All Things Art: Animation Edition
By
Abigail Frost,
Posted on: 2010-06-06 22:06 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
Alternate Animations: Frost animation for Ice Blast's Frost Breath. Something similar for Fire Breath from Fire Blast.
Reason why? Doesn't fit some characters (Such as power suit users for example) to breathe fire/ice.
Oh my, where to start.
Power Pool Emotes: setting alternate emotes for power pools, especially to align with magic / tech themes.
Medicine: the current tri-corder gizmo animation can suit tech, but alternate magic themed animations such as reading out of a book / casting would be great. Also something with a Serum dart gun would be great for alternate tech / and or science. Simple animations even borrowed from Empathy to cover Mutants using the medicine pool as an extension of their mutant ability to heal for example.
Teleport: Tech theme: using a tri-corder from medicine pool, or even wrist band like the Ouroboros portal summons would be great. Magic: again reading from a book and casting, or simple rune casting.
Flight: this is one of the harder issues to tackle because flight can be tied into costume pieces like wings or rocket boots. So, perhaps more jet / rocket packs should be made available. For Magic: riding a magic carpet (standing on it surf-style using the slide animations might be possible)
Alternate Animations:
Movement: different animal gaits such as using all four limbs to crawl / walk / run.
Toggles: different alternate animations to set toggle powers upon activation.
Melee (non-weapon): Any melee attack that uses fists (such as Dark Melee or Energy Melee) should have alternate kick-style animations - either martial arts style or "heroic themed styles"
Melee (weapon): 1. Broadsword: flashier fighting animations would be great.
2. Archery: Crossbows instead of standard bows, wrist mounted crossbows instead of standard bows.
3. Fire Melee, Ice Melee: both sword and non-sword style animations made available for each power.
4. Stone Melee: both hammer and non-hammer style animations made available for each power.
Blast Sets: setting a location for the origin of the blast, such as single / dual fists, or eyes. Wrist mounted weapons. Alternate magic style animations.
1)another vote for /E Facepalm here. It needs the correct follow-through stance for that subtle expression of helpless disgust though: left hand on hip, head down in hand, head oscillating from side to side at a slow speed.
2) Hover emotes:
A)like the bald men from the movie 'Dark City' (vertical, arms straight down at sides). B)like the default hover, but with elbows in, and fists clenched. One of the flypose emotes as a hover
C)a ghastly, curled up, dead-thing. Fly like a freshly excavated Chilean mummy.
3)Contrapposto idle stances, among other things, to convey 'attitude' instead of just the Heroic Perfect Posture. I don't know whose idea it was to make everyone look like they have a stick up their rear, but it was a dumb one. Villains especially should be allowed to look cowardly,craven, shifty, off-balance, intoxicated and/or lazy.
4) another vote for more choreographed power animations - Avatar: The Last Airbender really opened my eyes to the way a toon's motions could act-out the elemental character of their power. Sticking out an arm and clenching your buttocks really hard frankly has no sense of style.
Mechanista 50 rad/rad Corruptor
Buster Braun 32 SS/Inv Brute
Mortua Manus 41 Bots/Dark MM
December Ashe 30 Ice/Fire Dominator
Umbra Sprite 32 Dark/Super Reflexes Stalker
Mister Large 30 Thugs/Bubbles MM
Dynamaxine 28 Electric/Stone Brute
Three-Alarm 19 Fire/Dark Corruptor
Borrowing from other sets - Adding in animations from other sets that fit the attack type like Shadow Maul Swapped for a shorter range Firebreath/Frost breath, Powerthrust for bonesmasher, Sweeping Strike (Dual blades) for Eviscerate/Ripper etc...And vice versa for all of them. Figured this might be easier than entire new animations.
Martial Arts Style for more sets - Almost every set would look cool with a more martial arts flavor added to it.
More animated weapons/shields - Elemental shields, Vanguard shield, rularuu weapons (the eyes), Nemesis Staff, and Black Wand all look really cool and more animated weapon/shield options would be really cool. Especially ones that animate as you get them out like the Vanguard shield (so sweet).
