Custom Animations Accepted?
polycounter lvl 8
Hey guys,
So I'm in the middle of working on an Abaddon set with Silwer and we are contemplating making a custom animation to go along with it, hopefully done by one of you guys
Now I know with the kinetic gems added theres some support for custom animations but I'm wondering how many items WITH custom animations have actually been accepted AND if the items actually have the custom animation implemented in the game? We would hate it if we get an animator to do the custom animation but their work doesn't see the light of day.
And I guess this could expand to include ANY customized submissions with particles, animation, added bones.
Anyone have a item accepted without the custom stuff implemented?
So I'm in the middle of working on an Abaddon set with Silwer and we are contemplating making a custom animation to go along with it, hopefully done by one of you guys
Now I know with the kinetic gems added theres some support for custom animations but I'm wondering how many items WITH custom animations have actually been accepted AND if the items actually have the custom animation implemented in the game? We would hate it if we get an animator to do the custom animation but their work doesn't see the light of day.
And I guess this could expand to include ANY customized submissions with particles, animation, added bones.
Anyone have a item accepted without the custom stuff implemented?
Replies
I love living in a schodringers box.
(http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=189083397).
As I saw Oroboros say in another thread here the axe was made for Nexon and had lots of custom animations.
But when Valve added it to the game they made it an simple uncommon, without any custom animations or mentions of Nexon.
That was a while ago through, so maybe it's possible that things have gotten better?
It's hard to tell when Valve doesn't want to give us any information.
Actually, it only got worse from there. But that was mainly a communication issue between valve and nexon. My personal issue is that we never heard anything about it, and that goes for all the animations. We never hear any feedback on the animations. They are either simply ignored or added without a word being spoken.
Don't get me wrong, I'm going to yell "do animatons, we need animations!". If we have a large demand of quality animations, valve will have to respond. If that means being a torn in the foot then so be it. The person doing those animations will have to accept that their work might not be used, and at the same time, you have to ask the question, do I want to give this person a peice of the revenue if the item ships without the animatons, and their work gets tossed aside and therefore considered null and void.
The fact that valve doesnt communicate with us on the issue only makes it worse. And just to make it clear just in case any valve guys are reading. THE FACT THAT VALVE DOESNT COMMUNICATE WITH US ON THE ISSUE ONLY MAKES IT WORSE.Seriouslly, the least they can do is finalize the animation process on the workshop FAQ to level it out with all the other cosmetic support. *Actually, that's all I'd personally like to see, I dont even need or care for some communication, but simply finish/add the animation guidelines so we have at least some direction on what to do. And I'll even argue the same thing for particle fx as well. Two years, no movement on it, wonderful.
It sucks, because I cant help but feel animators in general in the workshop have always been tossed to the side when there is a real potential to be unlocked if certain parties push the matter.
If your animator want to fight for a cause and potentially change the workshop even though there is a possiblity of it not getting accepted with the cosmetic and therefore wasting their time, then go for it, kick some ass and take some names. Otherwise, it would be best to take the safe route and just submit the set on its own. Personally, custom animaton for a mounted character turns me on and something I'd love to see.
Until then, keep fighting the good fight and know that we animators won't go quietly into the night!
Maybe I'm being a bit overzealous, who knows, but if past lives are a real thing, I can't help but feel I some military general at some point.
This.
All of the this.
Time will always be the most valuable thing to an artist, and due to that, I've never ever ever touched custom animations for characters for dota. The support is clearly not there yet from Valve and, echoing Helenek, the potential is so extremely large that its really kind of head scratching why it hasnt been implemented yet.
To me it feels like undiscovered territory I'm not willing/able to put the time into to straighten out. Do I want support? Hell yes. Do I want to take the time to try to get some custom anims in the game? Maybe. Am I worried that any work I do on that front will forever fall on deaf ear? Yes.
I feel the same way about FX too. Like sure there are a couple custom fx (or animations) in game. Is there official documentation? Not really.. Is there communication about anything on the subject coming from valve? I can't find it if there is.
So basically I am all for custom animations, particles, GUI effects(I call 1000% royalties forever), sounds, anything! Although constraints breed creativity, limiting the artist via documentation/information really hurts. If we don't get some love from valve on these issues I feel like we are all just wasting our time.
but we totally aren't because the more we complain and submit animations anyways, the more awareness we create and the more of a movement we will stir. It's an uphill battle I guess.
