Desler wrote:
That sort of level of extensive 'in-game cutscene' seems way too complex to be 'simplified' for editor use. Most of that stuff is probably motion captured. It's good for StarCraft, although it looks less and less likely that the average joe making a campaign will no longer be able to keep up with 'Blizzard Quality' any longer.
(I just noticed this as going back through old posts)
Blizzard will NEVER Motion Capture any of their work. All hand animated. And honestly, it's easy to animate. You just need to expand your mind with HOW things move.
Yes, it's motion captured, just like the majority of all cinematics nowadays. Don't think about making that kind of quality yourself unless you're very handy with 3ds max. The editor will not be able to animate for you.
I can't say I like the marauder at all.
Also the debris is pretty much completely gone now.
Again, NO motion capture. I'd like to know where you get your sources from.
Um, lav... it is motion captured. Everyone uses motion capture these days. Hand animation takes too long especially for something as extensive as what they use, and as much as they like to claim otherwise, they are on a time budget.
They are motion captured and then tweaked by hand.
Doctor Doack wrote:
Um, lav... it is motion captured. Everyone uses motion capture these days. Hand animation takes too long especially for something as extensive as what they use, and as much as they like to claim otherwise, they are on a time budget.
They are motion captured and then tweaked by hand.
Isk.. They are NOT motion captured. Unless you can cite it, don't say it is. The art panel even said "A lot of people motion capture these days," just like YOU did, but guess what, Blizzard doesn't. Simple. I don't motion capture. You don't motion capture. Blizzard doesn't motion capture. Hand animation does NOT take too long. It does if you don't know what you are doing. You are talking about passionate employees here. We ALL know motion capture is rigid and horrid, and I'm sure you don't know just how HARD it is to edit motion capture frame by frame, because it's near impossible with the amount of content they would have had to motion capture. So please, let's not get into this when, especially when the panel room was filled with cheers in appluade when the lead animator grabbed his mic and pulled it up and said "I'll say it here and now: We do not motion capture."
The second one in particular, using all ingame assets and not the super high detail stuff like you see in CGI. And these are motion capped, because they are shown in the CE developer videos, along with part of the process used to edit them.
Blizzard may not use motion capture but that doesn't mean it is garbage.
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:05 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Doctor Doack wrote:
lol, So blizzard is going to completely avoid using a superior technique and technology? What, just to be different?
Well, I guess that does explain a lot of their strange animation glitches.
We ALL know motion capture is rigid and horrid
I can make you eat those words.
Um. Motion capture is NOT superior technique or technology. Look, you said they motion capture. I said they don't, because they said they don't. Case solved.
As for motion capture, and this isn't really the thread for it, it is a disease to the animation style. People go to watch animation for the fact it's NOT real. Watching something like Polar Express or Beowulf makes me quiver at the animation since it's all purely motion capture and it's obvious and looks terrible. If I wanted to see animation acting out real people, I'd watch real people. That's like rotoscoping 2D animations, it just looks terrible to see real people drawn out performing real actions. It's not what animation was intended for. Now this is a different subject, so let's not continue it.
How can you say Beowulf looks bad? Jesus christ, I once thought you had some idea what you were talking about.
Anyways, the point that I had originally said that was saying that campaign creators won't have access to the kind of technology or skills used to create Blizzard-level animations. The fact they're hand animating everything proves that even further, because that demands talent no one in the entire community, not even you, has, and will probably never have, given their experience and position.
Last edited by Anonymous on Mon Nov 03, 2008 5:18 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Aegis wrote:
I think I'm one of the very few people who NEVER played Antioch Chronicles, despite all the hype that it was given, especially when the number 2 came out. NA2, EDAST, and Reclamation of Aiur were the first custom campaigns I've played, and since most of the campaigns I played were from CC in all its glory. >>
And given that we shall be seeing some of the old units make an appearance in SC2, I wouldn't be surprised if someone decided to actually create SC1 with SC2 itself.
I didn't play Antioch Chronicles either, but I did play Shifters 1 and Field of Ash. Those two campaigns are terrific! I hope we get to see those two remade.