Katana/Claws - There is too much time inbetween each attack, the way the attacks are currently animated. Dual Blades does a good job of filling the animation time with DoT so it doesn't feel like the player is sitting there waiting to be allowed to attack (Though the attacks are longer than most melee sets). A change to the rooted portion of Katana/Claws attacks or a change to make the attacks fill up the space would be sweet.
Fire Blast - Fireblast - Ever since the first two powers in every set have been 'Balanced' for defiance this power allows the player to slide around after the animation has played. This power went from looking like MLB fastball pitch to being more like a slow pitch summer league toss.
Fire/Ice Melee - Fire/Iceswords - Really needs a new animation, would love to get Fire Katana from Oni.
Energy Melee - Stun, Total Focus, Energy Transfer - DPS Balance asside, this set is horribly slow to animate.
Taunts in General - Variety in Taunt animations, more than half of them use double handed, pulling towards the chest. How about the getsome emote as a taunt or the Martial Arts packs bringit for Taunts?
Alt animations changing DPS - Switch from a higher DPS quicker animation (Claws/MA/Dark) to a slower higher burst damage (BS/Energy Melee) animation for the whole set. So there could be more of a feel of difference between the sets, like the say that Wolverine is different than Sabertooth or Venom and Spiderman.
Fency animations for Broadsword and or Katana - Would be cool to have a more traditional style of sword fighting.
Runeward turned into a full set - This is one of my favorite powers (From Croatoa Arcs) the animation takes some time but it looks really cool and I would love to see a full set animated with a similar style to it.
Battle Axe - Mace got a huge boost and seems really solid now, But axe could use another look at the animations or damage to bring it up to par.
Dark Melee - Shadow Maul - I have never felt this name matched the animation and its always bothered me, some alt animation would be good here - Jacob's Ladder but with Dark damage or something like that.
Jump Kick - Change the name to flip kick for the love of all that is holy, this animation made my brain hurt since before Issue 1, please change it or the name.
Fighing Pool - Kick - This power underperforms in almost every way to boxing, though not in comedy factor. Faster animation could help a lot.
**Ability to have weapons out and use secondary powers**
Electricity:
It's amazing how much better the Mu lightning powers look. Could we please have options for the new Mu style electric powers in Electric Blast and Electric Assault? Particularly in Electric Assault where Static Discharge uses the new more chaotic effects and the rest of the set uses the older more boring looking effects you can really see the difference in quality.
Pool and A/PPP customization:
This is probably the single most requested animation/FX related issue right now. Please let it happen sooner rather than later 
More Alternate animations:
The new sets are spectacular. Pistols, Demons, Dual Blades, Kinetic Melee, the new SS and MA, etc all have fantastic unique animations. Like most of the 'new' stuff though, it makes the old stuff look kinda bland and boring. Could we have some more stylish alternate animations for the older sets?
Edit: First Post Before a Red Name.
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Coming. One thread at a time though.
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Originally Posted by Novapulse
QFE
Wow bases, we're going to need an "All things Art: Bases Edition" thread I think. |
David Nakayama, Lead Concept Artist
COH Concept Art Gallery now open at http://pixelsaurus.deviantart.com/
Quote:
Yikes! I love it! Why didn't I think of that |
Originally Posted by SilverAgeFan
Back to power animations, amongst all the requests for greater displays of effort and grizzle, hows about considering the other direction too of utterly bored and indifferent animations? NOT to be confused with boring animations... but what about power animations that show complete dismissal and confidence on the part of the super? I.e. a look away from the target with the head and a bored snap of the fingers to execute the power for example? Think of it applied to a mass hold power. Some people choose to create characters that are just that bad a** that they can barely be bothered to use some powers.
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OK, picture this with me: You have a psychic who is so powerful and so confident that he never lifts a finger. Picture him permanently stuck in the Magneto float, just soaring a foot above the ground. He never lifts a finger. He never looks his enemies, not even sideways. He just keeps on slowly floating forward, and people around him just DIE seemingly by themselves.
You see, my friends, such a character is so awesome he doesn't even need to act cool to kill people in cool ways. His mere PRESENCE kills them.
