Sarge Sword Attack Cycle[Short Anim]
polycounter lvl 18
Eep! I did bad... I gave the Sarge a sword
Here's my first warmup animation of 2009, and thought it'd be nice to share it with polycount
www.gamerreel.com/animations/sargesword.avi <== Divx codec
I was hoping for super wicked coolness, when i started, but I'll settle for not being stoned by being blasphemously bad and wrecking the legendary status of the Sarge by giving him a sword.
This animation was more of a rig test to see if I completely garbled up his weighting, and an excuse to give a futuristic soldier a sword only because the kid in me wanted to. Maybe next time... two swords and a monster
It's kinda game related so I don't feel tooo awkward about posting here on polycount
Hoo haa
Here's my first warmup animation of 2009, and thought it'd be nice to share it with polycount
www.gamerreel.com/animations/sargesword.avi <== Divx codec
I was hoping for super wicked coolness, when i started, but I'll settle for not being stoned by being blasphemously bad and wrecking the legendary status of the Sarge by giving him a sword.
This animation was more of a rig test to see if I completely garbled up his weighting, and an excuse to give a futuristic soldier a sword only because the kid in me wanted to. Maybe next time... two swords and a monster
It's kinda game related so I don't feel tooo awkward about posting here on polycount
Hoo haa
Replies
It is a bit jittery, and I'm trying to figure out if its just the video, or if you're animation is jittery as well? Are you still cleaning it up a bit?
Anyways, I still think it looks great, but on the second swing, as his weight is going forward and down, maybe he should bend a bit more... give him that extra EMPH!!!
Also... look no furthur then TOO HUMAN for your futuristic solider with swords game :P
animation is best critiqued in quicktime format... cause quicktime allows to cycle by frame
I'll try and critique it as I see it though. It looks like he snaps to a few poses in his initial movement. It looks like the animation tries very hard to be on 2s but on the held frames you can see twitching in some of the parts like the sword or feet.
The timing/spacing of some of the keys and inbetweens isn't consistently halving timing so it looks like he slows down and accelerates in the middle of the motion. Think about driving in a car, when you start it moving you ease the gas down and the car (normally) would slowly accelerate, smoothly from a stop, same with braking, it will come to a stop smoothly if you apply the brake evenly.
Also consider the head, I can see it pops down halfway through the first swing. We tend to try and keep our heads stable in motion, so if you steady the head a bit more it should sell the action . The animation itself is fine, the timing on your keys just needs to be adjusted. There's good weight to the landing on his steps and the sword, accentuate it a bit.
Make sure the sword is following a consistent arc as well, it look like it pops around when he's swinging it and rotating it around. (first swing down and pulling it back to starting position.)
One of the frames while pulling the sword back only his arms move and his body is stable. Make sure his body moves a little bit here to, It's adding to the choppyness.
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@Glib
The main reason I use .avi is because of the compression and color levels. I should have gone with a more commonly known codec though.
I use windows media player to scrub through the animations- That is if your on a windows computer.
How I scrub through in windows media player (not classic) is by going to :
->View->Enhancements->Player Speed Setting
It will have the two < > arrows, at the bottom, to allow for some good scrubbing action.
Enjoy
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@JasonLavoie Thanks Jason! Glad your enjoying the anims. Yep, your absolutely right. There is a bit of jitterynishers to it. It's mostly an error on my end with having one body part going on ones while the rest of the body on twos. I will be putting this on my polish list of things to do.
Good point! I could always do with some extra EMPH!! I'll see what I can pull out of the animation.
oh.. and...TOo human has all sorts of awesomeness. Just watched a trailer for it, and I must play this game now. Thanks !!!
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@Vrav Thanks Vrav. Your assumption is right on, it most definitely is the animation. With the next update it should be smoothed out.
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@Sir-Knight If your using windows media player, give the tip I mentioned to Glib a shot. If not, I'll see what I can do about getting a nice compression rate/color for the future.
ahh yes.. the dreaded twitch. It seems to rear it's ugly head whenever max is put into 'constant/stepped/blocking key frames' insted of linear or spline tangents- It often leaves out the toes from being constant as well the hands if pivot points are changed throughout the animation.
