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Builder Guard Completion List


mrdes

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Tweaked some of the animations a bit and they also look a lot better with the nice color maps on :)

 

But I got Smart FTP and I'm still unable to connect for some reason. It just times out. I've been having some weird problems lately though and I'm assuming it's gotta be something to do with my internet connection settings. I'm not using them but I do have Norton firewall and internet security. I tried disabling everything in Norton but still no worky.

 

And for most of yesterday I wasn't able to log in here and even when I was I still couldn't post because it said I didn't have permission or something. Computers drive me crazy.

 

edit: Is there a specific port I need to enter when I connect to the FTP server?

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I'm not sure...post in the dev forum where more people will be likely to read it...someone may have the same problem. I remember some people talking about firewalls causing problems. I can't log onto FTP with my regular client, I have to use IE.

 

In the meantime, like I said, you can always email them to me again. I'd love to see the colour versions. :)

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I sent some of the animations earlier and the E-mail couldn't send because "The user(s) account is temporarily over quota." God really must not want anyone to see these little animations heh. I'll make a post in the dev forum and try to figure out whats up with my FTP problem though.

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THe ones I saw on the FTP are great. I particularly like the 'looking behind' one. The weakest was the 'brushing dirt of chest' it looked too slow and mecanical to me. More variation in the timing required on that one.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Thanks oddity. Yeah the chest brush one was exactly what I spent a while tweaking last night. Fixed it up and it's pretty much done but I think there's still something about it that bugs me. I'll get back to it in a few minutes.

 

I'll try to get the updated ones on the FTP once I figure out what the problem is

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They look great with the colour. :) The link to the scratching cheek one isn't working, however.

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Updated the failed blackjack KO animation. I think I'm almost done with it. Anything look incorrect? Some of it still looks stiff to me but I'll fix it up.

 

I wish I had cleaner XL or something so I could compress em and they wouldn't take so long for people to load and see. Ah well.

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I'm not sure if you've put the seciondary animation in yet, but the fingers aren't relaxed enough as default in any of them.

Also I thnk you shouldn't animate the camera at all, it distracts me from studying the animation.

Thirdly, I think a black or dark backgroiund would be better than the white one

Animation crits -

THe brush chest has more dynamic timing now, but looks like slow motion. THe right arm is too still, and the from the hips downlooks rock solid in general, but this is hre the camera movment is interfering with seeing the nuances of the animation. What you should do for these to start with is have the base model animated just standing there swaying around a little at the hips with his arms swinging in circular motions (in a subtle way) also, breathing - just the cheast heaving up and down in the usual sublte fashion, it's easy to put in and adds so much more life. and then plant the primary animation on top of that.

The coughing one is good, but again you need more action in the opposite arm, it just hangs there likie a dead thing.

THe failed knockout is great.

The glance back is great.

The itch head is too quick. I think he should keep is hand up for longer than that. Try scratching yourself, and you'll relaise it actually takes quite a while, it's an enjoyable experience.

The stretch is fine.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Awesome crits, thanks. Exactly what I was waiting for. I'll get to work on it all either tonight or tomorrow. And yeah, I wont mess with the camera anymore. I thought the white background would be a good thing though because it might be easier to see the silhouettes. I'll make the clips black background from now on though. I'll set the material to 100% self illumination too, that'd probably help.

 

I'm still having trouble logging in here for some reason. Almost all of yesterday I wasn't able to log in. I don't get any error message or anything, it just doesn't log me in. Getting frustrating when I need to check stuff and can't log in. I got lucky this time though. It probably has something to do with Norton. Damn you Norton.

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The hand movement in itchhead looks unnatural. He uses all fingers to scratch his had, which looks kind of weird. Normally when I scratch my head like this I would make like a fist (not fully but alsmost) and use only the index finger to scratch. The same happens on the first animation, brush_chest. The coughing looks really good! The casual stand is IMO the most natural looking. Perfect. :)

 

I don't know about stretching. Something is wrong with it. At first I thought it may be to short, but then I tried it myself and the timing seems to be ok. But the camera movement interferes a bit with looking at the actual animation. Could be that it is just that. After watching it several times it may be that there is a small pause in it, but it is hard to tell with the camera. Apart from that it looks very natural as well.

