Heboltz3 - Workshop Thread
polycounter lvl 9
Here's My Workshop thread!
Steam Workshop
Email Skype ID: harry.boltz
Website
Skills: Animation, Rigging, Skinning
Favored in: Couriers, Wards, NPCs, Things that (could) Move
Open for collabs! Let's make cool stuff.
Submitted Pieces:
Accepted Pieces:
Steam Workshop
Email Skype ID: harry.boltz
Website
Skills: Animation, Rigging, Skinning
Favored in: Couriers, Wards, NPCs, Things that (could) Move
Open for collabs! Let's make cool stuff.
Submitted Pieces:
Accepted Pieces:
Replies
Tusk the Courier
Collab with - CSOConnor who did the model and texture
Working On this guy now. Rigging, skinning and animating him.
It's our first endeavour into the DoTA 2 scene, so any feedback is awesome
There is already a hero called Tusk in the game.
If this were accepted, it would be scaled down a fair bit.
Is there a visually different flying form or will it just use the ears to fly?
He'll use his ears to fly, and his tail will rotate swiftly like a neat propeller blade.
Floating elephant blimp ahoy!
It was a sorta slow week of rigging, but he's ready to get some animations on him! Here's a quick test animation of a potential flying idle. What do you think?
Loving the progress on elephant so far, the throwback to dumbo is great! I agree with the earlier post that in game it feels a bit large, but thats nothing to worry about, valve rescales all the couriers to their own requirements if they feel the need to.
I love the sculpt, though. Keep it up, I want to see this in game!
As far as the scale, I put a modifier on the rig to mess with it so we can test it while importing to get a good fit.
And yeah totally the weight on the flying is really rough at the moment. Looking at it after a couple of hours of not working is giving me a huge idea of what needs to fix when I go at it again.
As far as the movement up and down for idles, how much of that is taken care of by the animator, and how much of that is taken care of by the valve side of things?
Thanks again!
Also, just a small bit of advice, feel free to push the poses alot. I feel more successful animations in Dota are ones that have nice big motions, large horizonal sweeping arcs, and overly exaggerated poses. When you factor in the perspective players, 90% of the time players will be looking at this in game, not a preview, so make sure your animations read the best from the Dota Perspective. Also vertical movement tends to get lost, so really push that a lot. A fun example that demonstrates this is Axe's Ult animation, in game it doesnt look like he jumps too high, when in reality, hes actually jumping twoish-threeish times his height. I know its a quick test animation, but you pull that into dota youll see a lot of that movement will get lost. Some Horizonal movement would really sell it. Once you get some more animations up I'll be able to help a bit more.
The advice about the poses is super informative!! This is also inside info I needed to hear, haha. I wasn't sure how much I could really push it, but when I get back into the animation, ill really give it the gusto. Just out of curiosity, have you found a sweet spot for the camera coordinates in maya that is close to a 1-1 for the dota in game cam?
Once again thanks for the help!
And Game View
So I took into account the stuff Helenek was mentioning about long sweeping movements,horizontals, and the game camera while animating this idle. I'm finding alot of skinning issues I'm going to have to touch up to make it "perfect", but the idle came out pretty alright. I increased the flapping speed and ditched a more "wing like flap" for a more "flap like flap", if that makes sense...
My biggest concern at the moment is the z=flicker I'm getting in the wings, if anyone can speak to how the engine will handle that, that would be extremely appreciated, Not sure if I will have to work on the skin, or add some sort of mass to the ears, or if the engine will just ignore it, but at the moment it's kind of unsettling.
I did this with an idle in mind, but now looking at it, I feel more like it should be a movement animation, with the speed and all, but I'm not sure. Let me know what you think?
I'm going to keep pressing on with all of the animations, and then come back to polish once they are all completed. Crits, Comments, and advice welcome
With a bit of forward momentum, yup, I can see that being a movement one. I think something that would really help sell the animation better is till him up a bit more, and put his butt under his head, more upright, hes very horizontal right now, which is why it could probably work well for the run animation, but as an idle it feels off.
As far as the z fighitng goes, the only way to know is the test in game. I've had issue before with that but in game its not there. But I think its a asset to asset thing. Just pop out the .fbx and get it tested in game.
The way I have my pipeline set up is once I finish the rig, you export out the mesh and bones for the LODs, then the bones itself for the test anim. You load in the test anim for all the required anims and test your attachment points. Once all of that works perfectly, poping out, overwriting and testing animations takes seconds. Just know you dont have to always reimport to test, you only have to change the name in the importer, simply changing test_001, to test_002 will recompile all the data with the new overwritten files. Because if it were any other way and I had to plug the animations in each time, I'd probably just quit life. Haha!
Basically, that animation is just the haste run now, and I think it works really well with the particle effect, check it out.
I started from scratch on a Idle, and that's below as well.
Also...dem colors
Also did a flying Run and a rare Run. The flying run needs a bit more help so that might get posted later today, and the rare run is just kind of a glide, so it's nothing too special. I'll probably get started on the death tonight as well.
As far as portrait stuff, currently, the elephant is very out of frame, how does one go about centering it out and having it look pretty in frame?
Since I'm impatient and CSOconnor is working on the ground animations, I'm testing the flying animations on the ground body, which usually just looks funny, but i've run into something weird.
Basically when the flying death is applied to the ground it looks as it should:
Connects with ground. No skips or glitches, everything is cool.
When the same exact animation is applied to the flying set it looks like:
As far as the hovering I fixed it via adjusting the height in the animation via:
However, there's still real stupid skip. I've tried importing/exporting acouple times and I'm kinda stumped.
