Sensuki's Suggestions #015: Animations & Model Collision

[Sensuki]

In Pillars of Eternity, attack animations clip through creature and character models.

This is strange, as AFAIK usual animation practice is to make the animation go infront of, behind, or next to the model so it doesn't look "unrealistic".

 

Isometric style games such as the Infinity Engine games, Warcraft 3, DotA 2, Titan Quest, Grim Dawn, Diablo 2, ToEE ... etc all have animations that do not clip through character and creature models. The only "isometric" style game that had animations that do that I can think of is Dragon Age: Origins (which unless done absolutely perfectly is not good IMO).

 

easy to do with 2D games though haha, as there is only infront of and behind due to the image being flat

 

Here is an example of the Pollaxe animation in Pillars of Eternity that clips through the orlan character I am attacking here

 

 

Here is an example from Grim Dawn of a 2H weapon that has a similar overhead swing animation that does not clip through any of the creatures that I attack.

 

Please ignore the over the top FX in Grim Dawn such as the swing trail and massive hit FX / blood splatter. I am talking purely about the weapon animation itself in relation to not going through models.

 

Previous Suggestions:

Inventory Mockup

Dyrford Crossing Area Design

Main HUD Mockup

Backer Beta Version Review v257 bb

Fog of War

Inventory and Item Tooltips

Combat Feedback

Re-wrote CC Class Ability Descriptions

Item Descriptions and Contextual UI Rant

Area Map Functions

Main UI Tooltip Stuff

Selection Circles and Targeting

Disable Vertical Sync *IMPLEMENTED*

Edited September 1, 2014 by Sensuki

[swordofthesith]

Hoy Sensuki! How come Josh hasn't picked you up as part for the QA team @ Obsidian yet? We ought to start a campaign. Great, sensible suggestions across the board. 

Edited September 1, 2014 by swordofthesith

[Sarex]

And give us the crit kill body dismemberment + screen shake.

[Sensuki]

Gibs is already in - we saw them in the first trailer, but I haven't actually seen one happen in game yet.

 

The gib animation I saw had the body chunks, but not the blood spatter that the IE games had I don't think.

[Pineapple Ferguson]

Really looking forward to the next patch to see how many of these minor, yet important issues they've been able to address.

[Sarex]

Cool!

[IndiraLightfoot]

Great point, Sensuki!

As for other clipping, in the lastest beta build at Pax, you can see that the marker circles of our party do clip into enemy circles. Often, it seems like the various models are pretty free to phase through each other. I can only assume that this is getting addressed.

 

Also, a little more oomph to the hits animation-wise, plus some screen shake and proper sound (instead of just "scheek", "scheek"...), would be quite welcome too.

[Sensuki]

You can overlap selection circles in the IE games, at least a little bit, but models can't go past each other.

 

Some of the animations are good, some are not. They do also need audio and visual feedback as well (blood spatter and hit sound).

 

Multiple types of swings for melee weapons would be nice too. 

 

I personally think that the 20 and 30 frame restrictions can be a bit limiting. I think instead of broad categories it would be cool if different weapons had different animation lengths and different base recovery times. You can make this intuitive by actually displaying the base attacks per second value on the weapon and have the actual inventory / character record screen display the actual attacks per second value modified by other inputs.

 

One of my upcoming suggestions will focus on this topic, but I need to run the maths first.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Sensuki

[IndiraLightfoot]

At 2:49:28 and like half a minute onwards in the Pax vid (http://www.twitch.tv/twitch/c/5027673), you can see another animation issue in PoE.

Each member in the party, when ordered to move, will do so with identical animations that are completely in sync, like a perfect Droid army In Star Wars. It's especially annoying/glaring each time the party stops at their circle destination in formation. PoE would benefit from a script that desyncs them slightly, at the very least. Also, the adding of some simple idle animations as soon as they have stopped would help. As of now, it's almost like six robots walk up to a spot and then stop.

Edited September 1, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[IndiraLightfoot]

At 2:51:00 in the same video a Dwarven character get clipped straight through by the head and mandibles of the huge beetle, and also their respective marker circle gets clipped far too much for my liking.

[Sensuki]

Good pickup, *Hi 5*.

 

Another thing I noticed in this build is that characters don't stop their run animation at the correct time, they run into another unit and run on the spot for a few frames before they undertake their attack animation. I can make a video showing it later.

