GR#136 - Knight Swordswing - Animation

[jahasaja]

Hi all,

I am trying to make a sword swing but i cannot seem to make the motion blur look good.

I  tried several different versions but all seems to come out bad. I guess the problem is that I have several animations frames during the swing (needed for the game).



any ideas??

[r1k]

Im not the best at animating but I gave my try at an edit.



what I noticed first about your animation is that the motion is distributed pretty evenly.  It should be slower during the anticipation, and quicker during the action.  So I added a few extra anticipation frames.  I didnt spend that much time, so its not very good, but what I wanted to acheive by this was to show the weight of the sword pull him over a little as he brings it back. 

Now the foreward motion should be fast, so I cut a few frames out.

The point of motion blur is that youre drawing multiple positions of something in a single frame.  You want the motion to be fast, but you also want to show all the inbetween stages, but you dont want to add more frames because that would slow it down.  So instead you draw all the positions it moves through in 1 frame.  If you simplify this, you can just draw a blur of the object in the positions it moves through rather than actually drawing the object multiple times. 

So I put the motion blur on the frame with the most displacement from the previous frame (right when he brings it foreward).

Lastly, I added some frames where he doesnt have his sword out at the beggining.  This is just so we dont have to watch it looping over and over and also so we can see what the transition from the end of the sword swing into an idle pose looks like.  This is just for viewing purposes, and would be taken out after the animation itself is perfected.

Maybe someone more knowledgable about animation will come by and say I am wrong about this stuff though, Im still new to animation.

[jahasaja]

thanks a lot. It looks good.

However one problem is that i need more than one frame for the swing (for collision detection in the game) so i need to make it work with more than one frame. Maybe you should not have motion blur when you have more than one frame??

[numlock]

I think the motion lacks weight, also I don't think you should start shading before youre sure you want to use that animation, heres my quick edit but I know it could be done much much better, I think his back looks wrong on some frames but overall it might have the punch you want, maybe even more, also its 13 frames so 1 frame more than your animation, but someone more competent could make better animation with even less frames I think

[r1k]

I really liked what numlock did in his edit so I updated my edit, mainly by copying the last couple frames from numlocks edit into mine.  I also tried taking out the frame where the sword is horizontal before it hits the ground cause it was kinding of slowing the impact.  Instead I copied the frame where it hits the ground and tried adding a motion blur on that frame too.  Not sure how well it works having 2 frames of blur.  Though it seems its important that the shapes of the blur match/move smoothly into each other.



sorry, I feel like Im hijacking your thread, but hope its helping atleast.

[jahasaja]

Thanks both, Yeah i know he lacks some weight. what you guys are doing helped a lot 

Still problem with the collision detection though. I guess I will have to find another way to solve that

[numlock]

for collision dedection just make an invisible sword like object appear in front of him while attack animation is running and use that for actual attack instead of your player object, it should be like projectile but still and have few seconds of existence in game, you could also add an hitting effect(like dust or something) when it collides with enemy so it'll give more punch to it I think

[tim]

thanks a lot. It looks good.

However one problem is that i need more than one frame for the swing (for collision detection in the game) so i need to make it work with more than one frame. Maybe you should not have motion blur when you have more than one frame??

You shouldn't use the actual graphic animation as a the real collision data. Always try to separate the graphics (which is supposed to be pretty and complex) with the engine (which should be a simplified version for faster calculations anyway).

[ptoing]

I don't see a good reason to suggest that you should never use actual graphic data as collision. We are not in the 90s anymore where this makes a big impact on processing. There are cases where it is warranted, all depends on what kinda game you are making and how you want your fighting system to be like.

[jahasaja]

I want to be able to block the attack. I want it to look natural when you block so that is why I need several animations. I am working on something and will post it here when it is done. (will probably look shit  )