All Things Art: Animation Edition

Something I've done on one of my characters is that I gave him long hair and then I put on one of the single-shoulder capes, one with a ragged edge. From the front he looks like he's got really long hair that waves dramatically in the wind. Very bishy. I'll add an image of this later.

It would perhaps be possible to make comparatively easy animated hair with a similar setup if we had art and costume pieces that were actually meant for this purpose. A narrow "cape" that looks like hair, centered on the back, instead of offset to one side, for example. A hairstyle or three which will merge with this cape almost seamlessly.

The wedding veil hairstyle could probably work on its own if we could just get different types of "veils" that looked like hair, attached to the right place on the head. In this case clipping might actually be a good thing, if the "veil" is attached to a point inside the head and exits somewhere at the neck, the hair will seem to merge with the veil no matter how it flaps about. Probably.

On cape-rig hair: This is an overall bad idea, and Ghost Widow herself is both an example of pretty much the ONLY use that doesn't look bad and a reason why it WOULD look bad. The cape system is designed to model flat monolithic fabrics, and hair is simply not that. Some hairstyles could be classed as this, but even then, hair longer than about shoulder-length tends to separate and flow around the body. It does not stick together, nor should it. Nor, indeed, is hair as light a our capes seem to be. Capes themselves can be excused because their large surface area creates a lot of air friction, but this does not apply to hair.

Furthermore, we have hairs like pigtails, ponytails, mohawks, those weird free-standing cowlicks and so forth. Cape rigs do not work for what are essentially rope-like structures, and we don't have a rope rig.

I can only ever see animated hair done decently in two ways - either by animating it similar to wings, or by giving it a brand new "hair wobbling rig" like they have in Aion, and even then I have my doubts as to how well that will handle LONG hair like they DON'T have in Aion. And, yes, I checked. I don't know how time consuming that would be, or indeed if each hairstyle won't require its own unique animations, but I really, REALLY want to see that. It doesn't have to be complex, really. No more complex than tails, anyway. Just let it wave when we run and flap when we fall. That's about it. And, yes, that includes short air wobbling like short hair actually does.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

One thing I've wanted since alternate animations were announced was a headbutt animation for Cobra Strike from Martial Arts. The current alternate animation, an uppercut, looks fine and all, but it's not really well-suited for an attack that is primarily used to stun enemies. An uppercut is, after all, a "power" punch. A headbutt would work much better with the power thematically, and could really be interchangeable between the two styles of animations.

Also, I'd like to see a couple of unique animations work their way into some of the older sets. Blasts in particular, where there's like a handful of animations that get used over and over again across the sets. I don't want every set completely redone, just something here and there to give each set some flare and individuality. Y'know?

Finally, something that was informally discussed with BABs during the Issue 15 closed beta: a costume change emote for Villain Epics. He seemed interested in the idea (in fact, he may have been the one to initiate the conversation about it), but with everything that has followed, it's entirely likely it either fell off his radar or got pushed WAY onto the back burner.

I'd like to see a more 'elegant' alternate style for Broadsword - the big choppy animations are fine for stronger characters and the big meaty swords, but if I'm using something like the Chinese Jian then I think some spins, ripostes and thrusts would look great.

(p.s. can we have more swords like the Jian? Everything else is wayyyy too chunky for my tastes )

Can we please get a Flypose emote that lets us ride a Nemesis Horse?

I'd like a different animation for superspeed, you current one just doesn't work for me.

It may not be possible, but some sort of motion blur would be awesome.

Costume piece jetpacks, please.

Adam Strange
Rocketeer
Great Machine
Boba Fett
Beetle/Mach-X
Buzz Lightyear

You know you wanna.

Awesome topic. First the nitpicking, things that annoy me:

1) the alternate animations of MA currently on game aren't as smooth as the original ones. Going into more detail, the windup animation is okay (if not a little slower than I expected), but the blow animation is so fast that it has no strong impact (looks like a quick poke to me). Notable mention is the uppercut: the amount of time the character winds up going back to deliver the punch, only to *snap* forward during the hit, looks very fake, not powerful, and in fact, silly, just because it goes off so fast. For comparison, Knockout Blow has adequate windup/hit times, and I would like the new animations to be more fine-tuned, to have a better flow.

As for new ideas and suggestions...

2) I've been thinking about this just the other night: ability to choose our standing poses. I would like my characters to stay idle in stances like when you do the /e donut (eatdonut?) emote, but without the donut. I think that would be a great stance animation. But not just give us a new emote, but actually give us the ability to set a "default" stance animation, so every time the character stops running/jumping or after coming back from combat pose, the new stance would be triggered.

3) Alternate animations for other powersets, as others have already mentioned, would be awesome. Additional animations for powersets that already have them... would be too.

4) Maybe for a more technical suggestion... I'd like the "ragdoll" system to animate the hands and feet as well. Currently, when the ragdoll system triggers, the hands and feet are locked into a default position. The hand, specially, locks in a position where it's always holding a weapon, and when the enemy is not holding one, the result looks weird. Animating the feet would add more detail to the falling poses and such. Suggestion: would it possible for the enemy to *drop* his weapon, whenever the "ragdoll-death" animation kicks in? Would be a very cool detail in my opinion (weapons lying on the floor, next to a defeated enemy).