Glanceback is also great. I like especially the small pause before he fully turns around. I think we may need a full turn around as well there. So that he glances back, and when he doesn't note anything he will turn back, while when he sees something he would turn around full then.

Gerhard

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YOu really don't need to worry about silhouettes for game anmation I think, since it has to look equally good from every single angle anyway. I think tha'ts only usful in film animaiton where you're animaiting to one shot camera the whole time.

These models will be in a dark environment in the game most of the time, and often see against black backgrounds of shadow.

Also, in most games the animation from front view is usally the most important, since you spend your time looking at the front of the charcaters, but in this game that isn't the case, you spend just as much time looking at the backs of charcaters as you snake past them of creep up on them.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Hey mrdes, welcome to the team :)

 

The background color would be best as grey, black gives fake depth and white is distracting. The animated camera does take away from the ability to crit, like oDD said, just a normal 3/4 view would do great.

 

I'm on 56k so I havn't seen all the vids, but from what I've seen, you have alot of stationary bones/joints. That usually never happens in real life, there's subtle movement everywhere, so get that secondary stuff in there :)

 

As for compression, maybe I can help you, what programs and codecs do you have available to use? (divx6 pro does have a 6 month trial, which could come in handy) I'd really like to help you out there seeing as how over 1mb per 3-4 sec animation is hell do dl for me.

I'm going to live forever, or die trying.

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Great crits so far. Taking down notes heh.

 

About the compression, I really dont have much experience dealing with compression besides using Cleaner XL a tiny bit. I don't even really know of any other compression programs. I'm eventually going to learn more about it and find myself a decent compression program for sure and not just a trial. But I've actually just been rendering the clips at a much lower quality now and it's like 1/4 of the previous size :) Too bad I never thought that earlier. I'll upload the smaller versions and edit my original post, and then I'll get to work on all the animation editing right after.

 

update: k I directed all the original clip links to the smaller sized versions. Can't believe I never thought to just render them out at a lower quality. Sorry about that.

 

Anyway I can clearly see pretty much everything you guys pointed out plus a lot more. I'm not happy with any of them anymore except for maybe one or two. It helps so much to look back at all the animations after a few days of not seeing them. I can pick out so many more problems now. Gah. ah well I'll get to fixing it all up.

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They're already better than any previous Thief game. You have to be satisfied with your own work, of course, but there are a LOT of animations...don't get too bogged down making each one 'perfect'. :)

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I'm not too sure about how these types of shoulder pads connect to the breastplate, but I just started animating them as if they were pretty loose. Not hard to fix if it's a problem. I've only really added their animation into the cough clip so far anyway (which I just updated btw)

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The shoulder pads (spaulders) are animated well, but aren't they sticking out too straight? I thought they would follow the arm more when the arms were down, like in this picture: http://www.mindplaces.com/darkmod/builders.jpg

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YEs, that's what they should look like. You can see where the pivot point is from that. they're basically attached by a bolt above the nipple area of the chest and another one at the back.

edit - thoyhg I was thiniong maybe a better pivot would be at the top of the shoulder, then they could rotate a little in Y as well as X.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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About the failed blackjack. IMO the guard should raise one hand to the head at least a little bit. This would be a normal reaction instead of just shaking the head.

 

The grey background is much better now. :)

 

From the animations I like the coughin the most. It looks totally natural because the entire body is in a fluid motion which makes it very believable. :)

 

One thing I noticed about the looking back. It looks as if the guard noticed something behind. We also will need one that is neutral so that the guard can turn back. Also it might be better to split this in two animations which could already solve this. It looks back a little and then it either turns back or turns more fully depending on wether it has seen something or not.

Gerhard

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