Of course, we can't have it quite like that in-game, but mental blasts firing from the character without ANY animation would be really, really, REALLY cool. Possibly without turning around at all.
*edit*
Come to think of it, that would be a lot like Spriggan's Colonel MacDougall.
Quote:
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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.
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Quote:
...he said, while juggling three very active threads. |
David Nakayama as a mathematician makes a good artist: Coming. One thread at a time though. |
Dec out.
Animations and emotes are quite well supported, probably the most complete and robust aspect of the entire game, so most of what I'd suggest is about customizing and convenience, rather than making more.
Alternate animations, as with SS and MA, definitely. They don't necessarily have to be more. Many could be be imports from other power sets. Emanation points would be nice, such as a way to convert Ice Blast into a device that projects ice, or power armor that projects ice, etc. This might work best if it came with an animation time standardization so that not so many animations have to be created. Then you could customize a power to use any of the appropriate animations of that length. For example: 1 second, 1.2, 1.33, 1.5, 1.66, 1.8, 2.
Add the ability to convert a power tray icon into a macro so that you can include flight poses, as well as adding emotes or text to specific powers. The macro would have the icon of that power, however, as well as activation and recharge indicators as standard power icons do.
New emote ideas: heroic poses, villain poses, more tech prop poses for science and tech heroes (communicators, scanners, and my 2 most wanted emotes: the Aid Other emote, and the 'click wrist buttons' robot equip emote).
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Golden Girl
That's a little different - it's assumed that comic readers will know what Superman's powers are - but in a game, there need to be some sort of visual clues as to what the players and enemy mobs are doing.
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I know what my character is doing, and if I need to see what my teammates are doing, we have a buff window for that. As for the NPCs, I don't see how that is relevant to Player Character customization.
Oh, two other things:
/e facepalm I need it desperately. My villain does it daily. (Or every ten seconds while doing D-Mac's arc...)
And Alternate Fly Poses. Not emotes, those are cumbersome to set up, but actual power customizable fly poses.
While that'd be nice, they're really not at all that cumbersome to set up. Bind a flypose to a key. Start flying. Hit bind. I do it habitually now.
Dec out.
Count me in as another who wants alternate animations for broadsword and the blast powers. Right now, the older sets look downright clunky compared to the lovely animations of the new ones.
A (Golden Gate) Bridge Too Far- arc 299315
Crazy NIMBY's, Railroad robber barons, and kickboxing Engineers, Oh My! Go back in time and join the fight to save a San Francisco icon!
Check out my thread for emote ideas.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showt...gestion+Thread
to 
TO THE END!Villains are those who dedicate their lives to causing mayhem. Villians are people from the planet Villia!
Pistols-crossed pose currently used in the Costume Creator.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
All left-facing or right facing animations should alternate from one side to the other.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
A little notion that I thought would be cool would be if electrical powers caused the lights in in-door missions flicker a bit.
"Samual_Tow - Be disappointed all you want, people. You just don't appreciate the miracles that are taking place here."
I have a LOT of ideas for animations, so I'll be separating them into separate posts. The title of this post is:
All Things Sitting
With few exceptions, most chairs in the game (inside SG bases or otherwise) are simply too small to be seated in properly. We have a lot of great chair-sitting animations, but not a lot of places to properly use them. The "sittable" animations especially are pretty much impossible to use, because there exists no table at which a character can sit close enough to rest their arms on the surface.
There are a few ways to address this:
- A clickable chair system (described below).
- Review and alter character bounding boxes.(These are pretty huge anyway, some trimming could be done.)
- Review and alter chair bounding boxes. (Most likely solution would be to remove the physical boundaries of the arms.)
Clickable Chair System
Someone mentioned in the other thread clickable chairs. IE chairs that you could click on and be automatically placed at the correct position on the chair and set to using a chair-sitting animation. I have no idea how feasible this is, but this is something I've been personally wanting for awhile now.
In my own ideal, the clickable chair system would work thus:
- When you approach a chair and hover your cursor over it, the cursor would turn into a blue hand signifying an object with which you can interact.
