Bow And Arrow Animations

[sparhawk]

Hard to describe it.

 

Bascially I can see three distinctive parts.

 

Bow is raised, pulled and put away. And this part looks really good.

After this comes a part which looks as if the bow and some quiver is thrown around randomly and after that the bow tip can be seen for some time. I suppose the latter is what you refer to as the idle anim.

[oDDity]

Ok, it start with the hand coming up to grab the bow from your back, then the arm reappears from the top left bringing the bow doen to the idle position, then it floats around a little at the bottom (the idle), the the shoots, and the bit you describe as it being flug around is putting it away on your back agin, but I've obviously made that too fast so you can see what's happening.

 

lol I typd that so fast it was almost unreadable

Edited January 26, 2005 by oDDity

[sparhawk]

I was ssuming that this was somehting like putting the bow on back/getting it from back, but it can not really be seen. So I didn't know if that was a bug in my viewer or in the animation itself.

[Domarius]

Well when you're playing the game, it'll be obvious that you're putting it away, but just looking at it now, it's hard to tell that's what's happening.

 

Just an observation about the anim - like I said, in the game, it would be fine.

[pakmannen]

I think they're great. Can't say it confused me. I always thought it was odd that Garrett didn't grab the bow from his back, but instead it just appeared from the lower part of the screen.

 

Animations look great, good job!

 

Edit - Well the idle animation look a little off, I'll admit that.

[BlackThief]

the shooting animation is really great - one thing though: I wouldn't lower the bow that fast after the shot. Imagine you're really concentrated on a target - even after the shot you'll most likely concentrate on the target to see if your arrow hit it. and we want to avoid "machine-gun-like arrow-shootings" anyway right? always hated that in T3 - you could easily fire 20 arrows per minute

Edited January 26, 2005 by BlackThief

[Springheel]

The shooting animation is great. The putting away/drawing animations, as you said, are a little too fast to judge, although we might want them that fast in the game anyway.

 

The idling animation is problematic, for me, because it wanders all over the screen. I think it should visible only in one part of the screen and can move around slightly within that area. I know the bow would be held in the left hand, so perhaps just having the tip show up, on an angle, in the bottom right of the screen? That keeps it fairly consistent with the other weapon displays.

 

edit: I agree with BT about putting the bow away so quickly after firing.

[New Horizon]

Absolutely fantastic oDDity. That honestly looks really great! Can't wait to see the finished product.

[Springheel]

One question I don't remember talking about--are we going to have the 'hands attached to camera' effect like D3 or T2, or are we going to simulate body-awareness so that you only see your hands if you are looking towards them, not when you're looking at the ceiling, etc?

[sparhawk]

I thought we said we WONT do body awareness. So why would we need hands at all in the normal scenarios?

[oDDity]

Just have the arms attached to camera I think, like Doom and the early Thiefs, otherwise it requires to have a whole body for the first person animations reather than just arms, and we get into the whole area of body awareness.

[sparhawk]

How will this look when you look straight down? I don't remember that T1 had arms in there.

[oDDity]

The arms stay in the same relative positon to the camera wherever you look, just like with any doom weapon. When you're not holding anything you'll see no arms at all.

Edited January 26, 2005 by oDDity

[oDDity]

I changed it so the bow doesn't drop immediately any more. I also added a touch of recoil, though I'm not sure if this happens with bows in real life.

[Springheel]

It looks very convincing to me. Great!

[Ishtvan]

Excellent!

[kfmccall]

Awesome job, just one comment:

(though this may be do to my inability to see the full mesh in the darkened state) It seems that the arm comes up a little too abruptly towards the screen making his shoulder seem higher. Even though its probably anatomically correct, it just seems a little ackward. Nice job though, I've no knowledge of animation so I greatly respect all the work you guys have done. Keep it up!

[Ishtvan]

Question: If they hit fire again shortly after firing, is the bow going to drop offscreen, then come back up again? Or is it going to pause in the "onscreen" position for a time representing the time to get another arrow, then re-knock and fire?

[god_is_my_goldfish]

Excellent work Oddity!

 

Similar to kfmccall, the bow-holding arm seems a little high, other than that this is amazing!

 

EDIT: Yes, from my experience with bows there is a slight recoil as the bow snaps back into shape, that part works perfectly, exactly as I would expect it to be in real life.

 

EDIT2: (though it wouldn't hurt if a slight "twanging" bowstring was added as well)

Edited January 27, 2005 by god_is_my_goldfish

[Darkness_Falls]

Okay, yes, I'm amateur at bows and arrows so don't laugh when I ask these:

 

1. Shouldn't there be some sort of hand protection? I know he'll have half-gloves on, but like, shouldn't there be a little flat platform on the bow for the arrow to rest on? I just think I remember having a couple arrows hit my thumb knuckle when I shot a few of them from a bow in junior high. Something is sticking out in my mind as hurting (like the arrow feathers knicking me as the arrow was released), but I can't remember for sure.

 

2. Why does he hold the bow at an angle? Is that more "true to life" -- as in holding it perfectly vertical is never done? On initial view, it kind've bothers me that it's at an angle, but I'd probably get used to it if it's necessary.

[Ishtvan]

DF, I think you can rotate the arrow so that the fletchings don't hit you in the hand... just like they won't smack into the bow as they slide along it.

 

What hurts usually is when the bow string smacks against the inside of your forearm, but we're already wearing leather bracers, so that problem is pretty much taken care of.

 

As for the angle, I asked this question too, and the answer I got was that it gives more control over the arrow, because you're letting gravity create a little 'nook' for the arrow to rest in, between your hand and the bow. If it's straight up and down, and you're resting it against your finger, it's VERY easy for the arrow to bounce over to the side if you're not careful. I think Springheel was saying that tilting is better for combat/speed shooting for this reason.

Edited January 27, 2005 by Ishtvan

[sparhawk]

Many archers have a leather protection on the thumb. And the angle is not realistic but it works better for the game.

 

With the recoil I'm not really happy. Somehow it looks wrong. This new one has a wrong feeling to it. But I can't remember right now about a recoil. At least it was not so noticable that I remember it, but that was along time ago. Normally you have to hold the arm, that holds the bow, pretty tight, so it dosen't move when you release.

[oDDity]

He will eventually be wearing fingerless gloves. THe positioning of this in-game still has to be adjusted, this is just taken from the Maya viewport.

Like I said, the important thing is to get it into the game, and getting the mechanics of it sorted with its .def and script files, the animations and meshes can be easily fine tuned later on, I'm not spending any more time on it now, since I have other things to do.

 

Do we want to enforce a certain time period between shooting arrow? I thin kthe time it takes for the bow do drop there is fair enough.

[sparhawk]

Yeah. That's good. We wouldn't want to have a rapid fire bow. But you are right that the timings can be tweaked once we have it ingame and see how it feels. I make the time optional :lol: as I did the frobdistance, so we can tweak this without recompiling every time.

[Springheel]

I like the bow firing animation quite a bit, now that I've had a chance to see it in-game. I like the idle position of the bow, and the way it fires. I think you mentioned it doesn't quite point towards the center of the screen, and I agree with you that the bow could use a little sprucing up, but generally it's quite good.

 

I did a little experimental shooting, and I noticed that on some shots it was up to six seconds before the first arrow landed and I could draw another. We may want to tweak that at some point.