Animation Upgrade Project

[Jetrel]

Besides the TC project, and the project to make north-facing frames, another thing we need to do around here is to improve a lot of the current animations we've got. Unfortunately, this one or two-frame crap we have generally doesn't cut it for a lot of units. It can work for some, but for units that swing their weapon in an arc (swords, axes, etc), it generally doesn't look good. Also, some animations need to be revised to make them work better for attacks to the south, since, quite unlike in the past, they're no longer to be used for north-east (since we'll be getting north-directional frames).

Those units that are currently pending a TC remake will be dealt with as they are team-colored. The drakes, especially, are gonna need a lot of love when their time comes - right now, they're very poorly animated, and changing that will affect them quite dramatically.


Also, in doing a lot of these (esp human bowman, poacher, and orcish archer), we need to clean up their blade imagery - what we ideally want to have is blades like the human swordsman or human ranger have (though obviously shorter than the swordsman). For a number of reasons, these just plain look better.

I also need to update the tutorial on weapon blurs, and denote it as the official stance that we should not be doing these "smudge tool" blurs that we've previously been doing - it looks like crap. Mea culpa - that was a bad idea. Any of those we've still got kicking around should really get cleaned up, fortunately, with this work I've been doing, we have very few of those left (in fact, only the bandit comes to mind as having one, that and some campaign-specific units like asheviere).

- Elves: (awaiting some cleanup to the race coming soonish)
Fighter - I'm going to personally attend to this one
Captain - will be cloned by me from quietus' marshal animation
Marshal - being worked on by quietus
Hero - Needs more frames and an altered angle.
Champion

Archer - Done by me, awaiting a port to the male version of the unit, and a commit.
Marksman
Sharpshooter
Ranger
Avenger


- Dwarves:
Thunderer
Thunderguard
Dragonguard

Fighter - Axe
Steelclad - Axe
Lord - Axe

Fighter - Hammer
Steelclad - Hammer
Lord - Hammer

Ulfzerker
Berzerker


- Loyalists:
Bowman
Longbowman
Masterbowman


- Outlaws:
Thief
Rogue
Assassin

Poacher
Trapper
Huntsman
Ranger

Thug
Bandit
Highwayman

Footpad
Outlaw
Fugitive


- Undead:
Skeleton
Revenant
Draug
Deathblade

Death Knight

Spectre
Nightgaunt


- Orcs:
Archer
Crossbowman
Slurbow

Assassin
Slayer


- Drakes/Saurians:
Augur
Soothsayer
Oracle

All drakes

Yeti - I have some additional frames from eternal; I need to figure out what's still needed and play with offsets.

[Blarumyrran]

- Not really mainline multiplayer, so not such a high priority:
Human Thug
Human Bandit
Human Highwayman

just to nitpick, they _are_ mainline multiplayer. in Great War.

[Noyga]

They also appear quite often in campaigns and MP scenarios.

[thespaceinvader]

As requested, steelclad frames. I think the shield looks OK, but the shape might need a little tweaking.

[Jetrel]

As requested, steelclad frames. I think the shield looks OK, but the shape might need a little tweaking.

And the helmet could use some rotation around the vertical axis, but really, this is excellent. Awesome. I'll take this from here.

[thespaceinvader]

I did rotate it a little, but it doesn't really show unfortunately. Glad it's useful =)

[Jetrel]

As requested, steelclad frames. I think the shield looks OK, but the shape might need a little tweaking.

Some tidbits on the shield and rotation. Shame on me for the arms in the fighter line during the "shield behind" frames, they were wrong. They don't look so bad with the round shield, but it looked more awkward here because the change in the orientation of the shield was different between frames, and therefore it was a bit jarring. Also, you'll note some changes to the shading on the shield - might not have been originally obvious, but the shield is meant to have an outward "pillow" shape - like that of the shields of the Spartans in 300 (you're right that the edge is extruded, but the middle should stick out even further).

Prepping and committing right now..

[Jetrel]

Prepping and committing right now..

Committed. Thanks again!

P.S. If you want to do the same thing for the Lord, that you did for this - please, please do. It would be extremely helpful.

I've attached my edited frames.

[thespaceinvader]

I'll give it a shot.

[Jetrel]

I'll give it a shot.

Awesome.

Also, it should be semi-obvious, but please work from the edited frames I uploaded above. (Can't be too specific, on wesnoth.. Sorry about being paranoid, and I sure suspect you'd clue in on that yourself, but in the event you overlooked that, I've hopefully saved us some work.)

The hard part will be the cape; hopefully everything else will be a cakewalk.

[thespaceinvader]

Bingo. The cape probably needs work, though. I'll give that another once over, but since I'm still working via thumb drive from uni computers, it might take me a while to get it uploaded.

[Jetrel]

Bingo. The cape probably needs work, though. I'll give that another once over, but since I'm still working via thumb drive from uni computers, it might take me a while to get it uploaded.

Ah, yes. The cape is completely borked in this one. During the first few frames, the cape should be trailing backwards, rather than down, because he is moving forwards at a decent rate. At and after the apex of his jump the cape should be higher than he is, as it's billowing with the air underneath it as he descends. Only on the very last frame should it flop down.

A reference for what the "trailing back" would look like is the human marshal's attack animation.



Also, the nice thing about animations this long, where we're not recycling forward-moving frames in usage as backwards-moving frames, is that we can actually do stuff like this correctly. You don't have to put the cape in a BS position that sorta-kinda looks good for both, but doesn't really look great for either (a solution I've had to do all too often before I bit the bullet and started doing these animation things with a sufficient number of frames); you can actually do it correctly on both. This is a lot like how directional animations fix the problem of "horsemen charging ass-first"; there's just no way, no matter how you slice it, to make an animation for a linear attack that simultaneously looks correct both towards the north and the south.

[thespaceinvader]

I think that the issue comes with me thinking about the animation in place rather than with the forward motion involved as well. I'll re-work it with that in mind.

EDIT: hope this is an improvement. Roughs only so far to see if any fixes to the motions are necessary. Ignore the old ones copypasta'd about the place.

I redesigned the cloak on the standing frame, too, since it seemed to be hovering in midair with no visible means of support...

Should I go ahead and shade it fully?

[Jetrel]

I redesigned the cloak on the standing frame, too, since it seemed to be hovering in midair with no visible means of support...

For now, we're not going to fix that - it's supposed be tossed about by the wind, but it'll make more sense when we make animated base frames.

I think that the issue comes with me thinking about the animation in place rather than with the forward motion involved as well. I'll re-work it with that in mind.

EDIT: hope this is an improvement. Roughs only so far to see if any fixes to the motions are necessary. Ignore the old ones copypasta'd about the place.


Should I go ahead and shade it fully?

Yep, that looks great. You're good to go.

[thespaceinvader]

Hope this is OK. The only slight issue is the non-raggedness of the cloak - it's a lot easier to work with a whole one. Thus, I've included the non-ragged, gravity-obeying base frame, possibly just in the interim between now and the implementation of the standing animation.