I'm all in fighting for justice when it comes to this and totally agree on everything you said.
I brought up a lot of the points you made when discussing with Sukotto, and reading everything here makes me want to do the custom animations even more.
And yeah MdK, The fact that they do accept some animations but still wont give us the guidelines just makes the whole thing even more ridiculous.
My first guess would have been that they don't have animation guidelines because they don't want people to do custom animations yet, but that clearly isn't the case.
I understand that we can't demand constant feedback on our workshop items, but I'm pretty damn sure we have the rights to demand a proper workshop guideline on animations (and FX for that sake).
I am all into such stuff, but it should be available for everyone. One thing that comes to mind is that workflow is not yet established so Valve has allot of manual work needed to put every animation in game by hand and that's why will not release any guidelines before process will be automated.
I think it has more to do with your latter point, I hightly doubt it has to do with that the fact that people are already doing it. I'm doing animations without guidelines which means I could be doing it totally wrong, wasting my time, and the animations I do were never even considered. At least guidelines set in stone a target we can aim for. Not to mention, it kills threads like this, asking for blind advice on how to approach custom animations. I've already had multiple people asking me privatly for advice on custom animations and all I can say is what I know and what I believe is the right approach. And what really hurts me is knowing that what I could be telling them could be the totally wrong way to approach it. Which I make clear when I tell them. Simple guidelines would improve the animation side of the workshop exponentially, like off the charts exponentially.
I also think your comment about there not being enough support isnt providing enough drive to create those systems is a catch 22. The lack of systems drives people away except those crazy enough to challenge it. If those systems were in place, I would bet my life that you'd see a surplus of animators flocking to the workshop to throw their creations into the mix. Until then we're left to wards, couriers, and summons, which isn't terrible, but leaves to a very limited selection. Being able to provide custom animations for sets only allows us to particpate more in the workshop. It would bring us closer together in the end, and isn't that what we want? We're all friends here.
For your animations, here's some solid advice I've gathered, idle animations are the worst thing you can do unless youre doing a whole new animation set, stay away from it. All the default animations are built from that idle pose, you change that, everything else breaks. My personal recommendation for what they are considering now based off whats going in. Ablity and loadout animations in my opinion are best to start with. The loadout animation could be iconic in the way you present it, whereas ablity animations are well rounded and unique, played often but not as often as an attack animation, it allows it to remain fresh. However, there are things you need to consider, people dont like when you change it so much they can't recognize what the hero is doing. I did an experiement with Omniknight where I wanted to create a new ultimate animation, my approach was to keep the direction and momentum the same in both, while creating unique poses. This created an animation that felt like his ultimate while also moving the hero in a similar direction presenting something didn't feel so alien. I like to think of it like this, I remember being taught as a student that if you blur the image but can still read the emotion of the animation then you have a successful animation, and I feel that same mentality carries over to DOTA in that if you blur your screen and the animation plays and you can still recongize which hero it is, which ablity their casting, if theyre running or attacking, then you have a solid animaton that isn't gamebreaking, and that can be mainly achieved by echoing what I stated earlier, the direction and momentum.
But again, the best part, all of what I said can be totally wrong, so take it with a grain of salt, it's only a best guess. Also, if Vidotto is reading this, some insight from his end would be fantastic given he was successfully able to get an animation set implemented.
There is definatly a demand for custom animations, it's been there since the start, I remember taunts being submitted back in 2012 shortly after the workshop opened. It's dissapointing there have been no movement on it. And now with things like that new pudge crow, it makes me wonder what are the true potential of what we can add to these characters. Why cant we have the bird on earthshakers shoulder slot animated in a similar way? Or is this something that will only be allow for a chosen few? Or is doing something like that too heavy for the games budget and thusly left to be treated as a special case. If someone spends time working on something like that in the future will it even be considered? But that's a whole other discussion that I'm more then interested in starting cause I'd love to see how far we can push those boundries.
I recently heard a great quote in reguards to the workshop. "Make something so awesome they have no choice but to put it in." And I think thats the perfect mentality thats needed in reguards to additional things like this.
Well, there's another long one from me, I have a lot to say about this topic so I might get a bit passionate about it.