Hello, everyone! Welcome to the latest Dev Diary. My name is Andrew and I am the Lead Animator for Nuclear Dawn. Our job in the animation department is to illustrate the style of the game through movement. Whenever we are animating a prop, character, weapon, or structure; our goal is to convey the concept while still conforming to the restrictions that we have set to maximize performance. In today's blog, I will be focusing on one of the aspects that has proven to be quite a daunting task to me, personally: the RTS structures.

Along with my role as animator, I have picked up a side role as mesh-modifier-breaker-upper. It is my job to take all the beautiful RTS machines, and tear them apart...literally. When I am handed an RTS structure, I first need to look at every corner, every seam, every wire, every lever, every panel and every section. While looking it over, I am thinking of how these things can compact themselves down small enough to fit inside a delivery crate.