FYP Animation Preview

rprich

Hi everyone, I am looking for some critique on a bit animation I have been working on recently. It is for my final year project at uni which basically involves using motion capture animation in combination with real time physics, such as cloth simulation, hanging objects, etc, to create a realistically animated character. It is my goal to have a complete animation set working on a playable character in UDK.

Here is a short video showing some of the main animations that will be used. These have all been created using motion capture techniques and have been heavily edited to fix and improve the motion captured shots.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WgpLS1euBz8&list=UUl07eWiiRJP4lYFHtq6EQNQ&index=1&feature=plcp"]Animation Preview - YouTube[/ame]

The animation list is as follows:

Walk Cycle
Backwards Walk Cycle
Run
Run Jump and Landing
Run Landing (From Height)
Vault
Standing Jump and Landing
Standing Landing (From Height)
Wall Run
Wall Climb
Combat Walk Cycle
Attack (Single, Double, Finisher)
Take Damage (Single, Double, Finisher Death)
Hit Blocked
Block Hit
Counter
Take Damage, Injured Cycle and Death


Please post any criticisms you have, I appreciate everyone's replies.

Thanks.

StuButler

Not the best choice of angle to show your animations, whilst it is the potential camera view for gameplay for an AC game, its not overly suitable for a demo of your skills, show multiple angles which allow use to see the interaction and the animation better.

Also AC has a free rotate camera using the right stick

rprich

Thanks, that's a good point. I was trying to keep the camera consistent in each shot for a sense of how it would look in game, but at this stage it is probably best to get some more perspective camera shots.

I'll try and get another video up soon with some better angles.

rprich

Sorry I have been inactive for a while, been busy implementing the character into UDK and getting him working. Here's a video of my progress:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPLdi11fGS0"]FYP Alpha Release Video - YouTube[/ame]

If you want to try the game for yourself there is a download here with the installer.

Please give it a try and let me know what you think.

Thanks.

Visceral

I think you have to add some dampening to the cloth physics, its really jittery and i think there is alot of zstruggle going on. Other than that it looks pretty good ingame.

The only thing i notice is that the runcycle looks pretty repetative and unnatural.

e-freak

is there a way to have the original cloth sim prebaked and combine that with engine sim? right now it looks really jaggy and the cloth it self is very rigid.

rprich

Thanks for your comments. Yeah, I spent a while testing different settings with the cloth, it's quite unpredictable in UDK, hence the bug at the start of the video. I'll have to look more into how the cloth works. As for the jitter, it might be happening because all the separate cloth elements meet at the top, but I can't be sure. There is a cloth update rate setting in the UDK scripts that might need shortening so the cloth updates faster, this might fix it but it does still need work.

You are right about the run cycle, its been driving me mad trying to get it right. I can't quite work out what the problem is with it, probably something to do with the timing on the footsteps that looks a bit uncertain. If I had time I would probably try and capture it again or just hand animate it from scratch.