Wolf rider movement animation

[Eleazar]

I'd say it's one of my top 2 Wesnoth animations!

if you have this in layers, perhaps save out a riderless version for the "dangerous beast" wolf

[Tomsik]

Here are things that are wrong for me:

First: hindquarter goes too high.
Second: back legs go not enogh to front, look at animation in your first post.
Thrid: front legs look oddly, can't say exactly why.

[Kestenvarn]

The back legs look as though they have been twisted... think a bit of shortening might help them?

[ozymandias]

GREAT GREAT GREAT!



Grosses Kino!

[turin]

OK, I merged Disto's changes. I thought about what was said about the jump not looking powerful enough; I tried out deleting frame 2, which did make it look more powerful, but might look a bit odd... opinions?

[Zhukov]

I can't say that the exclusion of one frame makes it look any better. It just gives it a slight 'jerk' in each cycle. Although I doubt I would notice the difference if I didn't have them both together.

I wonder how it would look in-game. I have noticed that animations tend to look better when you're playing. Perhaps because you can't analyse them like you can in a post.

I still stand by what I said before. Particularly about the hind legs coming forward more. (Look at that b&w animation you included on your first post, that says it better then I can.)

[Disto]

Animations look better in game because you actually have the unit moving.

[Jetrel]

Before I say anything else - wow!

One major thing you're missing, though this is very good. Because your study animation is horizontally oriented, your work is bending towards that. The unit in game must travel at an angle, and we absolutely need different animations for ne and se. We might not be able to get them right away, but I would much rather have a single good animation for one direction, than an incorrect animation for two directions. You're going to have to do some rather significant corrections in that department, making his apparent direction shift by about 20-30°. His standing orientation might not be the best to imitate.

Man, this is gonna be so sweeeet when it's done!! Awesome!

I can't say that the exclusion of one frame makes it look any better. It just gives it a slight 'jerk' in each cycle.

Yeah - DO NOT remove the frame, it makes the animation much more jerky.

I still stand by what I said before. Particularly about the hind legs coming forward more. (Look at that b&w animation you included on your first post, that says it better then I can.)

I agree with this.

[turin]

I'll start on making that change, then.

BTW, I plugged the animation in-game to see how it looked. I don't think the problem Zhukov described was very noticeable (but maybe that's because I don't recognize the problem in the original either), but Jetryl's critique was right on. It looked like he was jumping to the right, and the wind was blowing him southward.

[edit]
OK, I just started the rotation. Is this a sufficient rotation for frame 1, or should it be rotated more?

[Jetrel]

No, it's not quite enough.

I've taken a swing at the rotation - note that this will take a good deal more of cleanup. I'll try and attack that cleanup myself, since doing this whole rotation is really difficult, and we're going to have to do it for four directions, since we'll need four directions of the running animation.

When it's done, however, it will be relatively easy to make all the images for all the other wolves' running. In fact, this will even make the creation of the horse galloping frames slightly easier.

On a side note, your choice of using a reference animation was very, very wise. Because that reference animation was well-done, it's a good as studying from life, which is what everyone should do.


Note, in the attached image, how the feet line up on the "ground plane" established by the arrow. They should (as they now do) straddle the arrow. Tricks like this help to establish perspective in our poor, inadequate brains.

[Jetrel]

Man this is hard! I'm glad I'm doing it, rather than anyone else, because even I can barely handle turning the perspective on this image.

I think this is the best I can do, right now - some things about the rider's body may be a bit ... off, but it's fairly close, at least. I know I can't fix it now, though, and fortunately, the wolf _should_ be correct, as long as you assume that his tail is hanging down - when it swings up, a lot more of it will be visible..

So, take a good, hard swing at making this wolf lope, kind sir, and I'll attend to the rider as soon as I can (if anything really needs to be done to him, I'm not sure, right now).



This looks correct (I've tried it in-game) for the direction this fellow is facing in, but (understandably), looks worse than the original moving frame did for anything north. This is probably a good sign.

[turin]

Will do.

[Jetrel]

Will do.

I'll also attend to making this guy face in the other three cardinal directions.

[Eleazar]

That perspective may be more literally correct, but it's certainly a different perspective than the one from which units are usually shown.
I fear it will be weird for the perspective to shift more dramatically than the angle when the wolf goes from "move" to "standing" mode.

[Jetrel]

That perspective may be more literally correct, but it's certainly a different perspective than the one from which units are usually shown.
I fear it will be weird for the perspective to shift more dramatically than the angle when the wolf goes from "move" to "standing" mode.

Uhm, the perspective isn't, or at least should not be, changing (pardon the loose terminology in my previous post - that was completely wrong on my part. I should not have used the word "perspective" where I did). The direction that the unit is facing is what is changing, quite significantly. Previously, the unit, in it's standing frame, faced at approximately 10° down from east. Now, the unit faces at a whopping 40-45° down from east. Plus the rider is hunching down rather than sitting upright.

I've seen this frame in-game, and it looks fine. I could certainly be in error, don't get me wrong, but so far it does look good in-game.