Great posts.
Other examples of games that use a mixed process:
Guacamelee -----> loads animations from .flas
CWars ------> pixel art composited with animation tool and exported as data.
Rakuga Kids ------> Mostly drawn frames mixed with deformations.
Paper Mario -----> Vector engine.
King Arthures Gold ------> Minimal rotations but used for some stuff like the archer, trees, etc.
Gunstar Heroes --------> old school example of transformations.
Personally I think this kind of stuff is really cool.
It's a great example of artists and programmers coming together to make something interesting.
Building base tech for games is a lot of fun.
Having an artist add content to an engine and creating new features to accommodate is very rewarding.
but I wish someone who's worked with it and got over their purism would chip in which is why I was so glad PxPd was watching over this board (wink, wink, nudge, nudge)...I'm gonna go see if I can fetch someone on twitter O_O
I have some experience with this but not really enough to make strong statements about it.
My animation experience so far is a very weird mixed bag of traditional, pixel, vector, and 3D.
I haven't tried a 2D bone tool like Spine or Spriter.
I'm sure there are other much more experienced people that could be more helpful with this topic.
Also I've seen a few tutorial videos around for those programs and they seem solid enough.
I've taken some interest to using flash again after doing the animation in the scrolling thread, but haven't taken the time to do much with it yet.
It has a nice timeline.
Objs can be replaced by other objects so that they can share animations.
Is it good for games that don't run from a swf?
Guacamelee loads animations from fla files.
But not exactlly sure how it works.
I assume they wrote some code stuff that parses the vector data and redraws it in engine.
You could export as a sprite sheet.
But obviously its better to use bone driven animations that export data to be read by the engine for this style.
Better to re-skin.
Easier to tweak.
Faster to see the results directly in game.
Frames could still work for what you want tho.
There's plenty of examples out there.
As far as getting over purism:
This is rather easy for me.
Is puppet better than traditional?
Or the other way around?
I'm very neutral about most things so I won't be able to help answer that.
Traditional animation processes are very old.
They have a lot of appeal and strength but it doesn't change the fact that there are other things out there to give a shot.
Drop about 100-200 hours, realistically you'll need to do a lot more, into something you've never tried before and then make an assessment of it.
Don't just limit yourself because you think "it's bad!" or "it's cheating!" or "it doesn't look the same!".
Even if you come back to another process of animation you will have gained something from that experience that will help inform you with your work.
If you really have interest in using transformations make sure to have some sort of outlet.
Spine looks cool and works with a variety of engines, including Unity which I like a lot.
Pair up with a programmer, or learn the basic tools/interface/code yourself, and make stuff happen.
If a game project is out of your time scope consider setting a smaller goal like a 1 min animated short or something.
Coming from redrawing obsession in pixelart (seriously I avoid copy pasting parts as much as possible)
I copy paste all the time.
Use the select tool constantly to rip things apart and rotate/scale/translate.
Duplicate frames to set up timing.
Then change only small parts of focus and leave other areas the same.
Adding more unique drawings helps for certain effects but it's almost always not the only option.
There really is some kind of social anger/pressure to only do things a certain way.
I encourage you to discard all of that and be active and open minded.
Find things that help you do what you want to do and don't have second thoughts about cheating.
How do you keep the volume of a bouncing ball in traditional animation?
Draw a circle on a long book mark shaped sheet of paper.
Then whenever you need a frame to come back to the original volume of the ball, slide it under your top sheet on the light table, move it to the location desired, and trace it.
Oh what that's cheating?
It's not, it's just a very simple tool made out of paper.
Modular animation is also subject to code. Code can't alter a set-in-stone frame-by-frame animation in the same way.
All these things highlight how puppet is basically applying 3D tech to 2D animation
Exactly.
And for games this is a big deal.
3D animation is driven by blending animation data and outside variables and 2D with bones is really the same thing.
Back in the day a game engine didn't necessarily use transforms to calculate position and movement and rendered pixels directly into a buffer.
Most games these days even if they are 2D use a 3D engine and draw everything onto quads.
All the graphics data goes thru the shader pipeline which requires using transforms.
This creates an engine that is inherently based on transforms, adding animations that are also based on transforms makes them work together well.
On the other hand, while frame data is obviously not as flexible you can still send information to a shader in the form of color, usually for labeling pixels to be modified in some way.
A simple example is the skull girls palette swap map.
They show it in the video mathias posted for a few seconds but don't go into depth about it.
Much more complex ideas can be done with passing color as data that affect more than just palette.
But let's talk about that some other time.
an animation of a character screaming while rotating an arm can have the same charm as swapping between two crappy frames.
It's funny you mention this.
I've been working on a 2 frame animation thread concept but haven't quite completed the thought.
I'm a big fan of limited animation and I think that it can be really strong. -----> Facets Castle of the Winds thread being a current example
and hating that stupid grapple move. =O
But it still counts as a piledriver!
Rumble Fish looks cool but definitely has some awkward moments.
Consistency in animation is fairly important.
Whatever style or tools you go with try hard to make frames, actions, speeds, holds, etc fit together.
Games tend to repeat animations over and over so strange looking ones will always float to the top.
Also that Rayman editor looks super boss.
In game tweaking is the way to go.
Looked at spine a little.
Will probly try the demo.
The
differences between Essential and Professional don't really please me.
But still gonna try it out.
With puppet animation, the shapes that compose a thing don't really change. This kills the squashing and stretching and deformation that are so important to the illusion. Also, it really locks the form into two dimensions. Even with a fixed camera in a game, the frame-by-frame animations can play in the 3rd dimension all they want by rotating, foreshortening, and so on.
Wanted to comment on your post as well NaCl.
I know exactly what you are getting at.
Frame by frame animation is really awesome.
When I look at a game that leans more towards traditional process, like Skull Girls or Vanguard Princess, Rumble fish seems a little ridiculous.
Check out a combo video if you are into that sort of thing.It also has other things going for it.
The timing is much tighter.
The impacts are better represented.
But there's still something interesting about Rumble Fish's engine, even if some of it is executed oddly -----> I seriously need a gif of that piledriver as my avatar.
And the other possibilities that the puppet concept offers games are really cool.
Also this comment was not directed at you.
There really is some kind of social anger/pressure to only do things a certain way.
Just commenting on how artists, including myself, second guess tool choices based on things they randomly hear.
