Sling Bee

Flower Animation / Physics

This was my main focus for this game was how the flowers felt to move around and have a good "springy" feeling. I understood that most of the "springy" feeling exists within the stem. When it's broken up into multiple segments with similar properties it creates the movement I was aiming for.

I learned about animation rigging restrictions and the Unity joint component, but I decided to proceed with the joints because our artist was limited in their abilities, and the mechanic of "launching the bee" required me to make use of the physics system in Unity.

I initially attempted to use spring joints to implement stem segments but found the movement to be chaotic and the stem segments would seemingly disconnect from one another. This was because the "spring" part of the spring joint applies along the joint instead of around the joint restrictions. I thought that the fixed joint would be too rigid for my needs but I discovered that when applying forces to the joint I could pull it past the set restrictions creating the "springy" feeling I was looking for. I utilized the joints to create repeatable stem segments allowing us to adjust the height of the flower, the number of stem segments, and how far each stem segment can bend for each flower.