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You Want How Many Animations When?: Floyd Bishop

The document discusses strategies for animators working on live multiplayer online (MMO) games to produce large amounts of high-quality animation quickly. It recommends reusing animations across different but similar characters by maintaining consistent rigging structures and animation curves. Specific techniques include animating one half of a symmetrical character and mirroring it, slightly altering existing animations for new characters, and using tools to import and export animations to speed up the process. It cautions that animations may not transfer well between very different proportions and that consistency in how characters move is important for players.

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Carlos Martínez Mojer
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63 views20 pages

You Want How Many Animations When?: Floyd Bishop

The document discusses strategies for animators working on live multiplayer online (MMO) games to produce large amounts of high-quality animation quickly. It recommends reusing animations across different but similar characters by maintaining consistent rigging structures and animation curves. Specific techniques include animating one half of a symmetrical character and mirroring it, slightly altering existing animations for new characters, and using tools to import and export animations to speed up the process. It cautions that animations may not transfer well between very different proportions and that consistency in how characters move is important for players.

Uploaded by

Carlos Martínez Mojer
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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You Want How Many

Animations When?
Getting Large Amounts of High Quality Animation Quickly

Floyd Bishop
Senior Animator
Sony Online Entertainment
Animating for a Live Title
In an MMO such as Free Realms, there are thousands of players
sharing the same world at the same time. Players are spending real
money on virtual items and worlds. They need to feel as though
they have gotten their money’s worth. Things that behave exactly
like things they have already seen are not very exciting. A simple
palette swap is usually boring to the player.
It is up to us as animators on a live title to ensure our players
continue to be entertained by the creatures and characters they
encounter, regardless of how many years they have been playing
the game.

Without the animation team, games are just slide shows!


Rigging With Reuse In Mind
When rigging the characters for a game like Free Realms, it is important
to have some rules for the character set up process.
● Naming conventions for controllers
● Left Side / Right Side symmetry
● Expressions to help with poses (we use this a lot on facial animation)
● Standards allow for more complicated characters to be rigged
quickly.
Complex Characters

Logical controls allow for complex animations to be done in a short


amount of time.
• Common set up standards such as rotation direction (X rotate will bend a
character forward, regardless of which character you are animating)
Unique animations are ideal
A well planned animation can be altered to create a new animation
for a similar character
● A live title needs many animations in a short amount of time
● Unique animations are often not a viable option… or are they?
● A Human doesn’t move like a Dog
● A Dog doesn’t move like a Horse
● Maybe a Sasquatch moves similarly to a Human?
● Maybe a Wolf moves similarly to a Dog?
● Maybe a Night Mare moves like a Horse?

If the controls on the rig are the same (or close), animations can be
shared, even with different proportions
Planning For Speed
Keep your animation curves clean. Key what you need to, and
when, so that the animation is easier to adjust. It is much easier to
adjust a few keys than it is to adjust an animation with keys on
every frame.

By adjusting something as simple as the X rotation on the Center of


Gravity (COG) controller, you can get a totally different feel out of
an animation with a minimal amount of adjustment time.

Be careful! Not everything can be easily transferred between


characters.
Animate Half & Get The Other Half Free!
For characters with bilateral symmetry, animate the left or right
side, and get the other half by copying and adjusting what you have
already animated.
● Feet
● Arms
● This will work for pretty much anything on one side that has an
identical counterpart on the other side
● You will most likely have to invert things like some rotations and
translations from one side to the other.
● Infinity is the key to speed!
● When to cycle, and when to oscillate keys
By animating the Right
side, we can get the
Left side
● Animating half
isn’t as hard as it
sounds
● By animating half,
you actually get
more time on the
side you’re
animating than
you would have
had in the first
place.
Copy animation from
the Right side to the
Left side
● Select all channels
on the R_leg and
“Copy Selected”
● Select all channels
on the L_leg and
“Paste Selected”
● “+=15” will offset
the keys as much
as we need them
to be.
Some things need to
be adjusted after
crossing over the
origin
● In our setup,
Translate X need
to be inverted
● Rotations often get
jacked up as well
● “*=-1” in the
values editor will
invert the graph,
making positive
values negative,
and negative
values positive
Walk complete

Here is the completed walk, with the foot copied, pasted, offset,
and values corrected on the other side.
● Allows for more focus on getting one side correct than you would
have otherwise spent.
Alternate Versions of Characters

This is the easiest scenario in which to share animation


● Similar proportions
● Identical control rigs
Characters of the Same Race and Gender

It is logical for these characters to move in a similar fashion


● Age, physical fitness, and mobility are all about the same
● Identical control rigs
Slightly Altered But Still Shared Anims

By altering just a few keys, we can get a similar yet different


animation
● Works great for similar races, species, or genders
● Control rigs are close enough to share animation well
Mixing things up a bit

Having Player Characters react differently to the same thing


● Seemed like a good idea at the time
● Players weren’t too happy about it
● Sometimes it is necessary
Tools That Make the Tasks Easier
There are several MEL scripts and tools freely available that make
the production process easier.

● Pose 2 Shelf – This works as named. This tool will take a pose from
selected controls and save it as a button to your current shelf.
(available on www.creativecrash.com)
● PAIE – Python Animation Import Export tool. This allows the
animator to save out complete animations, creating a library, and
then import those animations onto other characters. (available on
www.creativecrash.com)
● Functions within Maya – “+=#“ and “*=#“
When Good Animations Go Bad

This animation looks ridiculous when applied to a character with


very different proportions!
When repurposing animation, be smart!
Just because something has two legs, doesn’t mean it moves like
something else with two legs.

● A baby moves differently than an old man


● A horse does not move like a dog
● With slight alteration, maybe a baby’s animation could work on an
old man, or a dog animation could work on a horse.
Questions and Answers

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