Project M Social Thread

[Revven]

Edit: and from the currect stream, i stil think Lucario's new Nair looks awkward. What was the reasoning for changing it and will the animation be improved sometime?

The new Nair fits the style we're pushing for Lucario. As for the animation, it doesn't look at all awkward to me so I dunno.

 

[jalued]

The new Nair fits the style we're pushing for Lucario. As for the animation, it doesn't look at all awkward to me so I dunno.

So the Nair has the same hitbox and angle?

Can i just say from the currect stream, that the alpha looks amazingly smooth, fast paced and fun and i cant wait until the patch/final release. I am VERY impressed

REDD is a credit to the team for his tech skill

 

[Revven]

It definitely does not have the same stats as the old Nair did.

 

[Shell]

Wolf still limps when he walks, he just mans up when he runs. Everybody can be happy.

 

[Evilagram]

Edit: and from the currect stream, i stil think Lucario's new Nair looks awkward. What was the reasoning for changing it and will the animation be improved sometime?

I second this, it looks like the roundhouse from Lugaru, when it should look like a roundhouse from overgrowth.

 

[Shell]

It's modeled after SF hurricane kicks. If you can articulate what you don't like about it I can try to improve it.

Most lucario animation changes were done to make his movements more kinetic -- strip away the aura GFX on some moves and his limbs look like they're sloshing through water. We want him to feel more like a swift, brutal fighting type.

 

[jalued]

It's modeled after SF hurricane kicks. If you can articulate what you don't like about it I can try to improve it.

Most lucario animation changes were done to make his movements more kinetic -- strip away the aura GFX on some moves and his limbs look like they're sloshing through water. We want him to feel more like a fighting type.

I more feel that it looks wierd and awkward when fast falled. It seems to be hard to fastfall too, almost as if it sends up slightly. Maybe im imagining it though. Maybe the animation is too long...

 

[Strong Badam]

"looks weird and awkward" doesn't really help us improve the animation.

 

[jalued]

"looks weird and awkward" doesn't really help us improve the animation.

Ok i'll try to be more specific:

When the animation first starts, it looks rather floaty as if it is only suitable rising. If the move is FFed then it ends rather suddenly making the animation seem clunky and unproffessional, especialy since the wind clouds also disappear.

Possibly decrease the time of the Nair hitbox/animation, or half it so that there is only one twirl? If it's possibly, having the wind clouds slowly fade after the animation could help

Are they reasonable comments?

 

[JCaesar]

Are there any vids of ROB:M up on youtube?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7oJDzMmsIU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3xLaF3GBeA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xef6w5SUQL0 - my money match vs Sneak
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBuAHfgQGDY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3rCKWYFxyQ
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OztyiE07yg8

Please...


Unless you meant a ROB that's not me, in which case ... no.

 

[Supreme Dirt]

Mostly it was my brother wants to see how ROB looks, that's perfect.

 

[BuraiHell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe7gIt7u2cQ
new match. It's pretty decent.

 

[kaizo13]

Lucario's N-air looks pretty good to me. Alot of his new animations add this "speed" factor to his character which makes him look bad-***. (his dash/run animation alone makes me want to play him lol)

@jalued
in no way does the animation look awkward to me......in case you didn't know, all moves end "rather suddenly" when FFed. even more so when L-canceled

 

[JediKnightTemplar]

Shanus needs to remember that a lot of Brawl players prefer Melee.

I was about to ask why they were still Brawl players, but then I remembered complaining is more fun than having fun.

 

[Beorn4200]

http://www.justin.tv/redd91#/w/1372257440/3

Redds stream is still going if anyone wants to check it out. Just bumping

 

[Evilagram]

It's modeled after SF hurricane kicks. If you can articulate what you don't like about it I can try to improve it.

Most lucario animation changes were done to make his movements more kinetic -- strip away the aura GFX on some moves and his limbs look like they're sloshing through water. We want him to feel more like a swift, brutal fighting type.

That is understandable. The thing is, ryu's hurricane kick always looked kind of silly, and moving up and down in the air doesn't help it. To get it to look better, you're gonna have to find some more basis in the real motions involved.

