Standing and idle animations?

[beetlenaut]

His hand should lower when the club hits his palm, shouldn't it?

When he hits his palm, his whole arm should move. His whole body is, in general, too statue-like after he finishes turning. There needs to be a bit of movement around his shoulders and torso when he is moving the club around.

[Komdour]

Sorry, no animation to post. I want it to look somewat acceptable for the updat. I've been working on my animation, but I've reached a nasty threshold. I can't tilt my guy forward for him to stand, because that would place him off ballance. And bringing his right leg around is a confusing task. I have looked in a miror, and watched my actions to try and figure out how I could get him to stand from that position. It is extremely dificult even to manuver myself into a stand from there. Ballance is key. I have 3 options:

Manuver his leg around to bring him into a kneel, then have him lean forward.- this would be hard. And I would have to move his left leg back down, or redraw it. And there is the impending problem; if I make this too long it could be anoying to recruit a mage.

My second option is to have him bring his arms down, and use his hands on the ground to stand him up.- Super hard, but could yeald a good result that wouldn't be anoying playing the game.

The last thing I have been considering is redrawing his legs in all of the frames so he starts from a kneel.- Once I redrew all of the frames it could be simple and sweet. Only problem is, the redraw would take forever. I have already manuvered his body with his legs in the positions they are in, so redrawing them would be painstaking. I feal this would yeald good results though.

I am asking an opinion, wich of these options should I persue? And I am in need of suggestions to help improve the overall feal of the finished product.
PS this is the wrong thread, I know. But I originaly posted my standing/ recruiting animation here so I'm going to see it through. I'll move it if someone wants me to. But I dont see much a need to. It is a standing (up) animation after all.

[beetlenaut]

It's hard to give advice without seeing an animation. Could you at least sketch them out with stick figures? It should only take a few minutes for each. (You might be able to decide without any more input if you do that. One of them might look clearly better.)

[Komdour]

the animation is a page back. What I have so far.

[beetlenaut]

That's the beginning, but you're asking for opinions about how to finish it off. I was suggesting sketching the three different options for that.

[Komdour]

I have sketched them. To bad I don't have a scanner. The redraw kneeling is 100% out of the equasion. I'm leaning a little to fliping the leg around in a slightly ocward way.

Edit- I have decided to go along with the twisting of the leg. Now I have one minor issue. Since the begining I have had him set the book down (so he could stand up) but now I have animated it so that he picks it back up. The only way to not make setting the book down look totaly useless is to have a short break (when he beguins to stand) where he uses that hand to brace himself to swich his legs around. I was wondering, how long (in time) should a recruiting animation be?

[Redeth]

humm... I'm looking for suggestions about this one, before I submit it to Jet.

[zookeeper]

Looks really good. The only thing I'd tweak a bit would be his our left foot: it turns really quickly during the beginning of the animation, whereas it'd look smoother to move it more gradually across a couple more turns. And turn his our right foot just a little bit more, too, so it doesn't stick out as the only static part when everything else moves.

[Jetrel]

Looks really good. The only thing I'd tweak a bit would be his our left foot: it turns really quickly during the beginning of the animation, whereas it'd look smoother to move it more gradually across a couple more turns. And turn his our right foot just a little bit more, too, so it doesn't stick out as the only static part when everything else moves.

Maybe one more frame of the foot turning might be good. I think more than that would oversmooth it and give a stop-motion effect.

I'm beginning to realize that for a lot of our animation, having a "constant amount of movement per frame" / "moving body parts the same distance in each frame" is … a bit of a beginner's mistake. It looks okay, but it has a stiff, robotic look akin to early stop-motion animation, like the classic old king kong movie. In real life, even within individual moves, there's a lot of variability in speed.

Probably the best "guess" for the speed of a generic body motion would normally be a bell (aka gaussian) curve. Slow as it picks up speed, really fast in the middle part of the motion, and slow towards the end as it decelerates near the destination. So this should probably be the default guess -instead- of linear.


Anyways, this is really good, I love it, look forward to seeing it in-game.

[thespaceinvader]

That makes a lot of sense, actually - that's how movement works in reality... Acceleration is not instant, so you have to start slow, move fast, then slow down again, rather than instantly moving fast then instantly stopping.

[Ardent]

OT: Actually the muscle tissue has different dynamic pull characteristics depending on the length to which you stretch the muscle.

[Dragonchampion]

Redeth, could I use your unmounted Grand Knight and... Paladin? You know, from your avatar? It would be interesting to make a scenario where you can get on and off your horse at will...

[Redeth]

I tweaked his foot and added a simple frame in which the spearman seems to react to something (a noise perhaps) right before he turns around. It somehow de-robotizes the motion, if only slightly. I call it done, .zip below.

Redeth, could I use your unmounted Grand Knight and... Paladin? You know, from your avatar? It would be interesting to make a scenario where you can get on and off your horse at will...

My avatar is hardly "mine", it's the result of some pixel butchery from the time I was helping with Maeglin's Franken-Pack idea. The best I can provide you with is this version of the unmounted Grand Knight. Of course you're free to do with it - and with the rest of the avatar - whatever suits your wishes.

[Dragonchampion]

Thanks!

[Peter the Great]

Is it just me or does it seem that the spearman is hanging forward for a fraction of a second to long? In real life it'd be uncomfortable to be leaning forward like that without heavy armor and stiff metal boots for even a small amount of time.