Trying to understand animations vs graphics
The effect you described can be done with textures.
For dogs and attack animations, it requires animations to be done by messing around with the bones of the models and making sure everything moves smoothly and properly.
a quick summary
animations are how something moves, graphics are effects that are created.
for those Forcefileds you mentioned....
How a FF user moves their arms when casting the field is an animation, the actual field itself is a graphic(or a combination of many).
Quote:
The simplest way to distinguish between an animation and a graphic is that an animation changes the shape, position, or orientation of an object, while a graphical effect only changes its appearance. This is a highly simplified description, and misses some things (such as particle effects, billboarded effects, and the like), but is a good rule of thumb. Which one takes a more powerful system depends on the details.
Hi everyone.
Every once in a while I'll post a little thread asking about the technical limatations of this game's engine and what it can and can't do (though the recent surprises in four-legged rigs and power animations have rather surprised me). What I'm curious about are what constitutes an animation and what is a graphics effect. I'll give an example. For me, force fields in this game, regardless of color, tend to have a milky swirling effect that if I look at it too long seems to induce a little naseua so I do my best to avoid it. However, in what I'd call more 'modern' games (in the sense that the game has been developed in the last five years or so) I've seen force fields represented by a clear but distorted visual like a funhouse mirror. This also crops up in air distortions (to simulate moving very fast) as opposed to the only effect I can think of, which is the Afterburner effect for fly. So is one a graphics effect or animation? And if so, is it an impact on a game's system in terms of frame rate or something optimised for the game engine which it resides in? I'm only a player of games as opposed to a student of them, and what I consider cutting edge graphics may not be what I think they are. Any and all responses would be welcome. ![]() |
The distorted forcefield effect you describe is a type of graphical effect known as a "shader" (probably a fragment shader), where, instead of simulating physical reality to figure out what color something is, the graphics card runs a short computer program. Shaders permit all sorts of fancy graphical effects, but they demand more computing power than traditional methods, and graphical hardware didn't support them back when CoH was being developed. Shader effects are starting to appear widely in City of Heroes (Ultra Mode graphics make heavy use of them), but since they aren't supported by all the hardware that CoH does, the developers can't use them for core features (such as power effects).
Hi everyone.
![Smile](images/smilies/smile.gif)
Every once in a while I'll post a little thread asking about the technical limatations of this game's engine and what it can and can't do (though the recent surprises in four-legged rigs and power animations have rather surprised me).
What I'm curious about are what constitutes an animation and what is a graphics effect. I'll give an example. For me, force fields in this game, regardless of color, tend to have a milky swirling effect that if I look at it too long seems to induce a little naseua so I do my best to avoid it. However, in what I'd call more 'modern' games (in the sense that the game has been developed in the last five years or so) I've seen force fields represented by a clear but distorted visual like a funhouse mirror. This also crops up in air distortions (to simulate moving very fast) as opposed to the only effect I can think of, which is the Afterburner effect for fly.
So is one a graphics effect or animation? And if so, is it an impact on a game's system in terms of frame rate or something optimised for the game engine which it resides in?
I'm only a player of games as opposed to a student of them, and what I consider cutting edge graphics may not be what I think they are. Any and all responses would be welcome.
S.
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