot below). In the case of the levitation spell, the broom rises slowly off the ground to the specified height and begins to pulse up and down.

One critical thing we're missing is that the character doesn't animate during the act of spell casting. This is a big deal. Even from the video below, it's clear that the broom has been enchanted, but not that the character cast a spell. So my next goal is to model our main character and the associated animations (running, walking, idling, jumping, and spell casting).

Animation

I want casting spells to feel fun and exciting for our users, so I'm putting a lot of time into crafting the user experience (UE) and the user interface (UI).

We can divide the spell casting experience into three parts: Before spell casting, during spell casting, and after spell casting. The UE/UI concerns are different in each case. In a future post, I'll start itemizing these concerns.

At the moment, I'm working on the "during spell casting" phase. Here, I'd like the objects under enchantment to really LOOK like they've been enchanted. To that end, I created a simple broom model in blender. I textured it in photoshop. Then I rigged and animated the broom in Blender so that it wriggles and writhes when it becomes enchanted.

Although this is just one detail that pertains to the "during spell casting" UE, I believe that the accumulation of artistic details is what makes for a truly immersive UE. Here's a video of the broom animation: