I understand that the point of view portrayed in this video is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but I really have to get this off my chest, because a lot of people seem unable to comprehend what Blizzard's explanation means.Producing a new animation to a pre-existing skeleton may seem like something one employee could manage in a few hours on a weekend to some people (as that's what some hobbyists tend to accomplish for various Machinma projects), but for a new animation that has to work well with:
Eh, dude Contay. Firstly, all the staves and daggers generally tend to stick in the same direction, cause you know, thats how they are supposed to be held. There is no staff that would sit in your hand horizontally, and also no staff that would have giant horizontal spikes protruding from its head. If you would make an animation where the hand would generally be pointing the head part away from the body, and the stick part also reasonably away from the body, you will find that it works fine for a vast majority of staves.Also i do not see why you worry about the armor models, or how they should affect this. The only armor parts with really space-consuming 3d models are shoulders and helmets, and i definitely think it is possible to come up with staff movements that would not make your staff protrude your helmet and shoulders.Lastly, your post would make much more sense if we were playing a game where the developers give a damn about clipping. But you could have noticed that they actually do not. Did you know 100% of Worgen helmets clip through not only the hair on the back of your head, but also right through the back of your head? How many shoulder pieces make you impale your face when you /cheer and /flex? Yeah.
Personally I don't give a crap what my casting animation is doing. Generally the people that bother to look at themselves while they're fighting, are the ones that take too long getting out of fire.And if I cared about my dagger stabbing me in the leg while I was casting a spell, I would've QQ'd long ago about my stupid ears (and eyebrows!) poking out of every headgear I own, be it cloth or solid metal.Also, with all that goodie bag rage I completely forgot about being excited for new BoA gear!"Uh... 'chuckles to himself quietly'-""No - Darn - ugh, you're not supposed to read that part!""Now why didn't you tell me dat?"Fony this probably won't be much of a compliment to you, but I enjoy watching this and BFF report much more than PST and uh, that other one. Need me some 10 minute-long Darnellisodes, yeeeaah.Don't tell Lore.
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
This guy sounds like Junkyard Willy.
I'm not gonna lie, I LOL'd IRL at the "peaceful druid" bit at the end.As for animations, I'm pretty much with Contay on this one. Yeah, it's not too hard to put together a Model Viewer clip with various animations and a weapon in hand, but that's really over-simplifying the issue. Also, if we reject Blizz's explanation, we're basically saying they're lying to us. Well, if they are, what's the real explanation? They're "too lazy" or "too cheap"? Those are easy terms to mindlessly throw around, but they don't really fit the facts. Since Blizz invested the time, effort and money into remaking the world for Cataclysm, cries of "lazy" and "cheap" ring pretty hollow-- and tell you more about the people making those claims than anything else.So what're we left with? That Blizzard is not too lazy or cheap, but that this simply isn't a high enough priority for them at this time, given the considerable investment for a rather small gain. (After all, the lack of casting animations involving weapons is a somewhat minor issue, when taken in perspective.) Which is pretty much what they've already said: it's a good idea, but we're not ready to pursue it at this time.I may not like that, but I can understand it. I'm not going to claim they're lying about the ease or expense involved.
I wonder how much it cost Bethesda to create those spells that came out of staffs for Oblivion >.> ofc it was just one animation style of everything lmao
I've had discussions with developers in other MMOs (the lead animator for CoX is very open about his work) and they all say the same thing: brand new animations are some of the hardest things to make. Part of the reason is that it relies on putting a new set of work into a group that might not have been originally designed to accommodate it and that's before they even start it.Another part is something a lot of people don't understand: It's not a simple matter of moving the skeleton. It's a lot closer to programming a robotic arm. For every section of an animation being done, it can generate a few hundred lines of code, all of which needs to be tested in various situations. And while minor clipping can be basically ignored, a staff sticking through the chest is far too noticeable to be ignored, especially if it's a key part of the animation. All the stuff I mentioned so far needs to be built, tested and resolved with as few problems as possible before it even goes into internal in-game testing. Then you multiply that testing by how ever many times you need to and the costs in terms of time, effort, and resources multiply. It's a very meticulous and slow going process that, depending on what's being done, might not be worth the effort that's being expended on it."Expensive" doesn't just mean dollars, but an investment in resources and it has to be worth the effort for it to be a priority job. If the evaluation determines that it isn't worth the resources expended, it gets pushed down the list. Simple as that.
it was a CRAB not a rabbit.gah!
OMG Contay, from which age is your knowledge of 3D?No, none of the things you listed are right. There are Nulls, points locked, etc.They have to test at most 3 different types of Shoulders, Helmets and each of hand-held items types, and if they are OK all of the other will be, because their fixation points are absolutely THE SAME.They just have to adjust minor points of skeleton weighting over the mesh to do any movement.Have you EVER saw how Troll Arms deform?No, Blizzard is using the expensive "reason" as an easy fit-it-all excuse as they did with "at 85 all are balanced" and we SAW it was not true.That's crap, and as we didn't made it easy with "85 balance" and they stopped and fixed, we can not make it easy for "it's expensive" too.