===[COMMITTED]=== New Animation (Work in progress)

[Jos3BV]

Well, i'm starting to make new animations for every type of unit in the game. It's a slow work so i'll be uploading every progress on the animation proposal.

if something doesn't look good or can be improved please tell me, that's why i made this topic.

FEMALE CITIZEN

 

Spoiler

Files: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B63pzdp0WVmUR2FIcGxKVURIZ3c

               

               

         

 

Early Versions

 

[Lion.Kanzen]

i like your skill and still, you can animals animals too?

hmm the walk is some weird, looks drunk lady.

Edited January 12, 2015 by Lion.Kanzen

[Jos3BV]

i like your skill and still, you can animals animals too?

hmm the walk is some weird, looks drunk lady.

I made a horse animation sometime, but every animal has their own moves and references. It's a little bit dificult, depends on the animal but nothing that i can't learn in a couple of days

And yes, maybe the walk move it's too much exagerated. But that's why i made this topic, any advice will be apreciated

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

I recommend you look at videos of peoiple doing these things.

[Lion.Kanzen]

I made a horse animation sometime, but every animal has their own moves and references. It's a little bit dificult, depends on the animal but nothing that i can't learn in a couple of days

And yes, maybe the walk move it's too much exagerated. But that's why i made this topic, any advice will be apreciated

the mining looks like "the sims" style, need be not be exagerated because give a Cartoony look, you know, se ve humoristico.

[niektb]

Where are the walk ready and run ready anims for? I can't remember them being used...

Edited January 12, 2015 by niektb

[Jos3BV]

Where are the walk ready and run ready anims for? I can't remember them being used...

I'm just doing what says here:

Common:

-Seeding

-Mining

-Gather fruit

-Slaughter / cavalry slaughter (killing animals to gather food)

-Build

-Promotion / cavalry promotion

-Farmfield gather

-Chopping wood

-Treasure gather?

-Carry resources (same anm? different animation for each resource?)

-Death /cavalry death

Infantry:

For the sake of identifying units easier, infantry animations will be divided into the following types, each type will have different idles/rest positions as well as attack animations. Walk and run animations will be very similar between infantry types (and will be less work) but the arms position will vary depending of the weapons and props of the units.

These are the initial types I could think of:

Shield+sword, Shield+spear, Shield+javelin, Only Bow/Bow+shield, Only javelin, Hoplite, Pikemen, 2h weapon, Slinger

Each of this type of units will have its own variations of the following animations:

-Idle relax

-Idle ready

-walk relax

-walk ready

-run relax/slow/jogging

-run ready/charge

-Attack melee / ranged

-Custom deaths

Cavalry

Shield+sword, Shield+spear, Only spear, Shield+javelin, Only javelin, Bow

-Idle relax

-Idle ready

-Walk relax

-Walk ready

-Trot

-Charge

-Attack melee/ranged

-Custom deaths

Support:

-Healer crane walk/run

-Healing

-Trader walk /run

-Pushing siege?

-Mounting/dismounting siege?

-Firing siege?

Formations:

-Testudo:

-Front line idle/walk

-Back line(s) idle/walk

-Syntagma:

-Front line idle/walk/run/attack

-Medium line idle/walk/run

-Back line idle/walk/run

-Phalanx

-Phalanx idle/walk/run?

-Phalanx attack

Special:

-Howdah attack?

-Fake physics stunts?

-Hero Idles?

-Capturing/throw torches?

-Chariot riding?

[niektb]

Okay.

[Stan`]

Also don't forget the fishing ship anim (Ptolemies) Keep it up. As Enrique said glad someone is working on anims. keep it up

[nylki]

Looks really good so far, your work is great!

[Skhorn]

Se ven geniales. El de minería se le nota el esfuerzo al levantar la pica(Me parece realista) y el de sembrado esta perfecto. Pero el de walk ready y run ready se ven como algo roboticos, los brazos deberian verse mas relajados, no?