Edited September 1, 2014 by Sensuki

[Valorian]

 

 

Multiple types of swings for melee weapons would be nice too. 

 

 

That would be the nicest thing. 

A bit of clipping? Not too bothersome. However, I'd love to see varied attack animations.

[Nomadmerc]

Good suggestions. I enjoy the more impact filled combat where you get a sense you are really striking something.

[Karkarov]

Grim Dawn looks better than I expected, may have to look at giving it a spin and comparing it to the more recent stuff.  Titan Quest sure is showing it's age though.  I am surprised you didn't rag on grim dawn during that video though what with how floaty that run was looking

[Quantics]

Hoy Sensuki! How come Josh hasn't picked you up as part for the QA team @ Obsidian yet? We ought to start a campaign. Great, sensible suggestions across the board. 

 

+ 1 !

 

Shall we make a thread for it? 

[Gladiuss8@gmail.com]

I just wanted to say, that I just checked out your feedback topics Sensuki, and I totally love it. Keep at good work man, you are making excellent points ! PoE will be definitely a better game with this.

[Sensuki]

Grim Dawn looks better than I expected, may have to look at giving it a spin and comparing it to the more recent stuff.  Titan Quest sure is showing it's age though.  I am surprised you didn't rag on grim dawn during that video though what with how floaty that run was looking

 

Unfortunately Grim Dawn has some performance issues. In Titan Quest I got about 180 FPS solid, in Grim Dawn I get 40-50

 

Titan Quest also had a floaty run

Edited September 2, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Dw, still bugged.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Instead of making a new thread for this one I'll just post it in here:

 

There's an issue currently with the Pillars of Eternity animation blending / animation cycles when characters are commanded to attack a unit that they are currently not standing next to. I've only seen it to be an issue with humanoid characters currently, but it might be existent in all creatures.

 

Here is how it works in Baldur's Gate 1

 

 

Here is the issue with Blending showcased in Pillars of Eternity, shown frame by frame

 

Edited September 2, 2014 by Sensuki

[Sensuki]

Here is the frame by frame version of Baldur's Gate 1

 

 

I believe that characters in Pillars of Eternity should go straight into their attack animation, or to make things look less like a synchronized droid army, have a random amount of frames of the combat idle play before a character makes their first attack (say between 0-10 animation frames).

[Justinian]

The reality is that 3D models with often huge weapons swinging at each other in close proximity will result in clipping. As long as the weapon swing has a follow through, there is no "sorting" that will prevent this.

 

The only way to prevent clipping is to have the collision box around all characters be as large enough in radius to distance the character models as far as the longest weapon reach in the game. This of course will make all shorter weapon swings look detached and silly.

 

If they implement a dynamic distancing of character models based on weapon used, this will play all sorts of havok with collision and characters being pushed around in combat.

 

So no, I don't believe working to remove weapon clipping is the practical solution here. Better and more varied animation and hit impacts would be the way to go.

[Sensuki]

Other 3D games manage to avoid it though by making the swings go infront of, next to or behind models. However better and more varied animations are a must.

 

For anyone that missed it I added a third part to this thread

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68147-sensukis-suggestions-015-animations-model-collision/?do=findComment&comment=1500104

Edited September 2, 2014 by Sensuki

[Karkarov]

I believe that characters in Pillars of Eternity should go straight into their attack animation, or to make things look less like a synchronized droid army, have a random amount of frames of the combat idle play before a character makes their first attack (say between 0-10 animation frames).

I noticed this as well.  I think it is a Unity issue, basically, once an animation has started it can not be "interrupted" and since you had to move a step to get to melee it had to play the entire "step" animation and could not simply play it as long as needed then just stop.  I don't think it has any effect on actual combat time or speed of performing actions but it is sort of odd looking.

[Sensuki]

It could also be to do with the Pathfinding system as the character appears to 'run into' something. Hopefully it's fixable anyway.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I just finished watching a fantastic GDC session on animation that an indie dev team did with two people, and it was about a thousand times better than the stuff Obsidian has put together so far. No disrespect, but I'm just saying even the most basic animations are pretty awkward. Here's some good ideas.

 

 http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1020583/Animation-Bootcamp-An-Indie-Approach 

Edited September 11, 2014 by Falkon Swiftblade