Bringing this topic back up, and prefacing my post by saying that I know animations are still being devoloped and tweaked and that I'm super excited for the Pre-Alpha news :)
In the twitchcon stream I noticed the running animations looked a bit different from the past streams, and not in a good way, they were too "bouncy" and the characters looked wierd during the running, their hips were tilting down and swinging from side to side while running and the arms/shoulders where to far apart from the torso and swing from side to side just a bit too much, that's not how you run with propper form, running requires a tight straight posture and foward movement of all 4 limbs, so the core (hips and but) should be locked in place, and the arms should always swing fowards not from side to side. Video of the stream when the character is naked ( https://youtu.be/6RuyuiBkrX8?t=244 ) here you can really see the hips tilting down and how far apart the arms are from the torso. From a random article on the internet ( http://dailyburn.com/life/fitness/tips-running-form/ ) on proper runing form, points 2 and 3 of the article the most important ones if you want some more insight on what I'm talking about.
I also noticed animations were more "bouncy" than before, not 100% certain of this but it looked like it, since the game is going for a more realistic look animations and movements shouldn't be exaggerated or overly fluid to the point of making it look cartoony, they shoud be a bit more rigid, but not to the point of stiffness.
The combat animation look sweet though :)
Trying my best to give constructive feedback of what I think needs improving and what looks wrong or out of place to me, keep up the good work, lets get to that sweat ass Alpha so I can play :)
Armyguy0 said:Animation is very important. Not just character animation but spells and prop animation. I'm sure your animators flipped you the bird for even asking the question. Shame on you
Kilsin asks these questions for feedback to the team, its a way of guaranteeing they have their fingers on the right buttons. :P Feedback is very important on these forums, this is a hard working team and they do allow for listening to us the audience, on what we see, and what we think about the latest streams. Constructive criticism is allowed here. :)
Cana
Well, as this thread was brought back to life I guess I shouldn't make a new thread out of it, but some more critisism, this time about the combat animation. I know that it isn't all done yet but I hope this helps to guide the animators in some way shape or form.
Firstly the things I percive as "wrong" from a martial stanpoint.
The Stances, I like the feet and leg position and the overall body but my biggest gripe is with the weapons, especially the mainhand striking one, the shield could be done better but is in pretty good shape in my opinion.
Sorry for the low quality, but it was the best I could manage from the stream.
The biggest problem here is the sword, it is held behind the body and with the point facing off way to the side, making attacking look kind of awkward to me because the path they attack has to make is very windy. I'm liking how "alive" the stance looks, and also aggressive.
Pretty much the same for the ogre but I think it is worse here because he is using a mace/mallet/hammer so it doesn't have a point to threaten with wich makes this way of holding the weapon even worse than with the sword.
Here are examples of what I mean with very "windy" striking.
The ogre has to bring the weapon up high again to strike, it's not too bad really. A bigger thing for me though it how when he strikes the he brings the shield behind him, this would make it no longer protect him.
The "windy" striking is even worse here, where he has to bring the sword to the other side as well as bring it up high before striking. I didn't get a GIF of it but the human also throws his shield behind him when strike the other direction.
What I suggest is a couple of alternate stances.
For swords: Basically bring the point back on target.
Those are all basicall the same, heres another one from a high position.
For things like Maces/Hammers/Axes, but these work for swords just as well.
This one could be above the head, by the ear or by the shoulder pretty much and function the same.
These were mostly for hand and weapon positions so ignore the legs, you guys pretty much got it good there. It pretty much boils down to Weapon low, point online or offline and Weapon high, point online or offline, I don't think the kind of awkward in-between thing right now is the best choice.
jpedrote said:Bringing this topic back up, and prefacing my post by saying that I know animations are still being devoloped and tweaked and that I'm super excited for the Pre-Alpha news :)
In the twitchcon stream I noticed the running animations looked a bit different from the past streams, and not in a good way, they were too "bouncy" and the characters looked wierd during the running, their hips were tilting down and swinging from side to side while running and the arms/shoulders where to far apart from the torso and swing from side to side just a bit too much, that's not how you run with propper form, running requires a tight straight posture and foward movement of all 4 limbs, so the core (hips and but) should be locked in place, and the arms should always swing fowards not from side to side. Video of the stream when the character is naked ( https://youtu.be/6RuyuiBkrX8?t=244 ) here you can really see the hips tilting down and how far apart the arms are from the torso. From a random article on the internet ( http://dailyburn.com/life/fitness/tips-running-form/ ) on proper runing form, points 2 and 3 of the article the most important ones if you want some more insight on what I'm talking about.