5) Minor suggestion... I've been playing a few other games, newer than CoH, and I am surprised that they do not surpass the animation quality of this game. In special, CoH has hit-reaction animations, something I almost never find in other games. Both in gameplay and for some realism factor, I like to know when my character is hit, or then my attack hits the enemy. That said, I would like to see extra, alternate animations for hit reactions. There are some emotes out there that have them (when NPCs are punching each other, for example, the reaction animations are different). One touch of detail would be animations that don't hit full-force, let's say, when a Tanker has resistance armors up, their animations when hit would not be so intense, as they are resisting the blows.

5a) Following the previous idea is one for an alternate, stronger KNOCKBACK animation, where the hit character flies back, spinning on his heels. It's pretty common in fighting games, and for some reason, it makes me go "Whoa" every time it happens. This new animation could be used for powers like Hurricane, Tornado, Water Sprout (does it do KB still?), and melee blows that are swings (I don't remember if there's any that does KB... hopefully that will sprout ideas for new animations :P ).

Thanks for the topic!

I'd love to see more animated trees that we could use in our bases, especially autumnal coloured ones, or flowers that move gently in a breeze. Also, waterfalls or fountains would be a nice addition for us to use

Pointing finger instead of a gun!

I make a girl character. I give her high heels. She runs like a girl in heels....until she pulls out a gun. Or a sword. Or two swords (which I could customize to be teeny little knives). Suddenly she stops running a like a girl in heels, does a little skip, and starts running like a dude. I would like to keep running like a girl please. Alternately, some female characters don't wear heels and don't want to run as if they were wearing heels, so allowing for the "weapons drawn" run with no weapons would be good too.

I would also like alternate taunt sound effects for females. I am not overly fond of the one we have. My superstrong, nigh-invulnerable raging barbarian Brute sounds like...a girl.

I also second the suggestions for disco dance and headbanging emotes.

I'd like to see each power set get a few obviously unique and flashy powers to kind of bring them up to date with sets like Dual Blades and Pistols.

Most sets all have animations that are used elsewhere, Blasters, Defenders and Controllers are particularly bad for sharing animations.
Maybe a few flashy alternate animations for some key powers would be cool.

Re: FX

A few auras I've seen several people suggest that sound cool:
- Dripping effect - tintable so it can appear to be green slime, red blood, black tar, etc.
- Emblems - many of the existing chest emblems could look really cool as an aura effect, either moving about the body, or in a static position around the torso (front or back). Extra bonus for combat activated versions.
- Sparks - random sparking from joints/neck/eyes
- Steam - as above, but with spouts of steam a la steampunk machinery

Other costume pieces.
More costume pieces that incorporate some kind of effect in them, such as the rocket and winged boots, or the initial wings that dropped feathers.
From the GR previews, it seems some NPCs get such pieces, e.g. Praetorian Police forcefield gloves. Hoping similar parts are being investigated for players.

Once again, thanks for the interest you're showing and the honest dialogue. This is why I can't quit this game! :P

/em facepalm

... That's my suggestion, not my reaction. It's the most used emote that doesn't actually have an animation.

Also:
- I would like /em yoga as a flypose. It already has a bobbing-in-the-air version for hovering.
- I would like to be able to set any continuous emote as my non-combat-mode stance. (Continuous: crouch, crossarms, waiting, eatfood. Not continuous: slap, belch, howl.)

Oh, and I just remembered. The snipe animation for Zapp looks somewhat off. You do the brace-arm charge up, and then a blast of lightning shoots from your hand... and continues shooting for a while after your hand recoils. Please consider changing this to an animation more suited to a continuous beam.

I think I'll break my suggestions down into distinct parts as I think of them here.

1)Mix and match animations. As others have mentioned, there's a lot of in-game animations for costume changes or other powers that may well suit existing powers. The prestochango animation for teleport, for example. It seems relatively straightforward to my mind to pull together a list of those animations that have close animation times and then break them down by appropriate theme. This could just as well apply to powers. Nothing should be inappropriate and the list should only be comprised of those animations that make sense by theme.

2)Text-sensitive emotes? This at least exists in one game I play, Lord of the Rings Online where putting the name of the emote in a sentence will trigger the emote. I remember asking BaB about targetable emotes (where you will 'wave at <character>', and he said it couldn't be done, so I don't know if this would be the same.

3)More consistent social emotes. We have /teabag, but no /drinktea? There's /drink, but when you look at the animations, you have a mug versus a teacup. It's a bit jarring visually, and the switch of one object and one more emote line would clean this up a lot. Just a pass over the list wouldn't hurt to see if there's anything that looks 'off'. Gender also shouldn't be segregated.

4)Context-appropriate emotes. A good one is the Ouroboros portal. We have an animation (and sounds) to indicate a device being used to open the portal, but we see nothing other than the portal itself. Could we not see a small animated thingy to help indicate that? A good example is the Power Analyser crafted power...such a great animation, and it makes sense when you see it.

Those are all the ones I can think of right now. Thanks for putting this up on the boards, David.


S.