In the rush to put this up on the net I absent mindedly forgot to fix these ugly mistakes. Thanks
Good points on timing/spacing, and it's been a focus of mine to improve on in the last little while. I'll put some more effort into the next update
Noted on the head & sword arc, good advice
I did something evil with the animation. By having some pieces of teh body on 1's while others on 2's I was exploring the idea and outcome, but it turned out ...ungood
The cruel choppyness on the eyes will be fixed on the next go.
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Thank you for the excellent feedback guys! It'll give me a chance to improve this piece.
On a side note, I realized something funny I was doing.
I"m using Advil Liquid-Gel post-it notes for the Polish list.
Could that be a subliminal message to myself? -Just had to share that one.. had me chuckling a bit
couple of quick crits for you...
I would alter his wind up swing...there are some frames where he wouldn't even be able to see
the heel on his front foot raises too early on the first swing looses some power and makes it look a bit dainty?
tweak the way he settles back into his pose, seems quite forced...
also you could probably rotate the front foot on the start pose so that his boot isn't so much on it side...
*Updated Link @ The Top Of The page*
Seems I'm coming down with a cold, it just kicked in last night and i'm pooped as i'm writing this... so if I don't reply to anyones posts in the next few days that'd be the reason.
Thanks again for everyone's comments
Check out a baseball swing. You lift your front foot slightly before swinging, or at least rock your weight to the back foot and only have your toes on the ground in front.
The changes were all good ones :]
I was using samurai references for this anim. They seem to use very little to no anticipation before they strike, allowing the enemy zero reaction time to block the attack. Though, a slight wind up might work out to better the animation, I'll have to try it out and see.
This will probably be the last update, time to move on.
The wind up adds a lot imo.
Quite fast but I would expect that in a game.
Only crit is I would like to see more emphasis on the weight of his final thrust, i think he recovers too quickly/easily.
I'm also working on animation for a sword based character
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will post when done.
With that said, its pretty cool, nice work.
Crits:
- His body could use as much fallow through as his first strike. The second swing is mostly from the arms, where the first has the torso twist delivering more power. If you push his posture to more of a pose like you have on the first strike it might bring more power to the hit. Push the entire body forward leaving the trailing foot where it is. It looks like he underestimated how close the object was, and had to pull up short with a weaker then planned hit.
- The sudden snap back to to the root pose is a bit quick and also steals some thunder from the killing blow. Its almost like his torso starts moving back while he is still swinging... Personally I would hang there with the sword stuck in the object for a few more frames, brace and drag the sword out more slowly and take a few steps to settle into the root pose. the sudden snap back is pretty unnatural. Also if it was a killing blow in a game, they normally have the player open to attack for a few frames, its the trade off for using a powerful strike.
- The sword is kind of floaty like he's fighting smoke. It depends on the rig (biped planted keys, link constraint?) but if there is a way to get it to stick, it would help add to the effect that he just struck something and hit it hard.
-In the update I added more power to the final blow by implementing more of the spine into the action as well as adjusting the timing and arc on the sword. Hoping this will give the last strike enough power to appease everyone , and take away the mechanical look that it had before.
Realizing now that my first initial strike was relatively strong, maybe too strong. Giving no build up of what's to come, kinda taking the wind out of the last blow. An error in the planning mostly.
In an effort to try to make it work better, I ended up trying to make the last blow longer/more powerful by pushing the pose forward with more of a recovery time but the rythme and timing of the entire animation just wasn't clicking anymore, at least for me. Though, I agree that it's important to have the most vicious attack hit last, I'll keep it in mind during the next planning stage.
@Spanks Thanks buddy
@2cool4school Cheers, lookin' forward to seeing some of your animations here
@TorontoAnimator Thanks, hope it feels a little less mechanical in the second swing with this update. Add slight spine adjustments, and sword spacing so that he's less stiff.
@Vig Thanks Vig, I'll be doing a bit of searching around to find the best compression for .mov files. h264 seems to be the best, but desaturates colors
Thanks for the crits, hopefully the killing blow is a bit stronger with the altered anim+sndfx.
Adjusted the timing a bit on him returning to his main pose, though he still gets back to the root pose quickly, mostly because of personal taste here
I like your animation in the avatar of the mech striking the ground!!
Thought about how sweet that'd look with the sword getting stuck into someone and having him try to pull it out. - a small worry i have is... what if 'in-game' the player decides to push a bunch of buttons to test out the characters action and the sword sticks into the air, while no monsters were around... maybe no one would notice, and I'm thinking to much into it.
Thanks again guys,I'm happy that this animation improved because of the comments here