I also noticed animations were more "bouncy" than before, not 100% certain of this but it looked like it, since the game is going for a more realistic look animations and movements shouldn't be exaggerated or overly fluid to the point of making it look cartoony, they shoud be a bit more rigid, but not to the point of stiffness.
The combat animation look sweet though :)
Trying my best to give constructive feedback of what I think needs improving and what looks wrong or out of place to me, keep up the good work, lets get to that sweat ass Alpha so I can play :)
I'd like to agree with this sentiment, as it was one of the first things I noticed when watching the stream. The combat animations looked great, but the running animation for the human still seemed a little awkward in the hip movements and sync between the rate of movement of the stride as it correlates to the ground underneath as seen here:
https://youtu.be/6RuyuiBkrX8?t=4m6s
I'm loving the way things are shaping up! Animations are hugely important to me, as I Spend so much time looking at my avatar, I want to feel a natural human connection to him. I tend to feel this when the animations are buttery smooth and lifelike enough to convey gravity, weight and oomph behind the swings and locomotion of the movements.
Thought I would chime in here, as I was always a big fan of the EQ2 animations, especially combat / casting. Hoping that the VR team can improve the current place holder animation with something that is much more natural. By "natural" I guess I mean fluid. Think of "following through" with a swinging motion, example being a battle hammer is heavy and should look that way when being moved about during combat. Early on EQ2 was especially good at this and they also excelled at representing delicate hand, finger and body movements during a cast (heal or what have you). Even the call home animation was a very nice fluid motion. So when I view the current pre-alpha animations I have that EQ2 benchmark in my minds eye so its easy to be critical of what is currently being shown. A couple of the posts prior to mine have mentioned the running motion being out of sink with the ground, I saw that naked corpse run and immediately thought that it looked like a green screen shot of a character running in place. I also noticed that there were way to few joint pivots/movements. Again I realize this is pre-alpha but with the environment looking soooooo good I would expect character animation to have the same refined qualities.
So I believe this thread was originally a question regarding our favorite character animation from other games. Answer: the EQ2 Froglok standing front flip attack, must be performed with a proper two handed weapon, preferrably a two handed battle axe.
Cheers,
Miko
Iksar said:I have faith in them for making their animations/sounds feel good. Even in EQ heavy/2h weapons felt meaty, Executioners Axe had a slow overhead wind-up and whoosh sound. All we have right now are early iterations of most if not all animations.
Worth mentioning that all weapons of a given type have the same animation, barring some exceptions that were design oversights.
All two-handed slashing weapons had identical animations on a given race, for instance. Any feeling of slowness was just a result of the attack delay of the weapon being higher. That didn't alter the animation, but simply the frequency between the (same) animation.
This isn't really a criticism of your post, by the way. It's honestly pretty much industry standard that all items of the same type have the same animation. I fully agree in general that attacks should and will have a good feeling to them. Vanguard's animations felt great to me personally for most weapon types.
@Youmu
I don't have much knowledge of martial arts involving weapons, so all the combat animations looked fine and correct to me from a "looks and feel" standpoint, but after seing your post I get what you're saying, they completly break their guard when attacking, as oposed to making minimal movement without exposing weak point when they strike.
It makes sense from a realism pov to not open yourself when attacking, but I don't know how far you can push this realism, because the game doesn't work like a action game where there are openings, the melee auto-attack system in MMO's is more a "Turn Based" systems than action system, you attack every X seconds and the enemies also attack every X seconds, the reactive part of combat comes from using your abilities and skills at the right times while your your auto-attacks just happen to make combat look "active", so for me aslong as the animations look and feel good I'm fine with it, but I can totaly see why the animations would bother you.
Kelendil said:I'd like to agree with this sentiment, as it was one of the first things I noticed when watching the stream. The combat animations looked great, but the running animation for the human still seemed a little awkward in the hip movements and sync between the rate of movement of the stride as it correlates to the ground underneath as seen here:
https://youtu.be/6RuyuiBkrX8?t=4m6s
I'm loving the way things are shaping up! Animations are hugely important to me, as I Spend so much time looking at my avatar, I want to feel a natural human connection to him. I tend to feel this when the animations are buttery smooth and lifelike enough to convey gravity, weight and oomph behind the swings and locomotion of the movements.
Yup, the animations and character models are possibly the only thing that's present in 100% of the game, so they should be one of the most important aspect to get right.