Animating?

Clip Studio Paint is awesome indeed, and the brush smoothing algorithm is amazing! Not to mention the price that regularly gets down to 25€ (coincidentaly today it's discounted on amazon.com at 25$ - boxed)! But I think now we are moving away too much from the topic of Animation (even though clip studio paint "in theory" does animation)

@F_Kal

But I think now we are moving away too much from the topic of Animation (even though clip studio paint "in theory" does animation)

I don't think so. You create the animation with tools. That depends on the possibilities of used tools. For example: "Spine" sounds great, but the "standard" version doesn't offer "IK" and "Mesh-Deforming" (if I understand correctly). Making a walk is possible without IK, but it is... yeah.... a lot of trouble. If you want to create a professional walk you need IK. Making a walk (or a dancer!) with FK is also possible but takes 10 times longer. You need a driver on a bicycle? Feet always on pedals? Try it without IK. That's hard shit.

You have to buy the 300 Dollar version if you want to have IK.

If you haven't the fitting tool you will avoid some things you have in mind, because it's hard to realize. You want some water? It would be fine? But you don't know how? You can't? You won't make water. Believe me...

I totally agree with you @Machtnix; both about the importance of Tools as well as the bank-braking price of Spine Pro!

No problem!

I'm not sure what about the thread really is... You can write about the standards of Disney character design, which is a must-knowing thing about how to give life to characters

My way is as follow: I have a game idea. First: is it possible with Visionaire? If yes, how to realize it? What kind of style is the best for the story? I make a storyboard (or sth. like this) and collect my characters and what they should do. After collecting one million loops and animations in mind I reduce the stuff to a practicable size. It depends on: how many angles the characters should have? Is it necessary to have speaking animations? Pick-up animations? How many outfits? How many cut-scenes or movies? And last but not least: how many time the game will take? Is it for free, for fun or for sale?

My newest project will just have three characters and 15 loop-animations. Because the idea doesn't work easy with 8 angles (is too difficult for me to use Lua to calculate a lot of special angles) I use just 4. So I need just one walking loop left, front and back. Because of this the game should be a 2D style. That means: I don't need real 3D-envirement; it's faster (quick?) to draw on paper. That means: the animations should also be drawn. That's the point I'm standing now: how to make animations look like drawn ones? Back to Disney shells...? OMG.

@Machtnix, no, it's a mesh deformed trough bones so the jiggly movement was achieved by animating those bones (up/down/sides) by hand, so the bones deform this "polygon" mesh you create depending on how you set the influence weights (you specify how much influence a bone or several bones have over each point of the mesh so those points move depending on how the bones move).
You can see what I mean in this video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xUfosRr9fY4

@ArtNova, hehe no problem, I wish I had the time to do an updated version, fortunately they are somewhat relevant today still .

@AFRLme, yeah, you can export individual frames in png though it would be great if there was support for the Json format since you can do quite a lot with less resources and swapping parts would be incredibly great, it could bring head turns while entering action areas to indicate an interactive object, or using items and not change the whole outfit, even changing adding or subtracting items from an outfit like hats, shirts, gadgets, even talking while idle, walking or... etc. hehehe.

@esmeralda, Cool, i'm glad someone else also saw potential in that program and is using it too

Mesh deformations are amazing, but they have limitations. With things like diagonal walking cycles no 2D puppet rigging combined with mesh warping can help. It's either handdrawn, or... 3d!

Nice interview, thanks. Reminds me, how I played this game first time - beautifully drawn backgrounds, but I recognize quickly that characters are rendered 3d models. Well, I dont think its a problem for typical gamer, who dont really care about how its all cooked.

@ArtNova, couldn't agree with you more! As an adventure gamer, I don't mind if the character doesn't have 8-directions-of-walkcycles. 4 have always been more than enough for me; I'd sacrifies also few frames and allow for more stacato/no-frills movement than too elaborate animations that don't feel responsive (I hate it when you have to see the character perform his ritual of opening the door every time you leave a room - once is enough).

@F_Kal, Thanks for the link, proper 3D models support would be great specially for characters, the .X format is kind of the worst to work with, it would be great if there was .fbx, obj and/or dae format support.

I also love adventure games with several extra animations in the characters, it makes the game more alive and is fun seen the characters perform in unique or varied ways.

PS: Thank you!

PPS: if someone has info on how to bring 3D characters with animations from maya, I would really appreciate it .