Going Through the Motions: Difference between revisions
Content added Content deleted
m (update links) |
m (update links) |
||
| Line 6: | Line 6: | ||
And there's another problem with animating video games - technology. Up until recently, in-engine cutscenes had to use extremely simple models, often with no moveable mouths or visible eyes. It took until about the year 2000 before motion capture technology (recording an actor's movements with sensors) began to be seriously used (and seriously affordable). And even this must be processed by hand in some cases, because the sets at mo-cap record time may have changed in-game since the mo-cap was recorded (or no sets were used at all). |
And there's another problem with animating video games - technology. Up until recently, in-engine cutscenes had to use extremely simple models, often with no moveable mouths or visible eyes. It took until about the year 2000 before motion capture technology (recording an actor's movements with sensors) began to be seriously used (and seriously affordable). And even this must be processed by hand in some cases, because the sets at mo-cap record time may have changed in-game since the mo-cap was recorded (or no sets were used at all). |
||
Going Through the Motions is the corner-cut measure designed to avoid all this hurt and pain in the most commercially viable and time-saving way possible, thus allowing game developers to spend their time on more interesting and important pursuits such as writing, debugging, smoothing out gameplay and increasing the [[Third |
Going Through the Motions is the corner-cut measure designed to avoid all this hurt and pain in the most commercially viable and time-saving way possible, thus allowing game developers to spend their time on more interesting and important pursuits such as writing, debugging, smoothing out gameplay and increasing the [[Third-Person Seductress]]' cup size. |
||
Related to [[Machinima]], it involves small clips of gesture animation being predefined for all the characters - for instance, Bob might have a sarcastic [[Face Palm]] gesture, while Alice might have a hand-on-hip gesture, a raise-gun gesture, a stretch gesture, a hair-toss gesture and a fold-arms gesture. These can then be strung together to make a coherent scene; something like: |
Related to [[Machinima]], it involves small clips of gesture animation being predefined for all the characters - for instance, Bob might have a sarcastic [[Face Palm]] gesture, while Alice might have a hand-on-hip gesture, a raise-gun gesture, a stretch gesture, a hair-toss gesture and a fold-arms gesture. These can then be strung together to make a coherent scene; something like: |
||
| Line 144: | Line 144: | ||
** Also, Sonic's idle animation has his eyebrows bouncing all over the place, and it seems that the person responsible thought nobody would notice. They were right that it's hard to tell during gameplay, but it's used in many a cutscene as well. |
** Also, Sonic's idle animation has his eyebrows bouncing all over the place, and it seems that the person responsible thought nobody would notice. They were right that it's hard to tell during gameplay, but it's used in many a cutscene as well. |
||
* To the point of ridiculousness in ''[[Dragon Ball|Dragon Ball Z]]: Burst Limit''. There's some scenes which are faithful reproductions of scenes from the cartoon, but for a lot of the side scraps they use a small amount of generic animations, merely replacing the characters. Characters will fall over in the same way, they'll be taken aback in the same way, and get beat up/beat someone up in the same way. It's not just limited to the cutscenes though - there's also the Drama Pieces, which use a lot of the same animations. |
* To the point of ridiculousness in ''[[Dragon Ball|Dragon Ball Z]]: Burst Limit''. There's some scenes which are faithful reproductions of scenes from the cartoon, but for a lot of the side scraps they use a small amount of generic animations, merely replacing the characters. Characters will fall over in the same way, they'll be taken aback in the same way, and get beat up/beat someone up in the same way. It's not just limited to the cutscenes though - there's also the Drama Pieces, which use a lot of the same animations. |
||
* The [[Doctor Who |
* The [[Doctor Who/Recap/TAG/E01 City of the Daleks|Doctor Who]] [[Doctor Who/Recap/TAG/E02 Blood of the Cybermen|Adventure]] [[Doctor Who/Recap/TAG/E03 TARDIS|Games]] suffer from this to a ridiculous degree. The characters never stop making the same four or five movements, making them all appear like weird, hyperactive drug-addicts. |
||
* An attempt at an aversion occurred in [[Tech Romancer]]. That game had NO artificial atmospheric actions, somewhat justified by the fact that most characters are in giant robots, thus they wouldn't make idle motions. Thus, in cutscenes, no actions are made that are not already in the game. As such, one character tends to "disappear" at the end of cutscenes by using an attack that surrounds him in electricity, then jumping and letting the camera ([[Special Effects Failure|usually]]) pan away before he begins the descent of his jump. |
* An attempt at an aversion occurred in [[Tech Romancer]]. That game had NO artificial atmospheric actions, somewhat justified by the fact that most characters are in giant robots, thus they wouldn't make idle motions. Thus, in cutscenes, no actions are made that are not already in the game. As such, one character tends to "disappear" at the end of cutscenes by using an attack that surrounds him in electricity, then jumping and letting the camera ([[Special Effects Failure|usually]]) pan away before he begins the descent of his jump. |
||
* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'', big time, and often accompanied by a matching bit of stock voice (the dialogue was not fully voiced). |
* ''[[Skies of Arcadia]]'', big time, and often accompanied by a matching bit of stock voice (the dialogue was not fully voiced). |
||