but it seems like somethings off about it, if you could give me C&C and maybe edit it or something to show me how to improve it I would be greatful.
- Gold
Hey guys I made this walking animation;
but it seems like somethings off about it, if you could give me C&C and maybe edit it or something to show me how to improve it I would be greatful. - Gold | |
Jun 19 2014, 5:57 am
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Ter13
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It's the body and shorts. The body doesn't move at all. The shorts just sit there stiff as stone. Also, It might be helpful if you set it to animate over the slide speed it's meant to animate at. Literally move it forward however many pixels the intended slide speed is meant to be for this animation to test to see if the feet move sensibly.
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I'm not sure what you mean by slide speed if I'm honest, I'm not really used to all these pixel terms. I will try to move the body a bit in it but you might have to explain what you mean by slide speed.
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I'm pretty sure by 'slide speed' he's referring to your in-game movement speed (step_size). Try using the base in-game set at its intended speed to be used and see how it looks.
Basically what Ter said about the body and shorts I agree with. The body doesn't appear to be doing anything while the head comes forward a bit and the arms go back. | |
slide speed isn't a pixel term. It's only used during tile-mode, and it's really, really old. It's something that people should have been using with BYOND from the beginning to smooth their games out. Here's a tutorial: http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1573076
Anyway, slide_speed is a factor of how often a thing can move, the current world tick speed, and the icon_size of the world. Essentially, you want to determine how many pixels BYOND's tile gliding actually moves the player per step, and tune your animations to that value by making the load-bearing leg line up with that number. See this post for more information: http://www.byond.com/forum/?post=1592442 | |
 Not sure if this improved it or what but I made it 8 frames instead of 6 and made the upper torse somewhat rotate as well as made the shorts have a bit of movement in them. | |
I should clarify why I was doing 8-frame animation in that example.
I was in a unique position where I only needed to have 1 direction per mob, because we were going to mirror the east-facing direction using negative transforms. Since I only needed 1 direction, I decided that we could budget enough time to animations to increase their framerate by double what I'd normally do for one direction. Normally, I'd be willing to put in 3 unique frames into a walking animation at most, if I had to do 4 directions for the same sprite, That'd equate to 9 to 12 unique frames of animation depending on whether I mirrored the east/west frames. Since I would normally have budgeted 9 frames of animation for a 4 directional character, I found that 8 frames of animation for a 1-directional character was reasonable. Not only that, it was even easier when I started animating because of how little was changing from frame to frame, unlike working with 4-directional sprites. Be careful about setting yourself up for failure with those animation states. It's really easy to go overboard and wind up with too much to handle. | |
 anythings possible with 4frames ;) walking states are pretty easy things closer to your face make it bigger and things further away make it smaller with some shading... easy righ. | |
Much like. Teach me your ways!
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lol
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I think a good, smooth walking animation would do well to utilize more than 4 frames though. An 11 frame loop looks pretty well, if you're willing to invest the extra effort.
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An 11 frame loop looks pretty well, if you're willing to invest the extra effort. Assuming a rate of 10 frames per hour (you'd be hard-pressed to do this), that's 33-44 frames just for walking. Meaning each overlay/piece of equipment is going to run you a minimum of 4 hours. Going rate for an artist is ~$15-$20 an hour. $60-$80 per walk state per piece of equipment or overlay seems a little ridiculous to me. I really think that smoothing out the states like that will straight up lead to an impossible situation down the road. Some of capcom's animations for their fighting games are only 3 frames long, and look amazing. Not to mention that your 11 frame loop is 11 frames long. Making your movement delay 11 ticks. Assuming 30fps, that's a pixel slide of 2.909. That uneven ratio is gonna give you problems, and your prime number as a cycle delay is going to make things a bit rough as well. | |
Not exactly. If you think about how easy it is to use the existing base as a point of reference for your overlays, it becomes fairly trivial.
Then again, it all comes down to how much effort you're wanting to put into it. Like you mentioned, games like Street Fighter only use a handful of frames for each animation. But, what they have going for them is model detail, so animation can be less important. Besides, animating a highly detailed figure like that costs a lot of money. If you're using a simple figure, however, it really doesn't matter, as long as the animation is consistent and looks at least decent. | |
You won't best 10 frames per hour even with your point of reference.
I'm not saying that nobody can do anything I can't, but I can't even top 6-7 frames per hour most of the time. And again, I do 32x32 and 16x16 work pretty often. I have never seen legitimate artists charge less than $2-3 per unique frame, or $15-$20 an hour. At my overly optimistic estimate of 10 frames an hour, we're looking at a minimum of $60-$80 for walking alone, when you multiply that by a handful of armor sets, that starts adding up fairly quickly. | |
And, unfortunately, they do. Getting professional-tier artwork is a costly endeavour, to say the least.
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9 frames at the most, 11? Really? That's absurd. I usually make a walk in 5 frames.
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UPD4T3 wrote:
9 frames at the most, 11? Really? That's absurd. I usually make a walk in 5 frames. 4, 6 or 8 frames = perfect dont really need anymore or any less... | |
Actually, I miscounted, it's 10, not 11.
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