Standing and idle animations?

[Jetrel]

Hmm. Everyone keep in mind that we are experimenting, here. We are daring to do things that we know might end up being bad, just in case they aren't.


Try:
Reducing the up and down motion of the body to 1px.
Introducing a very small bit of side-to-side motion, as well - make sure this is physically accurate, not just grabbing the top half of the image and sliding it side-to-side.


Also, perhaps arms should move more than the torso? That might work much better. Right now, the arms stand still, and the torso seems to bounce.

I'm not really sure, but I think what looks goofy about this one is how the shoulders move up and down as much as they do. Making it less subtle than 1px could be really hard, since then you'd have to get into subpixel rendering to make it work.


Like I said, we're experimenting here, and you doing this is really appreciated.

[Eleazar]

Would all the animations of the same kind of unit happen in sync?

If that's not the case, i'd recommend longer streatches of non-movment, punctuation by a shift. It would be weird if all the rousers were still and then they suddenly twitched together.

If you go for a more "active" movement, this could be tied into gameplay by only allowing units with movepoints left to "bob". This could allow more active animations, because you wouln't always have to see it.

[zookeeper]

Hi Eleazar!

Would all the animations of the same kind of unit happen in sync?

If that's not the case, i'd recommend longer streatches of non-movment, punctuation by a shift. It would be weird if all the rousers were still and then they suddenly twitched together.

If you go for a more "active" movement, this could be tied into gameplay by only allowing units with movepoints left to "bob". This could allow more active animations, because you wouln't always have to see it.

I'd say that we should leave the timing of these animations pretty random. Meaning that we only define the 1-2 second long animations in the unit .cfg's and the engine takes care of all timing and randomization - every unit should absolutely be randomized individually. The standing animation definition could of course have for example a key that determines how often the animation triggers (a breathing anim would trigger every few seconds, a stratching of head every half a minute or so).

[Darth Fool]

I think a unit bobbing would be a good animation for a selected unit, but for a unit that is not selected, I think bobbing is too much. The units should look like they are waiting in a position that they could hold indefinitely. Motion should be restricted to things that move because of the wind (cloth and flames) during normal standing animation. Idle animations that get randomly triggered when nothing is done on screen can add variety, but making most units bodies animated all the time is going to look wierd.

[kshinji]

Hmm. Everyone keep in mind that we are experimenting, here. We are daring to do things that we know might end up being bad, just in case they aren't...

...now, nurse, please bring me first fetus.

[zookeeper]

I think a unit bobbing would be a good animation for a selected unit, but for a unit that is not selected, I think bobbing is too much.

True, bobbing would be good for the selected unit. However, I'm not quite sure if we want to start having both bobbing animations when selected and standing/idle animations...all units not having idle animations is fine, since they're reasonably rarely triggered. A bobbing animation when selected however is expected every time you select anything, so it wouldn't look very neat perhaps for the [a very long amount of time] that it would take for every unit to get one. But that's of course a matter to be discussed in the other thread.

[JW]

I'm wondering if these standing animations will be implemented with the larger hex sizes and OpenGL

[Boucman]

Ok, some background about standing animations and how I intended them to be used (not that you have to use them that way, but a little background can always help)

I plan to have two types of animations : standing animations and idling animations

idling animations would be played randomly when the unit is standing, could be interupted in the middle if the unit is selected, and are here to have units make weird things from time to time

standing animations are played all the time in loop, and are here to replace the base frame we had since now.
Actually I never intended units to be animated in their standing frames, it was done only because it was impler to have a full animation for standing than doing special code to have directional standing frame....

my advice would be to use standing animations only for standing frames filtered on direction/terrain/whatever can be filtered (and more, simply do a feature request )
and wait for the idling animations, if you want your unit to look bored

[Redeth]

Try: Reducing the up and down motion of the body to 1px.

Done.

Also, perhaps arms should move more than the torso? That might work much better. Right now, the arms stand still, and the torso seems to bounce.

Ok, no torso bouncing, a little more movement of the arms. And I found 150ms/frame to be the best speed.

Introducing a very small bit of side-to-side motion, as well - make sure this is physically accurate, not just grabbing the top half of the image and sliding it side-to-side.

I couldn't get that to look right, but instead I tried this... the guy remains in place but looks to the other side, making a 'caution' signal with his hand.

This action is hardly suitable for a mindless, insignificant goblin, but as we both keep reminding everyone, this is an experiment and the spearman just happens to be our guinea pig. Units with Leadership, for instance, could signal their comrades.

I imagine this animation being used on a selected unit. For the non-active units, the simple blinking of the eyes and some movement of the clothes/straps/flags should do the trick, along with the short and funny random idle animations.

Like I said, we're experimenting here, and you doing this is really appreciated.

Thanks. That's encouraging, because I see much talking but very little animating here

Oh, by the way, Eleazar, good to see you're still around!!

[Stilgar]

I like it, the motion of the arm and head looks very smooth.

If you do try doing one that would be suitable for a goblin, you might try having him look around nervously, or biting his nails.

[Dragon Master]

or have him pick at his spear and prick himself. Maybe clean out his ears every so often.

[Jetrel]

Well, you've made a wonderful animation for a sudden, random movement, after the unit has just been sitting there for a while.


This is one of the things we need, so that much is good.

[Woodwizzle]

Well, you've made a wonderful animation for a sudden, random movement, after the unit has just been sitting there for a while.


This is one of the things we need, so that much is good.

Yeah thats exactly what I think we need. The bobbing though I'm not so sure about. It seems like it would get rather busy on screen, and if they all did it in sync it would be horrible! When I first heard of standing animations it was what you just mentioned that I thought of first, not continual loops.

Not so say continual loops couldn't be done very subtley and un-synced. Just sayin' I like the all of a sudden idle animations better. =)

[Zhukov]

Well, first off: this is pretty damn cool, even if it is just an experiment.

My thoughts [IMHO]:
Any continuous standing animations would be fine only if they were very subtle, cloaks rippling in the breeze and stuff. Like what Redeth has done with that rag on the goblin's spear. Bobbing on the other hand, even if only a matter of 1 pixel, could easily become annoying if you see a whole army doing it. I'm curious to see how this turns out.

However, non-continuous animations (like that 'caution signal') occuring at random intervals would be excellent. I for one am positively popping with ideas for this (goblin knight patting his wolf on the head, archer restringing bow, rogue balancing knife on fingertip, bird flying out of wose's foliage...the list goes on).
[/IMHO]

I realise this is an experiment, don't take me too seriously. Just speculating. Anyway, it's looking promising. I'll certainly be keeping an eye on this thread.

[kshinji]

Yeah, it would be great, if each unit was doing a random action each rand(CONST,CONST*2)*NUMBER_OF_UNITS^0.5 seconds, and a funny thing each rand(ANOTHER_CONST,ANOTHER_CONST*2)*NUMBER_OF_UNITS^0.5 seconds.

My formulae is reasonable i think, and simpel to be coded.