[tribalbeat]

I really like your animations. I think the exaggeration helps with telling what is going on from far away. For the mining animation though they should probably be bringing the pick up higher. She looks like she hurt her back and can't move it.

[Lion.Kanzen]

You can show you a gameplay with animations I want see it from far distance( zoom out)

The females when walk don't move the shoulders and cross the leg this make the hips moving not otherwise.

When runs needs move arms but not syncronized.

And as Tribalbeat says when she is mining looks hurts with shock with mine

Se vería mejor desde lejos. Cuando corre debe mover los brazos un poco diferente, parecen sincronizados. El de caminar las mujeres no mueven los hombros y apenas mueven los brazos cruzan un poco las piernas al caminar eso hace que muevan las caderas.

Con lo de la minería como dicen al chocar el poco con la roca parece esforzarse y lastimarse.

Lo bueno de tu animación es que el movimiento es suave y no robótico.

[wowgetoffyourcellphone]

The mining anim in the game right now is good, you should try to emulate that.

Only good one so far is seeding. Keep it up though. Keep getting better/.

Edited January 13, 2015 by wowgetoffyourcellphone

[Enrique]

Hi Jos3BV, amazing work as usual.

I'll drop my input:

First some explanations on my list:

-The difference between relaxed/ready:

This is because we want the units to look more aware of their surroundings, so we want to have a relax pose when no enemies are nearby, and one "ready" when enemies are close. An example would be units with shield: if no enemies are nearby, they will have their shield down, at a side relaxed. And when they have enemies nearby, they should bring the shield up and get "ready" in a pose closer to the attack loop, but still "idle". For ranged units, relaxed would be the javelin or arch down, at a side and when they're "ready" with the javelin up ready to shoot, and their arch loaded too.

This is an example I made about static poses to give an idea of what I had in mind:

Same for walking and running, if they're walking/running towards the enemy it makes sense that the units raise their shield according to the incoming danger. Right now units walk around the battlefield like if they're walking in the park

*(NOTE: units being aware of units nearby to change their idle/walk/running animation is not yet implemented, but will be. So we need these animations)

This difference makes that females do not need a "ready" stance for idle/walking/running since they do not attack. Sorry I didn't make clear that before.

-Female walking looks too manly, let's try to make it a little more feminine (more hips-heavy, less shoulder heavy). The flow of the loop is great though .

We want walk/run/idle for females to be different from males.

-Mining... I think the previous iteration was better. Something close to what we have now would be nice. Good reference: http://youtu.be/sPwXhtg94-M?t=2m33s

You're doing an amazing job man! keep it up!

And forget at the moment about horses and fishing animations, core unit's animations are high priority now

[Jos3BV]

Thanks everyone, i'll keep searching for good poses and reading everything you're saying here, opinions are very important for the animation's development.

and please be patience, this is not a hard work but it's a little bit slow.

In the mean time, where i can upload one .Dae file to test it? i need to know if there's an issue with the c4d's exporter before i continue making more animations.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/12ioop2vl1086qa/FemaleCitizen_Dress_Seeding.dae

Edited January 13, 2015 by Jos3BV

[Enrique]

Thanks everyone, i'll keep searching for good poses and reading everything you're saying here, opinions are very important for the animation's development.

and please be patience, this is not a hard work but it's a little bit slow.

In the mean time, where i can upload one .Dae file to test it? i need to know if there's an issue with the c4d's exporter before i continue making more animations.

http://www.mediafire.com/view/12ioop2vl1086qa/FemaleCitizen_Dress_Seeding.dae

Let's show you some modding so you can make your own tests in the game:

This is a look at the newunit_fem.xml actor: (open the .xml file in notepad or notepad++ is better)

This file is located in \0AD\binaries\data\mods\public\art\actors\units\hellenes\

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><actor version="1">  <castshadow/>  <group>    <variant frequency="1" name="Base">       <animations>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_long.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_short.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>      </animations>      <mesh>skeletal/new/f_dress.dae</mesh>      <props>        <prop actor="props/units/heads/new/head_female_test.xml" attachpoint="head"/>      </props>      <textures>        <texture file="skeletal/hele_fem_d.dds" name="baseTex"/>      </textures>    </variant>        </group>  <material>player_trans.xml</material></actor>

In this example, you can see the animations that are going to play when "idle" (no attacking/not moving) are the following:

    <variant frequency="1" name="Base">       <animations>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_long.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_short.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>      </animations>

The speed is obviously the speed to play the animation, and the file is the path where the ".dae" of the animation is located.

