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Elite Search


Domarius

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(I've been sick for 3 days so I've had lots of time to animate! It's been fun :))

 

Elite Search

Elite Search exagerated

 

This is just walking forward searching. I based the pose based on my best idea about how a one-handed sword fighter would cautiously advance.

 

The head turning to look left and right would be a simple neck joint rotation. So I think it would look REALLY cool if we could cause this randomly with the code - and then it would be another AI difficulty setting we could control with the code!

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I dunno, personally I don't see the need for excessive body movement in this one. He is expecting to be attacked at any moment, so I would expect he'd have his arm a bit tensed keeping the sword at ready, not swinging his arms every which way. Maybe you guys are saying it just needs a little more involuntary arm movement to appear natural though, that could be.

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I agree that the arms should be moving a bit...it would take a lot of effort to hold your hand perfectly still like that as you walk with a heavy sword. Having the hand bob up and down a bit would be realistic. Also, I don't know if this is an animation thing or a model thing, but will the guard be holding the sword any tighter than that? Right now it looks like it would fall out of his hands.

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Well I spent many times walking around with my "sword" out (an extended but closed umbrella :) ), looking for any potential thieves, practiced "sword fighting" and found that when I was creeping I wanted to hold it up near my head ready to block someone jumping out at me.

 

I found while doing that I could keep it pretty darn still (I did all this in front of a large mirror walkign towards it at the end of a hallway) - the point of creeping being to keep everything in perfect readyness. But of course not perfectly still - I noticed the sway left to right in both arms.

 

So I did add heaps (well what I consider heaps) of arm swinging to both arms.

 

But again I think its a case of the exaggeration required for animation, therefore... much swinging and bobbing shall be forthcomming in the arms in the next update.

 

Having said that;

 

I agree that the arms should be moving a bit...it would take a lot of effort to hold your hand perfectly still like that as you walk with a heavy sword.

Medieval broadswords weren't that heavy, I actually did a bit of reading on that recently.

http://www.thearma.org/essays/weights.htm

 

If this is a searching mode, then the forward movement of the first leg should be slower. he would be cautios if he is suspiciously searching and this would mean a slow movement.

Yes he's cautious but I can't agree with your particular critisism at the moment. No one else mentioned it either. There is a difference in speed of the legs because of the difference in distance they can move while walking in that side-on pose, it seems completely natural to me when trying it. The speed difference is barely visible anyway.

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By the way - hands and faces are not being animated by me yet. oDDity is going to re-model everyone to have mitten type hands so I will re-animate them then.

 

And looking left to right can be done in the code (and will be much better to do so) - at least thats what I thought, but no coders have confirmed this yet.

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Medieval broadswords weren't that heavy, I actually did a bit of reading on that recently.

 

I have a sword (not even quite as long as that one) and although it probably doesn't weigh very much overall, when you hold it at the end it still does put weight on the arm.

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And looking left to right can be done in the code...

But what about from right to left? Ha ha. Okay, in all seriousness, they both look nice to me again. I've practiced walking perfectly motionless in my upper-body before, including outstretched arm, and it's quite simple. I just tried it again - easy, and not that unnatural. Even with a sword, I'm sure he

d have sufficient arm strength to pull it off.

 

I feel they can both be used and I like them equally as much. For variation and randomness, can we include multiple anims when Dom comes up with multiple animations? (That was rhetorical, btw. I'll read other posts b/c it's probably already been answered.)

 

Dom- you keep saying 'exaggerated', but I agree with others, it's not really exaggerating b/c they're both quite subtle.

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Yes he's cautious but I can't agree with your particular critisism at the moment. No one else mentioned it either.

 

Doesn't matter wether anybody mentions, because not everybody mentions something that has already be mentioned by somebody else.

 

I made a normal step and set a marker. Then I moved forward as I would cautiosly, and the step was about 2/3 of the normal step. Your step on the front leg looks like a normal step to me. Maybe you could playe the walk cycle and the search anim side by side and compare them. It could also be that this is the camera angle, but the search forward step should definitely be a bit smaller then the normal walk cycle step.

Gerhard

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What stands out to me with regard to what others are saying, is not so much that his arms aren't moving (though it is that somewhat), it's that they're not moving with respect to the rest of him. Their movement might ultimately be very slight, but it almost looks like he's molded solid, and his arms move in perfect sync with the rest of him. Like he needs to be a bit more fluid.

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  • 1 month later...

Okay I made a new search anim. Not sure about this one cause I might be getting too used to seeing the same anim. Next time I go to my brother's house I'm going to get them to walk around doing various guard things and film them with their digital camera. Heheh.

 

http://members.optusnet.com.au/~kelliehay/...rch_3_fluid.avi

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Well... I hope the line of sight calculation would not include the entity's own mesh - AFAIK the "eyes" are set actually inside the middle of the head, so if it's own mesh was included in this calculation its view would be forever obstructed by its own face.

 

Hey what about the anim? No feedback on this? If it won't do, why? Is it completely the wrong thing? I can start again if it's that bad. I just read some stuff on creating walk cycles so its a lot easier to make them now.

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