Are you by any chance interested in hiring on an animation intern? I'm interested in high-quality, realistic animations, but I don't have much experience. I'm considering entering a course here at the University of Washington, but im so self-motivated I wonder if i should just learn on my own. My first animation experience began with Operation Flashpoint, which i eventually learned didn't have any animation blending done by the engine, ugh! I know about rotation orders and how to blend them, how to import and apply new poses and clips, how to use weighted tangents and breakdowns. Currently im helping out with animations for TheDarkMod(.com) Heres a few idle_animations if your interested: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx0CjBI55jc The games i loved are the usual suspects of FPS's: Chronicles of Riddick HL1 and 2 Doom 3/ Quake 2 4 Operation Flashpoint Rainbow Six series Call of Duty series Unreal Tournament 1 Tribes 2 (missed #1) Battlefield 2 and 2142 I should warn you, I have a lot of ideas about proper virtual reality first-person-perspective movements and gun animations, and know just enough about programming to be dangerously annoying to the programmers: "Well why cant you just put the A.I. states in one of those I.O. stacks or whatever and call it good, huh???"
I forgot one key bit of info regarding those animations i linked to. They are only meant to be satisfactory, as the mod needs quantity over quality in the animation dept. The Doom 3 engine also compresses the interpolation values and get rid of fine movements, thus i had to scrap my plan to make detailed VR-like animations. So only the first couple animations finish with the arms swaying back and forth as they settle. Those animations took me about 2 days each on average.
Hi Libertine, Thanks for your interest. We're not currently hiring for animators. Helping out with mods is a good way to cut your teeth and get some experience with game animations. Also I would suggest not posting Maya binary files and instead create yourself a youtube page or something more accessible and easier to view. Depending on the studio, they may use Max(like us) or Maya, or in some cases XSI. Cgtalk.com has a great animation forum section where you can post reels, get feedback and look at what other animators are doing out there. I would suggest posting there too. But like any skill worth learning, it starts with the fundamentals. Get yourself copies of The Animator's Survival Kit, Illusion of Life and read up on the 12 principles of animation. http://www.animationtoolworks.com/library/article9.html As you've already figured out, making animation look great in games is half great animation skill and other half implementation in engine. Great animation can look horrible if not implemented correctly. Usually an animator will get paired up with a programmer to get animations working properly. But first things first, get a solid animation reel together and only way to do that is to keep animating and improving your timing.
Hey, thanks for responding, i appreciate it, I'm sorry i took so long responding, I've been on vacation. That's the 3rd time someone mentioned Animator's Survival Kit to me. I have it already, but am still going through it now. I'm learning a lot, I appreciate the link too. If your curious, i made of video of the idle_animations i was referring to. ( Bear in mind the model isn't weighted completely and that the idle pose was created and set in stone by our lead animator ) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mx0CjBI55jc I don't know if i want to get into animation anymore, lol, i keep noticing bad animation everywhere and its taking me out of the experience. In Terminator Salvation, as Conor takes off in a highjacked motorcycle, it makes me want to send a letter to the producer, grrr...
haha, yea. that's the way it goes. I have done some animation and now I always take much more notice of animation in movies/games. Also with programming I actually think about how the systems behind the game work subconsciously...it's great fun =/
I wasn't a designer on that game. I was a content engineer. I would have made some different decisions, design wise.
SupCom ended up with a great score, so it's kinda hard to say anything bad about it. Who can rag on an 86 metacritic? It's a great game. The changes I would have made are personal preference. I'm not a hardcore guy. SupCom is a very hardcore game. I come from working on Command & Conquer games. I like them quick, fast and not heavy on the calculations. So, the first thing I would have changes it simplified the economy system. It's crazy that a factor can be building one thing and your economy is fine then go on to build a different thing and your entire economy disappears. Now, you can learn how to not have it do that with a lot of time and effort but that's not my preference. I actually pitched early on to have a direct-support model. If factory A is up and running it can put out X mass per second and uses Y energy to operate. That's it, no changing unless you upgrade. Same with engineers. So you know that at any time if your factories and engineers are all on and your economy isn't draining it won't unless you upgrade or build something new. The second big thing I'd change is make the game much more about units than base building. The original game was about 20% units, 80% base building. I'm more of an action-oriented guy. I would have flipped those numbers: 80% units, 20% base building. Make units build faster, cost less but increase the strength of base defenses and how much mass extractors/power plants generate. I think that FA pushed more in that direction but TBH... I've never played FA. I was working on Demigod. Lastly... I personally found the units too normal. And the really cool units came way too late. In general you had to play the game for an hour to see a Monkey Lord or a Fat Boy. I never was fond of T1 Tank, T2 Tank, T3 Tank method. I would have liked to see the units get gradually crazier. We went for big numbers of units instead of less units with more uniqueness. With that, I would have like to see the factions play differently rather than just look differently. Remember this is all if I was in charge. Chris Taylor designs games his way and his way works. Supreme Commander was his baby and it works. And it got an 86, can't argue with his genius. Demigod was partly my baby. The new Uber game, is my type of game, so we'll see how this pans out.
so it has a small amount of unique and crazy units, with some but not much buildup of your base? sounds like uberentertainment has a leak
Maybe one side could have some amphibious toads that are designed for war, and another could use some sort of anthropomorphic turtles to do recon and fast attacks. Hmm....
Who says that base building is exclusive to RTS FPS + base building + Cute Mascot = Win PS: I am glad you want at least 20% for base building if you theoretically were making a RTS, while I can see people saying that base building isn't that much fun, even partly agree with that - without basebuilding there is no base crushing and thats the funnest part of RTS.
Getting off topic here... There is a thread about what we're working on, you can speculate more there... and I'll tease more if you wish.
I know, it's off topic again but it just fits into the whole design thingy: There was an interview way back about Demigod and I recall Tyo (I think it was Tyo, not 100% sure though) said something like they changed the item system after you (Scathis) left. Your plan was actually that you could only equip one item of each type IIRC. honestly, I first thought that would lead to less diversity because it limits your options. Turns out you were right though. Right now I'm playing an Unclean Beast build that relies completely on health/armor items. No gloves, boots or even mana helmets. (Actually, I buy Unbreakable Boots: +600 HP, +5 HP/s, +800 Mana, they are more or less like armor.) Every smart player has at least 2 or 3 health/armor items theses days and I frequently see demigods with 6000+ HP. So instead of creating more diversity the new system actually created an imbalance and forces most players to buy a bunch of items of a certain type. What's the favor item most players use? Blood of the Fallen: +800HP, +5HP/s; even more health stacking. My point: listen to Scathis, he knows best.
Sorry, I don't have enough knowledge about this matter. i just suggest you should take help of any experience person or you also take help of search engine to find it. Best of Luck
