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[fromsoysauce]

The most intense Anim8or video ever!

Based on the game Bullet Life, showing an animated version of the first boss battle.

[davdud101]

This is so ridiculous it seems impossible to be made with Anim8or. not to cap on Anim8or's limits.

[rellik420]

great job.

the texturing and modeling look great. the animation was good too. in some parts of the animations it really doesnt look smooth. you might want to go back and tweak a bit. but that was one of the best videos ive seen coming from anim8or. great job and good luck with your bullet time project

[fromsoysauce]

Thanks but which parts looked funny? By the way it's "Bullet Life."

[BMattster]

That was AWESOME!!!!

[lizeal93]

Well done.

Animating all the bullets and changing their visibility (if that is what you did) is very tedious, I commend you for actually taking the time to animate that many bullets.

As said above the female characters movement it choppy. maybe in the graph editor you could smooth some of the key transitions instead of adding in so many new key frames.

all in all, Great job! Wish I could see more like this more often.

[fromsoysauce]

Thanks, and yea that's what I did, everything except the models, but including rigging the models, was done over the course of 4 days, 3 days of animating, and 1 day of adding sounds.

But you see, my problem, being the guy that did it all, is that I have no idea what your talking about, of course since you are seeing it from a differant point of view then me, you see it differantly, could you give me some examples of the choppy movement you speak of, to give me an idea of what to improve on?

[Janro]

I am not so sure what those other two meant by choppy. Based on the gameplay video this is actually pretty close. And quite frankly the animation is pretty good.

My comments perhaps would be more on the 'readablility'(no idea what else to call it) of the movements. Perhaps that is where the others see 'choppiness' but I don't see it as such though. The times where the girl 'jumps' and zooms into a direction at 0:48 for example. You could exaggerate that squash(that anticipation before dashing) a little more. As it is now, it's a bit hard to notice. Just a little more bend and perhaps an additional frame or two so that the anticipation movement can be registered by the viewer. The movement at 0:20 prior to the spinning could also use the same kind of treatment.

Another thing that catches my eye though is the recoil animation. I'm not sure if there's something wrong with it or not, it just does for me. Does a rifle that long produce that kind of a recoil? I think my brain's just confused at the thought of that rifle behaving as such. Particularly the one held with a reverse grip.

I replied to your other thread about the particle effects but realized that this animation of yours is where you needed that feedback. You did a pretty good job at pulling it off.

[fromsoysauce]

Ahh yes, Janro, You I like. I was hoping that you would post on this topic.

I believe the proper term is "foresight", looking back at it though, I can see why people would think such, though the reason I catch it so easily is only because I notice EVERYTHING because I'm forced to watch everything frame by frame while working on it heh. I'll keep that in mind the next time I make one of these.

My way is: "What's out is done, what's next is to come."

I will make more vids for Bullet Life by the way, because Bullet Life will be a series of shooting games, it's not unlikely for me to add a few of this type of animations for cut scenes or opening/closing videos in game.

To answer your question, no and yes. No because rifle recoil in real life is all thrust backwards motion and virtually no swing up motion.

Swing-up motion is something that can occur when holding a hand gun one handed. The problem was that in the game she can use 2 weapons at a time, so I thought it would make sense to have her the same way in the animation. Besides she also holds two guns on her in game graphic as well as the art work that appears in game:


In any case the problem was that: it is an implausibility to be able to hold let-alone use a rifle one-handed. And one-handed backwards thrust animation just looked plain FUNNY; Like HAHA funny (Or at least I couldn't make anything look nice when trying to make it). And that just didn't seem cool enough for me.

[Janro]

Understandable. That's why I too actively search for feedback. People can get attached to their work and unwittingly don't notice subtle flaws despite watching it over and over again. I at times wind up not knowing what's wrong despite how many times I review the animation.

Blending what we know and something imaginary is hard to do, but that's what I find fascinating about animation. You can do what's not possible in reality.