This only happens in the game, the preview windows when importing show it as it should be, but its wonky in game. Any suggestions would be super cool and really helpful. Is it just because I'm using the same animation for both or something else.
Finally I figured out the portrait editor ( and by figured out, I just found the box that lets me position it :P )
Sooo on an unrelated elephant note, here's the ward I've been working on with Shock and Godzy!
(there were real animations here before the exodus from Imgur.)
I've since fixed the flicker in of the snow on the spawn. Besides that, what do you guys think?
It's my first entry submitted to the store, and hopefully not my last! It's been fun so far. I'd love it if you could give it a thumbs up and a favorite. Have a happy holiday my friends
And here's the flying death animation;
This week is all about finishing up the final animations and polish, polish, polish. I'm looking to ship this bad boy on the first of January.
Unrelated note, anyone have any good resources for Source Film Maker?
The elephant is going pretty well. I really like where the animations are going my only issue is that the ears almost seem like they are permanently 'flexed' during hte ground animations. Might just be me though. I am no expert. I am really looking forward to seeing this done. I hope you get it in game.
Damn Reyne, you saw right through my late night laziness. I haven't really touched the ears yet besides giving a lil' wiggle back and forth. I wanna try to get a feel for the ears across all the ground animations and give the effect to bring all the animations home.
As for more progress, here's the "cleaned up" run cycle.
It's in quotes because it feels undeniably floaty. I went with the 30fps limit like Valve suggests, but it still feels wonky. I guess it's going to need a lot of tweaking to feel weighty and on point with the rhetical movement in game
Or maybe I'm crazy... What do you guys think?
I know very little about animation but I can see it being very difficult to make such a bulky creature with itty bitty legs move in a more grounded fashion at the speed of a courier.
If you do decide to put a lot of time in tweaking it I wish you the best of luck.
^_^
I think that the only way to solve it is to animate by taking the movement speed in consideration first and foremost, and *then* decide on what kind of cycle would be appropriate for that speed. At the moment the cycle you have is more of a walk, whereas I think that a full on sprint would be more appropriate.
[ame="
Now of course with an elephant it is super hard to pull off ... There might be some good examples in Disney movies tho, and probably some good stuff in Horton Hears a Who as well.
Besides that, I really like how your flying death animation makes it roll backwards, then forward. I thing that's a great way to suggest that the body has some natural "spring" in it, even after death, and it is something that is rarely seen in CG animations of that type which usually tend to be dramatically over-acted. Well done !
And good luck !
This is the exact thing, I had a very similar prople with the walrus, big slow animals are a pain to animate at the speed thats required. He needs to be running more or less. Maybe hopping to hit the speed could work as well, if you looked at Shagbarks animations, something like that could resolve your issue.
Oh wow Thanks Pior, I totally didn't even see your comment until that Video caught my eye. I really like the advice of getting the timing down first THEN adding in the animation, it could be a really good exercise and provide me with some happy accidents.
And Helenek thanks as always, I think I will try to exaggerate some kind of bounce to his step, that plus what Pior was saying of getting timing down first then adding in movement could give some real character to the little guy. Shagbark is a baller place to start, and on that note;
Does anyone have any good information/tutorials on source film maker?
So using all the badass advice I got from the last post, I went back to the drawing board on a way more bouncy fun "run". I think the results have turned the character to the max, and with some elbow grease it'll be pretty rad piece. Check it out.
I like that the bounces really add some weight I was looking for while still keeping the speed needed for the reticle. The floppiness and swagger really help the lil' guy and I think they fit the animation set as a whole a lot better.
What do you guys think? I'm sorta stumped on what to do for a rare run, besides maybe alternative trunk movement... just right now I was thinking maybe he could charge?? But that might be too much like the previous run.. hmm... suggestions??
the run looks great, just one little thing - i would do his ears closer to the head during the run, and then let them come to front again when he stops.
greez
Ears on the ground are the bane of my existance...
but meanwhile in the air,
Anyways looking forward to the next update.
Infinite Rolling Elephants.
Totally doesn't look like a tumble/trip to recover, but here's a neat blockout of my mind set I suppose.
More to come at 11!
I think falling over may need to start from one side rather than head on. Just some ideas, take them or leave them ^_^
Really Really quick update.
I think I'm going to have him do the the somersault purposely now, and come out with a little glide. Trying to optimize the cuteness I suppose, and in a 30 frame animation not sure how well I can pull off a side barrel roll to front again
This will get happy go lucky polish and everything, and probably a couple timing shifts, but what do you think?
The new run cycle looks awesome! Only thing I can say that needs to be improved is the ears, they're a bit stiff, and this has also been previouslly mentioned, so I'm sure you already documented that. If I'm being nitpicky, I'd say throw some more horizontal movement in the tail, exaggerate it a bit more. If I'm being a bit more nitpicky, hold the contact pose a bit longer, like a frame or two, needs just a bit more weight to feel juuuuuust right. Again, those are nitpicks, what you currently have (besides the stiff ears) is solid! :thumbup:
And soulhacker,
Is it just the alt run for both ground and flying, or the alt everything including idles? Also, does that include the sidestep animations for turning? I guess now I'm just nervous about how many of the extra animations will be included.
Animation was going frustratingly slow, polish is always is a headache.
To calm the nerves I'd thought I'd do a lil concept thing for drow with a chinese archer set. Wooo CNY event.
Mostly just for fun, but tomorrow elephant will be all completely animated and ready for the big time
Finally, I am submitting Stampy to the workshop. He's my first "baby" project, so be gentle. I'd love a comment, thumbs up , and even a favorite!