Doctor Doack wrote:
lol, So blizzard is going to completely avoid using a superior technique and technology? What, just to be different?
Well, I guess that does explain a lot of their strange animation glitches.
We ALL know motion capture is rigid and horrid
I can make you eat those words.
Um. Motion capture is NOT superior technique or technology. Look, you said they motion capture. I said they don't, because they said they don't. Case solved.
As for motion capture, and this isn't really the thread for it, it is a disease to the animation style. People go to watch animation for the fact it's NOT real. Watching something like Polar Express or Beowulf makes me quiver at the animation since it's all purely motion capture and it's obvious and looks terrible. If I wanted to see animation acting out real people, I'd watch real people. That's like rotoscoping 2D animations, it just looks terrible to see real people drawn out performing real actions. It's not what animation was intended for. Now this is a different subject, so let's not continue it.
Motion capture could be put to good use if they would fill in a lot of the animation gaps with procedural generation, I'm thinking it'd be most noticeable in sports games where animations are strange as fuck.
Also not all MoCap looks terrible, it depends a lot on the studio that is doing it. MGS4 was mocapped and Uncharted was as well and they have some of the best animations I've seen in a long time. But we're talking about devs that are given limitless time and money for the most part where as most devs don't get that and make shitty mocap stuff (re: any sports game/Gears of War). Blizzard could probably mocap stuff if they wanted to, but it probably wouldn't flow to well with their art style and that's probably a good reason as to why they don't do it.
Heavy Rain iirc is using mocap and it has very nice animations from the little I've seen of it.
Doctor Doack wrote:
The fact they're hand animating everything proves that even further, because that demands talent no one in the entire community, not even you, has, and will probably never have, given their experience and position.
And that is my challenge that I will beat.
wibod wrote:
Motion capture could be put to good use if they would fill in a lot of the animation gaps with procedural generation, I'm thinking it'd be most noticeable in sports games where animations are strange as fuck.
Also not all MoCap looks terrible, it depends a lot on the studio that is doing it. MGS4 was mocapped and Uncharted was as well and they have some of the best animations I've seen in a long time. But we're talking about devs that are given limitless time and money for the most part where as most devs don't get that and make shitty mocap stuff (re: any sports game/Gears of War). Blizzard could probably mocap stuff if they wanted to, but it probably wouldn't flow to well with their art style and that's probably a good reason as to why they don't do it.
Heavy Rain iirc is using mocap and it has very nice animations from the little I've seen of it.
That has to be one of the most well-written posts I have ever read from you. I agree with it all.
No wonder it takes them so long to get a game out the door these days. I imagine that contributes significantly to the delay. I don't know if 'no motion capture' is a badge of honor or not. While it certainly takes longer and speaks highly of their talents to manual animation, I can't help but wonder if we would be seeing this game 6 months sooner or more if they didn't spend so much time doing that.
In any case, it still represents a huge gap between being able to have these kinds of scenes in a campaign or not, unless they put every single animation they keyed into some sort of generic command (play animation - Raynor take drink from bar) that anyone can use. Yeah, doubtful.
The Music of Squad 303 (Celestial Reverie Music by Joel Steudler)
@Desler: I personally doubt the bottleneck is in the animation department. As far as I understand it the Blizzard animation department is part of the cinematics department that spans all their productions. So the ingame cinematics would be animated by the same guys as the prerendered ones. I think it's all the production values that makes the game be 'late'.
On that subject, I still wonder why people complain so much. What they are doing is making 2 expansions for sure, I love that.
@Doack: No offense dude, but if you disagree with someone why do you always have to insult them?
- Maglok
Audio engineer and writer
SC2 campaign dev ranting: The Bunker blog
Desler wrote:In any case, it still represents a huge gap between being able to have these kinds of scenes in a campaign or not, unless they put every single animation they keyed into some sort of generic command (play animation - Raynor take drink from bar) that anyone can use. Yeah, doubtful.
Even if they did do something like that, such a solution would offer very little creative freedom. You'd probably end up with a bunch of custom-made scenes using the same animations, the only differences being dialogue and whatnot. Kind of like those Fanta Shokata movies.