Looking forward for more of your videos 

[fromsoysauce]

It might not be relevant to the topic, but Everything besides the modeling of Zoey was done in four days, I had been making the Zoey model in my spare time over months, really just to get the hang of high poly character modeling, because before I am an Animator, I am first a game designer, and tend to have my characters drawn with quite low detail for the games. The first three days of work were making the robot, rigging Zoey and the robot, and all the animations, and the fourth day was creating the sound effects and syncing them with the animation.

There is a story to Bullet Life by the way, it's just something I don't find any reason to release yet, simply because I'm not popular enough yet.

Did you play the game by the way? It's free and it's arcade style so it's beatable in a short time (21 minutes to be exact). In the next BL game I will find a way to incorporate some of the things that were in this animation that were not in the game, particularly the stylish dodging at 0:33.

Anyway, I agree with you, I like animation for that you can explore the world that is impossible. One person once tolled me "It's a little odd that she is flying." My response was "Isn't that normal?" And besides it's so much easier to make an animation of something impossible as flying then something as possible as running, because when making an impossible animation, it really doesn't have to look "right" as long as it doesn't look "poorly done."

[lizeal93]

Sorry for not being clear, and I did not mean to bash your animation at all just to give some suggestions.

there is an animation school which has free videos online, Animation Mentor. By choppy i mean the smoothness and change of force are none existent. To explain: animating a scene where an is arm resting on a table which then is raised and slams down on the table. this animation poses several problems to the animator. the first is that if you simply animate the arm to raise up and swing down its going to be a constant motion which is in itself unrealistic and the second issue is that it wont appear to have any force when it hits the table even if it is moving at incredible speeds.

the solution to these two problems is by using ease in and ease out frames. animator does not have an easy click to do it for you. but it can easily be done with the graph editor or by hand. what i mean by ease in and ease out is when the arm is being raised from the table it will start slowly and then speed up and then slow to a stop as it reaches the zenith of its arc. then it instantly drops and accelerates as it hits the table. then you have it actually pass through the table a tiny amount and then quickly bounce it back at the wrist. this gives the motion a more powerful force that seems as though the table is actually being pounded.

Now, I am far from an expert on animation but simply tweaking the way the motion between the frames is being generated makes such a tremendous difference to an animation's realism. Just try it. Your animation doesn't need it but its the little secondary motions like these that give an animation its true believability.

Try it with a sphere if you don't believe me. one hour with animation mentor and my animations changed dramatically. (I have a basic sphere animation i did right after watching one of the lessons, i'll see if i can find it.)

once again, i'm not saying you animation is bad, on the contrary i think it is very good and that effort you put into it really shows. I'm just giving a recommendation that will help you in you animation skills.

Sorry if I sound too Harsh, it was not intentional. but that is what i meant by choppy.

Keep up the good work!

[fromsoysauce]

I wasn't getting mad at you, stating the criticism was over generic.

On topic though, thanks for the advice, but I don't quite get just how much better it would make the animations look. To me, it just feels like extra work witch to the average eye would go unnoticed, and knowing that this animation is fast past, more disciplined eyes would just overlook it. Though that's just my look on it.

For the sake of illustration, I'd like you to rate the second motion as it is now, and then how much better you think it would be if I did use grid editing, from 0-10.

[lizeal93]

Very Well.

with 0 being a piece of (Fill in the blank)
and 10 being a professional CGI masterpiece.

I would give yours a solid 6. as it is now.

with the Tweaking it could go to an eight at best a nine.

A good reference would be The movie Final fantasy Advent Children, it has a very similar type of epic animation to yours but the animation, although physics defying to an extent, still looks very believable.

Look especially at time one minute and thirty-five seconds when cloud is twirling around and fighting the monster thing. you will see just how smooth the animation is. please note that this movie was hand animated and did not use James Cameron's technology. (Wasn't invented yet). You will notice just how smooth the transitions between motions. Just see how his limbs move when he is fighting.

[Janro]

Ah the slow-in slow-out. I'm still learning so I easily missed that. Either that or I just focus on the others too much.

Anywho, FSS. You may think the average eye won't notice, but in fact they will. Like me perhaps, they just won't be able to put a finger on it. It's one of those very subtle things that our eye catches in real life but we rarely even think about it.