Greetings!
Today’s blog post will focus on one of my favorite topics:
ANIMATION!
I absolutely love animation and the many ways to think about it. It’s an artform with a lot of hidden depth. There is of course the application of physics and motion- which is challenging itself! Capturing (and heightening) the feeling of impact and weight in a character has soooo many methods and styles. Squashing and stretching, smear frames, hitstops, and all sorts of other methods to capture movement are a fascinating rabbit hole I highly recommend diving into if you are interested in it. As an action game, Begone Beast has had a ton of iteration on how to get actions and reactions to feel good.
There is also acting- which is easy to overlook. Animation is acting! No matter how good a character’s movements are- they still have to deliver a compelling performance. And that whole acting part is super involved. Diving into specifics of how a character would express a thought or emotion is core to Begone Beast’s characters. We’ve put a particularly large emphasis on ensuring our characters are full of personality and that their actions/expressions are very specific to how each of them think and feel.
And finally- there is the technical animation implementation in games- which is all about creating logic, blending many animations together, and responding to events and inputs from the game to create a sense of responsiveness. Mixing these elements all together is probably my favorite part of game development. Lets take a peek at some of Ate’s animations!
Core Movement
If you are somewhat familiar with game characters- you might have heard of a walk cycle or a run cycle. The way we create a movement set for characters is usually by creating a number of run cycles that blend between speeds and directions to make movement smooth and natural feeling. Begone Beast is no exception! We also use a set of run cycles to create a movement set. However- this didn’t quite feel like enough for me. There was something that felt too… “cycle-y” and I wasn’t initially sure why. I wanted our characters to feel fidgety, anxious, like kids! And one of the best ways I found achieved this effect was to alternate between a set of cycles that hold the flashlight two handed, and a set that holds the flashlight one handed. While simple- the effect really transformed the character from feeling like an animation, to feeling a lot more natural!
Strafing Movement
This also works across all of our strafe animations. Here you can see how Ate switches from 1 to 2 hands while also moving in a full 360 strafe set of running animations.
Here is what the animations look like in our logic tree. Four animations blend between each other for each movement set.
Leading with the Eyes
But that’s not all! The faces of our characters are a HUMUNGOUS part of them feeling alive. I did a test to have the eyes dart toward any new joystick direction. This turned out to be a really awesome small touch that breathed life into the characters. Giving them a sense of intent:
You can see it in this gif- as you change inputs Ate’s eyes will dart toward the new direction:
Blinks and More Blinks!
Layered over all of the animations is a set of eye darts and blinks that help tie everything together. Animators love talking about blinks! There are so many different kinds, so many different ways to animate them. I particularly love half-blinks (which you can see included in our blink set). I also love to really involve the whole face in a blink- you can see how Ate’s face squishes a bit with each blink- her blinks even make her bun wiggle! Haha!
Face Blend Shapes
Our characters achieve this level of detail in their facial expressions because their faces are animated directly on the model vertices rather than using a traditional animation rig. Face rigs are typically very high bone count or else they lack precise control (especially if you have lots of very different faces!) but I just HAD to have full control over very big expressions. So hand modeling every expression has really allowed me to create much more expressive faces. The animation of these are driven by a switchboard of sliders - its fun to watch them all move around:
There is sooooo much more to talk about with animation- but I’ve already gone on too long! This will have to be a multi-part post. Ok one more thing! Each player character has a “personality flourish” animation that they play after big attacks and combos. This turned out to be a great way to sneak little bits of extra personality into gameplay. Ate’s is absolutely maniacal:
Ok ok! I will share even more about animation soon. There is sooo much more to talk about, but I gotta get back to work! Thanks so much for joining me on this journey and, as always *DEEEEEEP BREATH* AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!
-Tomas