New animations

[Happy Ent]

I like the dying Wose so much, I couldn't resist playing around with it. Any dwarf player worth his salt will take perverse satisfaction in cutting down a Wose the proper way. With an axe.

Now, before I marshal the energy to continue working on this idea, please tell me to stop if this is a stillborn idea. For example, because the whole concept is too cartoonish.

Otherwise, the biggest problem with the animation is to decide what the "cut-face" of the falling trunk does. I've looked a bit at pictures of fallen trees, and it clearly lands behind the remaining trunk. I guess the tree it slips "behind" while it topples over, never really exposing its full circumference to us. The first few frames take this into account, but from frame 5 or so I just stopped drawing it, because I need to decide if the final position of the upper half is all-right. Currently, it's exactly where it was in the original animation, but the chopped-down tree might actually end up in a different position than the uprooted one. In truth, I think the current approach looks surprisingly good, and I am not too keen on experimenting with foreshortening (in the already-weird perspective of Wesnoth). Comments are, of course, welcome.

[Gus]

I've never cut a tre in my life, but i'm pretty sure the tree falls in the direction were the cutting takes place. You are, in essence, removing some wood from the trunk, and when you remove enough, the whole thing "topples" (is that the correct word?).

[irrevenant]

Don't bother, it looks fine as it is.

Yeh, I didn't mean to imply otherwise. The couple of things I suggested would be a nice touch, but they're far from necessary.

I've never cut a tree in my life, but i'm pretty sure the tree falls in the direction were the cutting takes place. You are, in essence, removing some wood from the trunk, and when you remove enough, the whole thing "topples" (is that the correct word?).

True, but a normal tree doesn't have the capacity to move around in reaction to the blows, so there's some room for interpretation there.

[torangan]

Cutting a tree is a bit more complex as there are strong forces involved. You've got to take into account the shape for example. Not every tree is absolutely straight and has evenly distributed branches.
But for the matters of the game, we should simply use the best looking approach and if someone complains, kill the argument with: it's a wose, not a tree!

[Flametrooper]

This is a cool idea, and it already looks very promising. If you can add several "in-between" frames to smooth things out, this puppy can get committed. Note that in some of these "in-between" frames, the knife will need to get rotated to angles that aren't currently drawn.

Sounds good - sorry for not starting sooner. Where should the in-between frames go? I'm thinking around the throw/catch in his left, our right, hand - at the start and end. Possibly one between from when he catches it in the other hand and throws it again. But I just want to hear your opinion on where to place those "smoothifier" frames first, before I try any.

[Jetrel]

This is a cool idea, and it already looks very promising. If you can add several "in-between" frames to smooth things out, this puppy can get committed. Note that in some of these "in-between" frames, the knife will need to get rotated to angles that aren't currently drawn.

Sounds good - sorry for not starting sooner. Where should the in-between frames go? I'm thinking around the throw/catch in his left, our right, hand - at the start and end. Possibly one between from when he catches it in the other hand and throws it again. But I just want to hear your opinion on where to place those "smoothifier" frames first, before I try any.

Everywhere; the toss needs several frames to smooth it out, and the knife-in-hand parts need a few frames of "follow-through". For example, when he catches it, his hand is probably going to get knocked back a smidge from the impact (1px?), and the knife would rotate about 5-10°.

These are not changes I'm suggesting for the existing frames, those are a description of a new frame that hasn't been drawn yet.

[Boucman]

I've never cut a tre in my life, but i'm pretty sure the tree falls in the direction were the cutting takes place. You are, in essence, removing some wood from the trunk, and when you remove enough, the whole thing "topples" (is that the correct word?).

I cut a few trees myself, both with saw and axe, ant you can usually choose on what side the tree is going to fall by diong two opposite cut, one above the other...


anyyway, I don't think realism is important in that case. even if it is technically wrong (which we can't really tell with that level of details) it's not visually wrong, and that's all that matters

[Happy Ent]

I actually thought about the direction of falling. The problem with having the initial "notch" on the back of the tree is that you can't see it, and the attacker couldn't have hit it. Conversely, having the tree fall into the direction of the initial notch would (1) be a lot of work, and (2) makes it land far into the lower-right adjecent hex.

I have already played around with having the Wose's arms flail before he starts to topple. This makes the animation even longer (1: Wose discovers notch in the "belly", 2: Arms flail, suggesting the Wose tries to avoid falling forward, 3: Wose topples over, falling backward). It's funny, and even more cartoonish. No time today, but maybe I can upload an animated GIF of it tomorrow.

[hunz]

Oh man, I had a dream tonight..
A cutted wose walking! It was moving like a spider, moving root by root...

If anyone is planning in a wose-moving animation, this is my dream-suggestion, heh.

Hugs, peace!

[Jetrel]

Now, before I marshal the energy to continue working on this idea, please tell me to stop if this is a stillborn idea. For example, because the whole concept is too cartoonish.

The concept is a bit too cartoonish, and we're already have not one, but two perfectly fine worse-death animations.

Please work on units that have no death animation at all. There are many of them.

[Gus]

To clarify: i think the tree looks good even if it shouldn't have fallen that way. Happy Ent's suggestion of moving the arms sounded nice to me. But hey, Jet's the boss.

[Happy Ent]

I'm stilling trying to learn how to do this, so excuse my somewhat pedestrian contributions...

Here's another dead tree-man. I inserted two new frames between the Elder Wose base-frame and the 4th to final frame of the basic Wose death.

[Jetrel]

I'm stilling trying to learn how to do this, so excuse my somewhat pedestrian contributions...

Here's another dead tree-man. I inserted two new frames between the Elder Wose base-frame and the 4th to final frame of the basic Wose death.

Don't combine the elder-wose death animation with the death animation of the level-1 wose, it looks cheap. Do it from scratch.

You did a fairly good job with what you did, but we're not going to cut corners on things like this.

[EELuminatus]

The bigger the tree, the harder it gets... the elder wose is causing me quite some trouble.

Here's a work in progress-version of the elder wose's death animation. I know that the animation of its head doesn't look fine, yet (mostly because the leaves don't move "around" correctly, one line of leaves + fruit is duplicated and the face appears flat in mid-movement) and the hands need some polishing. I'm pretty much pleased with the roots so far, though...

Just wanted to post it now, because it's been quite some work already and perhaps you have any other comments to which I could react better now than later.

(... deleted this version and posted the next one...)

[XJaPaN]

O_O Woohoo!! Spec-tec-cular!! Nice job, keep going!