Outerra forum
Outerra Engine => Off Topic => Topic started by: PytonPago on July 19, 2014, 12:50:10 am
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Thought someone else would be interested too here :
http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach (http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach)
I like the way of overlapping animation reactions to situations. It might be just the way for using a "opening car door" animation, with blending between all the different car door heights, opening radius's and other factors. The vehicles just have to have a set of variables added somewhere, to give the needed info for the animation (better at the model, cause adding new ones (or modifying) would be much easy-er compared to adding it to some global "door height/angle/radius" index file) Also, it would be interesting, if at gun-handling, subsequent movement (maybe based on time n mass dependent kinetic movement effect) could throw off the aim till you get to a stable stance accordingly to equipment weight ( maybe even displacement on the character ), movement and maybe a "sloppiness" constant/variable, that would define the individual characters agility. Maybe that way, creating character-dependent variations of animations would be reduced greatly in terms of changing constants, when done rightly. It would be like a character look customization thought expanded to animations. Think MMOs or role-play games be more fancy with such expansion of "individuality".
AI object movements could be interesting too, like adding another predator, and the animations would be slightly different thanks to some variables individual for all the predators and preys ...
... the in-engine ringing seems to be an interesting idea too ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpqbC5-Z0E (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RpqbC5-Z0E)
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I`ve asked myself if thats possible as well, after playing with some mods on GTA IV.
Specifically with motorcycle mods, where the character`s hands would adjust to grab the handlebars correctly, without custom animations that would come with the mod.
It seem that the mod author only has to specify the x,y,z position of the places that the character`s hands need to be and they will move accordingly.
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It seem that the mod author only has to specify the x,y,z position of the places that the character`s hands need to be and they will move accordingly.
Yes, position of it + something saying the animation player to modify certain rotation-angles at the armature according to the difference between the base-animation and the desired place. At the end, its just reading the function of rotation movement in time, so there must be a way to add corrections to them on go. Thing may be, that the skeletal-armature would be needed somehow standardized (to get multiple characters act rightly), witch for basic humans wouldn't be as much of a problem - custom anatomy personalities/creatures could doe be one as the bones structure would wary (for their game, that is) ... but seems they done some extra coding to handle simple modifications there (adding a bone to the particular limbs - extending the animation rotations to all in some way) ... it may be as he said - pushing animation creation to text editors, but i kinda like the potential in it.
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I`ve asked myself if thats possible as well, after playing with some mods on GTA IV.
Specifically with motorcycle mods, where the character`s hands would adjust to grab the handlebars correctly, without custom animations that would come with the mod.
It seem that the mod author only has to specify the x,y,z position of the places that the character`s hands need to be and they will move accordingly.
GTIV was supposed to be "using" Euphoria, which was, allegedly, a middleware handling the dynamic procedural animations that took care of all the characters in the game. The truth was, Euphoria isn't a middleware per se, but an animation consultant that helps integrate a mix of procedural, physics based and keyframe (each on varying degrees depending on the customer needs). Procedural fills the gap between each set frame and physics give a frame to keep some of the clipping at bay and have an animations that doesn't overlap over what's going on around the character at time (Far Cry 3 is an example of animation overdriving everything else).
David, the lead developer of Overgrowth, made a very interesting write up on the matter. Not wanting to sound like a rabid fan, but everything he writes denotes a clear understanding of game development and technology. Really worth the read:
http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-euphoria/ (http://blog.wolfire.com/2009/11/why-we-are-not-using-euphoria/)
His other blog entries are all very good.
To me, animations play a key role on any game and having a good dynamic animation system on anything with living creatures or things that move in an organic (ie: mechs) way is crucial. Baked animations have to be avoided when possible.
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Kinda interesting how they handle height positioning ... Arma3 had a few selectable heights, these guys try to make it partially adjustable ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfcaCmMy7c (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJfcaCmMy7c)