I'm not entirely sure what can make it less silly, but I can say that the hurricane kick looks a lot like the roundhouse from lugaru, just as silly. They did the same thing in the sequel, overgrowth, but they did it in a way that did not look silly.

When animating it, did anyone actually try acting out the animations? Did they try seeing the balance of weight when they actually do these things in real life? Did you at least take reference from people doing similar motions in real life or in other videogames?

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

Can YOU do a hurricane kick?
Or Snake's old utilt?

 

[Strong Badam]

yeah evilagram
we modeled it after Ryu's hurricane kick
which is from another video game :V

 

[Evilagram]

Can YOU do a hurricane kick?
Or Snake's old utilt?

Dude, animation is all about acting things out, studying from life, and making sure things have the illusion of life. All the best animators always acted out parts no matter how strange the character or how strange the movement. Try doing a roundhouse kick, take inspiration from that.


Anyway, I watched the stream, it looks a lot better than I remember it. It's perfectly fine in its current state. If you guys want to make it look better, I'd recommend leading the momentum with his torso, with the leg behind it like an axe kick, the heel being the part striking. It's similar enough to still be a good ryu tribute, but different enough to have its own flair.

 

[kaizo13]

I could think of 100 other animations i would change before touching Lucario's current Nair

just sayin

 

[iLink]

Lucario's nair is by far my favorite change actually

I think his usmash looks a little awkward because it just looks like his usmash animation lifting him into the air and not really like the shoryuken

And his ftilt to a lesser extent just looks like he teleports forward but I think it might be something that I would get used to.

Can YOU do a hurricane kick?
Or Snake's old utilt?

This needed to be posted
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsweUX_YpYo

 

[iLink]

derp double post

 

[Eternal Yoshi]

Dude, animation is all about acting things out, studying from life, and making sure things have the illusion of life. All the best animators always acted out parts no matter how strange the character or how strange the movement. Try doing a roundhouse kick, take inspiration from that.

If this was 100% correct, the smash game animators would have quite the hospital bill. But seriously, citation needed.

Not everyone has the resources(or space) to motion act. -_-

Also, how would you physically act out aerial attacks without the resources professional motion actors have? >_>

Nice job Daniel G.

Edit: Now you know why Sakurai uses action figures.

How do you convey poses to animators? Sakurai used a Microman poseable action figure. Using these, he snapped photos of many of the poses that would ultimately become final animations. It's clear, even from these photos, whose animations these are, with Pit and Zero Suit Samus standing out.

http://kotaku.com/359758/liveblogging-sakurais-super-smash-bros-brawl-design-talk

Also, this.

"I’d like to stress that just because you are assigning human-like movements to the characters, it doesn’t mean that you should pursue the most realistic movements possible," Sakurai said. Realistic movements don’t necessarily fit the game play.

The next step was to get the animators to create moves based on Sakurai’s concepts. He used tiny MicroMan action figures from Japan, posing them in the ways he wanted the character to be posed during the fighting moves. He showed some of the pictures he took and the final moves from the game, and noted how faithfully they were recreated in the game.

Sakurai said that the most important emphasis on the animation frames was how they were viewed from the side. Although it is a 3D game and the player can stop it and view the action from any angle, for the vast majority of the time you’re looking at the characters from the side. So that’s where Sakurai spent most of his time when tuning the animations.

http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/02/sakurai-talks-a/

OK I'm done.

 

[Ecks]

Dude... It's the Tatsumaki Senpu Kyaku. I think it looks perfect the way it is.

Hell, Lucario should yell whatever Ryu yells when he uses it. (it sounds like "I'd-like-some-poundcake!")

 

[Akuma2120]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe7gIt7u2cQ
new match. It's pretty decent.

Your lack of up-air is disturbing

Other than that it was pretty good lol

 

[Rikana]

Congrats Ulevo. Lemme know when you come to Toronto/GTA. We'll get some offline friendlies going.

 

[BuraiHell]

Your lack of up-air is disturbing

Other than that it was pretty good lol

I use it some times more than others @_@
-takes note that I should use it more- it is a pretty good move.

Thanks.

 

[Ecks]

Oh, Ulevo got in!

Congrats!

 

[Redd]

Hope you guys liked the stream!