Just overwrite the path with your animation's path (better place your animation in the same folder as the "biped/new/" folder) and the unit will play it when spawned in atlas. These .xml are just for test, so don't worry to change them as you please to test your animations

In resume this is how "visual actors" work in the engine, it's a ".xml" that tells the engine where are the mesh in the <mesh> labels, the <textures>, the props, animations...

[Jos3BV]

Let's show you some modding so you can make your own tests in the game:

This is a look at the newunit_fem.xml actor: (open the .xml file in notepad or notepad++ is better)

This file is located in \0AD\binaries\data\mods\public\art\actors\units\hellenes\

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><actor version="1">  <castshadow/>  <group>    <variant frequency="1" name="Base">       <animations>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_long.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_short.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>      </animations>      <mesh>skeletal/new/f_dress.dae</mesh>      <props>        <prop actor="props/units/heads/new/head_female_test.xml" attachpoint="head"/>      </props>      <textures>        <texture file="skeletal/hele_fem_d.dds" name="baseTex"/>      </textures>    </variant>        </group>  <material>player_trans.xml</material></actor>

In this example, you can see the animations that are going to play when "idle" (no attacking/not moving) are the following:

    <variant frequency="1" name="Base">       <animations>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_long.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>        <animation file="biped/new/fem_idle_short.dae" name="Idle" speed="100"/>      </animations>

The speed is obviously the speed to play the animation, and the file is the path where the ".dae" of the animation is located.

Just overwrite the path with your animation's path (better place your animation in the same folder as the "biped/new/" folder) and the unit will play it when spawned in atlas. These .xml are just for test, so don't worry to change them as you please to test your animations

In resume this is how "visual actors" work in the engine, it's a ".xml" that tells the engine where are the mesh in the <mesh> labels, the <textures>, the props, animations...

Alright, i'll try it right now

Edited January 13, 2015 by Jos3BV

[Stan`]

I find the gathering fruit anim a bit too rough when she is bending down
For the building one you could make her stand up and go down since you master transitions

[av93]

Maybe it would be nice to make building variations on animation, like in Aoe3, where workers use saws and others tools.. but thinking about all the needed animations there's a lot of work and that wouldn't be a priority. Very good work, hope that some of this would make it into a18

[Jos3BV]

Maybe it would be nice to make building variations on animation, like in Aoe3, where workers use saws and others tools.. but thinking about all the needed animations there's a lot of work and that wouldn't be a priority. Very good work, hope that some of this would make it into a18

I was thinking the same. Don't worry, just give me some time. Now i'm putting some animations in the game for fix up compatibily problems. i hope to show a full gameplay with the female citizen on this weekend... maybe earlier.

[Stan`]

Take you time !

Did you manage to get it in the game ?

[Jos3BV]

Yes, but i'm having some troubles with the meshes, it's seems that the bone's animations are working good but there is something wrong with the c4d to collada exporter. I'm working on it

Edited January 14, 2015 by Jos3BV

[Stan`]

Do you have a fbx importer ?

Edited January 14, 2015 by stanislas69

[Jos3BV]

Yes, c4d work's on:

3D Studio (.3ds)

Allplan (.xml)
Bullet (.bullet)
COLLADA 1.4 (.dae)
COLLADA 1.5 (.dae)
Direct 3D (.x)
DXF (.dxf)

FBX (.fbx)
Illustrator (.ai)
RIB (.rib)

STL (.stl)
VRML 2 (.wrl)
Wavefront (.obj)