- When you click on the chair, your character is forcibly moved to a pre-designated coordinate over the chair and made to play a default "chair sitting" animation.
- The pre-designated coordinate MAY cause a sitting player to be in a location not normally accessible(stuck in geometry, et al.) However, I would think a use of "Only Affecting Self" and loss of access to powers similar to Walk could be in order here.
- While sitting, a player is able to use the various sit emotes to change the style in which they are seated.
- Any use of movement keys would shut off the sitting state and cause the character to be moved away from the chair. (Or possibly placed in a location just above the chair, in order to avoid getting stuck in the geometry.)
- Alternatively, the movement keys could be temporarily locked out while sitting, requiring a player to click again on the chair or on a chair "button" to be released.
- Bench seats could be separated into multiple "chair" locations. (For example, a 3-seat bench would have 3 separate interactable areas, the right, left, and middle seats.)
- A "getting into the seat" animation is not necessary.
Sitting Animation Variety
Female models especially have a lack of variety when it comes to sitting animations. More animations for them, and in general for all the player models, would be great. NPCs have a good number of sitting animations that we still do not have access to.
I have scoured the CoH and CoV world in search of NPCs who are sitting in a manner that we as players do not have access to. I have compiled screenshot compilations of these for you, and numbered each sit so I may better explain them.
Picture 1
(I actually made this picture a few years ago. Since then we've gotten two of the animations depicted. I have marked these out.)
1: A raised-surface (chair) sit. One leg is stretched out, and the subject is leaning forward, resting his arms on his legs.
2: A ground sit. The subject has one leg pulled in with an arm resting on it, one leg stretched out, and is supported by an arm on the ground.
3: A ground sit. Subject has both legs stretched and crossed, and is supported by his elbows.
4: Not a sit. This is a wall lean I spied years back that we don't have. It looks kooky from this angle. It depicts the subject leaning on the wall with one arm, with his other hand in his pocket.
Picture 2
3a: This is another angle of the animation from 3 in the previous picture. You can see it a bit better here without the Lost bulk in the way.
5: A ground sit. Subject's legs are stretched and spread, using both hands on the ground for support.
6: A ground sit. It is similar to /e lotus and yoga, but the subject is slouched forward.
7 and 7a: Teabagging sit, female version, from two angles.
8: Teabagging sit, male version 1.
9: Teabagging sit, male version 2. Note the crossed legs. This is not the same animation as 8!
Picture 3
10: You may recognize this one from the end of the I17 Hero arcs. It is a ground sit, with legs splayed and torso slouched, as if wounded.
11: A raised-surface sit. It is similar to the current /e sitbench1, but the legs are crossed differently.
12: The Thinker. Not much more needs to be said.
13: A conversational sitting animation, male version. This animation is on a loop, and involves head nodding and the pictured hand gesture.
14: A conversational sitting animation, female version. Again, this is a loop with nodding and a hand gesture.
15: Another female sitting animation. I'm not sure we have access to this one, but I could be wrong.
16: No, it's not a screenshot. I swear to all that is holy that I have seen an animation very similar to this in-game. But after searching every zone on both sides for 2-3 hours, I came up empty and had to use this. It is a "casual" crouch, or a "sitting on your haunches" position. Balanced on the balls of the feet, with arms resting on both legs.
17: This may be too close to a laying down animation to be considered, but I thought I'd put it in anyway. Ground animation. Head resting on hand, legs crossed.
Other Sitting Requests
Please make it so we can select specific ledge sit animations. Currently, we have to use /e ledgesit over and over until we come to the desired animation. It would be nice if these were separated out into ledgesit1, ledgesit2, etc, like the other sits.
If possible, please allow us to use the kneeling animation from Rest as an emote, so we don't have to activate Rest to use it.
Some other requested sitting animations that I do not have examples of:
- Sitting and reading a book.
- Sitting and reading a newspaper.
- Sitting and writing on a clipboard.
- Sitting and talking on a cellphone.
- Sitting and drinking.
- Sitting and eating.
- Sitting and thinking. (Hand on chin, like in /e calculate.)
- Sitting with crossed arms. (/e crossarms, but sitting.)
