I have gotten several messages lately expressing some confusion over what it means for our team to switch from 3DSMax to Maya and how that relates to the Modding Community.
I wanted to take a moment to reassure everyone that I have not made any changes to how the game reads information. So you will continue to be able to use 3DSMax, Blender, Maya, XSI, or whatever tool you have been using in the past - with zero issues : ).
In the future:
I would like to add things to the importer, specifically scale in animations. This is just a dream of mine at the moment, and if it happens, it should be possible to make sure old animation files (those without scale) still work. This is important to me (outside of community issues) simply because I donāt want to go back and re-export all of our existing animations with the new scale data.
For those of you interested in using Maya to create animations for Stonehearth:
Once I am finished with writing the scripts we need here for team Stonehearth, we will look further into the legal issues around giving out things like scripts. I also plan on (someday) doing some streams with animations as a focus - but A) Iām kinda nervous about webcams, and B) Animation work takes a lot of thought and is long and tedious (i.e. is not the best watching material).
Thanks all! Please post here and/or flag me with @malley on other posts to get my attention : ).
Malley
Iām trying to imagine cool animations you could do with scale, but I canāt think of anything thatās not super over-exaggerated, like with Hearthlingsā heads practically exploding after reading a book or something
I loved the rare occasion when @Tom used to do animation on stream, so Iād definitely like to see you stream some animation if youāre up for it. I can see why it would be hard to stream, though.
Scale is useful for a lot of things in general - remember is not just for hearthlings, its for anything that moves in the world. For example you could:
Blow up a balloon.
Create bubbles in a cauldron.
Flatten something between something else.
Hide an asset very small and then scale up drastically for an effect which makes it look like its āpopping out of thin airā.
Just as some random ones. For Hearthlings, you can do much simpler exaggerations which appear on one frame to drive an animation home - but generally is imperceptible. Check out this awesome little example video: 10. Exaggeration - 12 Principles of Animation (The other principles are also excellent things to look for/strive to have in your animations if you have time to watch : ) ).
Thanks for such an informative video!
Iām totally gonna watch all the videos on that series
Hereās one i personally really like that also covers the exaggeration/squash and stretch in animations, in moreā¦ Video game practices?
For StoneHeart, [quote=ācoasterspaul, post:2, topic:26150ā]
but I canāt think of anything thatās not super over-exaggerated
[/quote]
One good example/possibility would be on attacks!
You could imagine a swoed slashing animation to have a strong but quick stretch in the peak of itās motion(the moment where the blade is pointing straight forward/the fastest) to give it more āUmphā
Those animation principles are one of the things i try to keep in mind, i donāt list them to keep them in check, but when an animations feels off, itās good to check if any of those could help
And iām sertain Malley does so as well(in a more professional level i suppose?)
So lets thank all the game animators out there!
Itās suuper tedious(fun, but still) to make any animation, and makig them the quality they are? In mass? Thatās something to admire
