Petition: Keep the Animation!~

[Klefth]

Well... that new movement animation did look really out of place on the gameplay showed during the live letter... especially when they showed multiple characters doing emotes (the same ones we currently have) while others ran around...

[Soukyuu]

The new movement animations look awkward and unnatural as hell. Give me my 1.0 animations back.

[Irohuro]

The new movement animations look awkward and unnatural as hell. Give me my 1.0 animations back.

from the live letter thread~

SQUARE ENIX PRESENTS

A NAOKI YOSHIDA PRODUCTION

RUNNING IN PLACE XIV: GRASS REBORN

[IveraIvalice]

How can you not be frustrated with the current version as well? Foot placement is not only NOT synchronized with the ground, half the time your charcter will be floating off the ground altogether! Are there any online games at all that use a system like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v2q5kuic6HA

?? (I posted this link in the other thread)
The animations are actually modifed in real time to keep the character's feet exactly on the surface of the ground, no matter if it is sloped, or if the character's speed and direction is changing. This technology is over 4 years old already...

not sure if thats possible in the current system. i cant say this is something i specifically know about but i can tell you how regular walking in games work and why this is possible in that video and probly not in the current version. so keep reading if your interested about alittle game development, if not skip this.

the way regular animation works is that someone animates a character walking and the animation is baked, meaning every frame has a key so that every frame is set and when imported into the game engine there is no computer thinking involved in filling in between keyframes.
once the animation is in the game, the feet are set to the ground based on the collisions which are different then the ground plane geometry, thats why if the feet look like their floating sometimes its because the collision of the ground isnt in the exact same place as the ground that you see.
the feet are set by something in the game engine called ground clamping.
for things like stairs the collision is actually a ramp so that its smooth when you walk up them and thats why when you stop on things that are slops it looks like your floating.

this video is showing that the walk animation is there, but that the legs y axis is being ground clamped seperatly in real time. but in order to do this, or at least whats in the video, the collisions need to either be set to every step which adds more collision geometry and is more intensive on the engine or have the actual ground plane terrain geometry set as the collision also, but as you can imagine this is very cpu intensive.
thats one part that makes that possible, and the reason that i believe this video is possible and it might not be in the new game engine is because the legs need to have a part of the rig still attached as its going into the game engine called an ik, the full name is inverse kinematics and it basically turns translation information of one joint into rotating information of the joints its parented to.
an ik runs from the leg to the ankle and when you move the ankle, the computer fills in what the knee and leg do, saves alot of time and is great for animating.
but as i said earlier the animations are usually baked as they go into a game engine and the animation controls are deleted, nothing but the joints and skin remain, and the joints are baked with the animation.
but unity can take a full rigged character with animation controls, so it has the ik in the legs to update these in real time, but thats something that needs to be built into the system, so if the new game engine for ARR doesnt have that capability built in then its not possible.

also the "keeping the character on the ground even if he's changing direction" thing isnt amazing actually, kuz ground clamping only edits the characters Y axis to keep it on the ground and only the Translation of the Y axis, so rotation isnt affected at all, all game engines can do it. oh whoops i forgot, for game engines, up is the Z axis. for films and stuff Y is up.

super long post
hope this was informative at least for those who read

[IveraIvalice]

oh by the way, i wasnt able to see the letter from the producer live III this morning, been looking for it on youtube but all im finding are private links >.> anyone got it somewhere or do i got to wait for the translated version? i havent been able to see the "bad animations" that was mentioned alittle earlier

[Zezlar]

Some of the animations in the video definitely do look unfinished.

[Aion]

oh by the way, i wasnt able to see the letter from the producer live III this morning, been looking for it on youtube but all im finding are private links >.> anyone got it somewhere or do i got to wait for the translated version? i havent been able to see the "bad animations" that was mentioned alittle earlier

try this one, no translation but condensed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3pjj...ature=youtu.be

[IveraIvalice]

try this one, no translation but condensed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3pjj...ature=youtu.be

oh awesome thanks

[IveraIvalice]

there were a bunch of things good with that video, the animations were not one of them, specifically the start and stop of the running animation, the dragoon getting hit, the jumping sideways, the diagonal back step, and the finishing of cutting the tree, were all horrible.
i might be missing some but those are the ones that they need to fix kuz it looks bad right now

[Rokien]

there were a bunch of things good with that video, the animations were not one of them, specifically the start and stop of the running animation, the dragoon getting hit, the jumping sideways, the diagonal back step, and the finishing of cutting the tree, were all horrible.
i might be missing some but those are the ones that they need to fix kuz it looks bad right now

well, hopefully they will listen to us