- Sitting and sleeping. (A chair sit. Arms resting on legs, body slouched forward, Zzz effect floating above head.)
Pedestrian group activities; right now, most of the peds wander around aimlessly (or are cowering while getting bullied by some villain).
In places that have parks can we get the to jog around it or have group/solo yoga, tai chi or aerobics in them.
How about lines at the movie theatres that already exist; light lines for daytime matinees and maybe larger lines at night.
Tourists taking pictures of their families.
People enjoying water sports (with maybe the occasional shark attack (or Corolax attack). Boating, sailing, fishing, jet-skiing, water skiing, parasailing, cliff diving, splashing, wading.
People playing catch, frisbee or softball or just having a picnic.
People randomly waving at each other and saying hi.
Peds making shady deals with villain NPCs (instead of always being the victim, they could be the participant)
Peds going in/out of better defined buildings (grocer, movies, gym, auto body shop, icon, wentworths, train station, ferries, etc), ie. moving with a purpose.
Having peds give random stats about the player's toon when they are chatted with.
More ped chatter about dev related projects, events, forum contests, off-site web presence, promotions, etc. (Or make this what appears on billboards and signage in-game).
Pedestrian costumed heroes/villains (untargetable) doing day to day activities (just like civilian peds); could also be the source of CoX events/promos/teasers.
A random 'Thriller' sequence thrown into Zombie Apocalypse every once in awhile (zombies would be untargetable until they A) disappear or B) finish the sequence; then becoming targetable.
Power machinery actually being used in construction zones.
Emote being added to Follow and Chat options for peds; prompting the ped to do a quick, random emote (or at least an annoyed look from the ped)
Brethae more ambient life into Cimerora.
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Not so much a visual suggestion; more of an audio thing. For all that seems to be going on in Paragon or the Isles; it's really quiet.
More ambient sounds in open world please.
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
I just realized that there IS one aspect of animation that needs serious improvement.
CIVILIANS! EGADS!
They're OK walking, but yikes, their running away animations are so terrible I can't even describe it. Some new scare animations would help, and not pushing players would too.
Honestly, I think that click to sit is way too much work, at least in the 'program it into every sitting surface' way. What about simply making it possible to move and turn while sitting, so you can adjust it yourself? That could be a comparatively simple thing, which would work more reliably and to more tastes!
A game is not supposed to be some kind of... place where people enjoy themselves!
Agreed on adding in more alternate animations in powersets a la Martial Arts/Superstrength.
Fiery Melee: alternate version of the sword attacks sans sword, or alternate version of the punch attacks with sword. Same with Ice Melee and Stone Melee.
Quote:
IMO and possibly unfeasible but how about being able to define the horizontal edges on any given object (chair, wall, wire, roof's edge, table, etc) so that when sit or crouch emotes are used the toon gets conformed to that edge? [Edge mapping?]
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Originally Posted by ChaosExMachina
I just realized that there IS one aspect of animation that needs serious improvement.
CIVILIANS! EGADS! They're OK walking, but yikes, their running away animations are so terrible I can't even describe it. Some new scare animations would help, and not pushing players would too. Honestly, I think that only people without dev experience could ask for click to sit. It would only be useful rarely, and would be a huge amount of work. What about simply making it possible to move and turn while sitting, so you can adjust it yourself? |
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Hey! Just invite the animation team from Guild Wars to come over and convert some of their emotes over to CoX.
Apparently, I play "City of Shakespeare"
*Arc #95278-Gathering the Four Winds -3 step arc; challenging - 5 Ratings/3 Stars (still working out the kinks)
*Arc #177826-Lights, Camera, Scream! - 3 step arc, camp horror; try out in 1st person POV - 35 Ratings/4 Stars
Also, a way to select the flypose animation for fly, per costume. I think it'd be easy, just make fly customisable in Icon/Facemaker, like the other powers (I think this would be done when the rest of the travel power pools)
/bind numpad1 "cce 1 ccspin"
will make it so when you tap the 1 on the number pad, your character will change into costume slot 1 with the spin emote.
there are more complicated binds and a list of all their slash commands here:
http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Cce_(Slash_Command)