On the breathing animation of our 3D avatars

[IndiraLightfoot]

After a few critical remarks on my behalf and others, I decided to make a topic about the breathing animation of the 3D avatar - best seen during character creation in the recently released videos, for instance this one (4 minutes in and onwards): : http://www.pcgamer.c...-infinity-rpgs/

 

Now I have researched a bit about the subject, and some of my criticism was definitely premature. My apologies to the animator(s) at Obsidian!

 

I can tell now that it really emulates breathing quite well, but I will still present you with some of the latest research and modelling of breathing 3D avatars, as I think things can be improved.

First have a look at this (a clever and instructive video released this year about this subject by people that know what they talk about, as opposed to me, in this case):

 

It's obviously very technical, but if you keep looking at their statistically derived breathing and models on which it has been applied, there are some minor/slight improvements possible to the breathing found in PoE. Here are my own tweaking suggestions:

-The 3D avatar during character creation is set to something like 50-80% chest breathing. Since it is pretty much an idle situation, where the model holds weapons and all, it becomes unnecessarily distracting. If you tone down the chest breathing to 20%, it looks more fitting for its paper doll purpose. Compare this yourselves, like 3:40 into the Youtube video above

-Onto the nitpicking: I had no idea, but it turns out there is a slight sexual dimorphism when it comes to breathing (in humans, that is). The head and shoulders of females bob a bit more than males. Right now, though, that bobbing is too much even for female standards. Both the shoulder rolling and the head bobbing need a tiny tone-down

-Finally, the lower abdomen region - the stomach and thoracic diaphragm - should actually move a bit more

 

I have no idea if this is easy to tweak, but I'd love to hear what you guys think about this, or perhaps even get a comment from Obsidian on this.

 

[Sensuki]

FTR the Baldur's Gate 1 & 2 characters had breathing as well but it was a bit quicker and only in their combat stance.
 

My concern with the Eternity characters is they look too idle in combat, almost exactly like Icewind Dale 2 characters do (IWD1 even more so).

 

So far, the BG games have the best (most active) combat idle as shown here in my recording of it (apologies for the sibilant s, that is just my microphone):

 

 

I have a reply about this in my RPGCodex interview which *should* be going up tomorrow (has to go through their editors).

Edited July 31, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

No worries, mate. And you're gifted with a nice speaker voice as well!

 

And, yeah, in-game, a more active stance is to be preferred, I reckon. IIRC, in D3 (if the comparison is allowed), they made two versions of paper dolls, one more passive for softcore and a slightly more active for hardcore (I always liked the latter - but that's just for the paper doll and it has nothing to do with their in-game idle stances).

[Karranthain]

Oh, this looks nice, I think I'm going to take a look.

 

 

...

 

 

 

...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

*Wiping tears of laughter from my eyes*

I admit it, Karranthain, I loved out loud there, big time.

[Sensuki]

No worries, mate. And you're gifted with a nice speaker voice as well!

Cheers. Although I've had practice as I used to do Call of Duty 2 and 4 shoutcasting.

[PrimeJunta]

Wow, this forum just keeps getting better and better.

 

I thought the breathing anim in chargen was a bit exaggerated, and I also noticed that the paladin's breastplate appears to be made out of rubber.

 

I'm also sure that neither of these "problems" are going to be noticeable in the gameplay.

 

(And yes, I still think that going with the 3D toon in chargen, at least at that size, was a minor mistake -- although one that's probably not worth changing at this point.)

[Zeckul]

I immediately thought the animation looks very unnatural. Shoulders shouldn't be slumping like this during normal breathing. It's way overdone.