Next should be Friday, around the same time. <3

 

[MonkUnit]

A weekly stream?! :o

 

[Redd]

A weekly stream?! :o

Right now it's like 3x a week, I'm making up for lost time haha.

 

[MonkUnit]

Ughhh I wish I didn't work so much so I could see your streams

but I have to work more to make up fr lost time when I'm going to Brainshock which in looking forward to :D

 

[standardtoaster]

So many new streams. @_@

You don't have to stream every time you play. lol

 

[Beorn4200]

A weekly stream?! :o

You just got one-uped dawg.

 

[NeoZ]

So many new streams. @_@

You don't have to stream every time you play. lol

Yes, he has to.

 

[Evilagram]

If this was 100% correct, the smash game animators would have quite the hospital bill. But seriously, citation needed.

Not everyone has the resources(or space) to motion act. -_-

Also, how would you physically act out aerial attacks without the resources professional motion actors have? >_>

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kTOZxTsOFk&feature=related

This guy is a professional animator for videogames, he acts out his character's moves a lot as he's working on them. It's a standard across the animation industry, I say this because I'm an animation student.

I'm not saying to become a crazy martial artist just to pull off these moves. I'm saying to try a roundhouse, a kick that anyone can do, to get the same idea. I'm saying to improvise.

This is what the disney animators did, this is what the pixar animators did, this is what Richard Williams still does and will keep doing until he's in his grave.

One thesis student at my college animated a chimp banging on some drums while hanging upside down from a tree. To study for this scene he rigged himself up and tried out the motion for himself. Then he seriously hurt himself. Then the animation was spectacular. Of course I'm not saying to go this far, but if you're not at least getting up and trying out motions to get a feel for the timing and the weight then you're doing something wrong.

Edit: Now you know why Sakurai uses action figures.
http://kotaku.com/359758/liveblogging-sakurais-super-smash-bros-brawl-design-talk
Also, this.
http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2008/02/sakurai-talks-a/
OK I'm done.

For one, since when did people start caring what sakurai said? The entire reason we're here is because we think he's disgraced his franchise, right?

He uses action figures to get the pose out clearly and effectively without putzing around with gesture drawings. It's a sensible method, and honestly, I'm stealing it.

I'm not suggesting we invest in a full motion capture studio or something silly like that to get perfectly real motions, because to be honest, those would look crappy. Rotoscoping creates an eerie effect with animated characters, as anyone who saw any movie with heavy motion capture work will tell you, like Beowolf. Real people move with a fidelity that is unsettling with lower fidelity representations, like cartoon characters, like the brawl models.

However, life is still the essence to good animation. If you don't know realism, then you don't know where to differ from realism, or where to abridge it. Saying that we should ignore real life when animating characters is about as silly as saying a painter should ignore the model and just imagine what they look like.

I'm sorry, I'm not trying to be elitist here, but animation is a topic I've been studying for years, and when it comes to animation I always go back to the methods of Disney's 9 Old Men, the greatest animators to ever live. If there's anything I know, it's how stuff moves. Of course, these 9 Old Men did non humanoid characters a lot, and they acted out those too, the best they could. It's not about duplicating the motion in real life, it's about feeling the motion the way the character would.

And if you feel silly doing that, then study the hurricane kick video above, I'm not forcing any one method on you, and I said this already, please read my posts carefully.


Oh, and he says that realistic moves are not always the best fit for a game character, because you need to accommodate the gameplay more than the motion itself. I'm not suggesting changing the physical properties of a balanced move at all, just the way it looks so that it looks better.

 

[hotdogturtle]

Yes, he has to.

^ This. Don't discourage them!

 

[BuraiHell]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kTOZxTsOFk&feature=related

.

I holy **** 'd o.O
That was awesome as hell. This guy is probably never bored <_>
Imma go try some of that now.

When I don't come back, stay the hell away from my funeral.

 

[Crispy4001]

Put me down for liking Lucario's new neutral air. It fits him. And to me it looks no less 'natural' than Mario's Down-B. Not that I'd change the look of that either from the demo build.

 

[kaizo13]

mario's tornado looked a bit odd to me in the demo build....

could just be the stars and sparkles tho lol