Portal:News/IRC Transcripts/08 October 2010

Chat with Russ Calahan and Scott white in regards to animations and special effects - 08 October 2010.


 * %Abigale> Welcome Scott and Russ :)
 * %Scott_White> Hi everyone.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> hello all
 * %Abigale> I asked the guys to tell you a little about what they do before we start with the questions. :)
 * %Scott_White> Hey all. I'll just talk a little about who I am and what I do here.
 * %Scott_White> I'm Technical Art Director on Rift, pretty much specializing in anything environmental or special effects related.
 * %Scott_White> THe most visible stuff I do is the visual effects, but also setting up a lot of under-the-hood stuff, working on optimization...
 * %Scott_White> Figuring out challenges with the team, stuff like that.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> I am the lead animator on Rift. I work with various groups of people to make sure the animations in our game work well with gameplay
 * %Russ_Cahalan> and of course to make them look as good as possible =P


 * Daft asks: Are we going to see weather affects?
 * %Scott_White> Well... yes.


 * Oabe asks: Weather effects? Will we have dynamic weather animations?
 * %Scott_White> I can talk about weather a bit. A few of our zones have a particular weather occuring within them now, you may have seen rain or snow.
 * %Scott_White> As far as dynamic weather we can accomplish that and would love to see it in the game actually.


 * Ciovala asks: How do you create your animations? Do you use any motion capture or NaturalMotion?
 * %Russ_Cahalan> Early in the project we decided to hand key all of our character animations for several reasons:
 * %Russ_Cahalan> one was that we were certain that the motions would have to be pushed larger and faster than they would be in real life, and that is easier done by hand.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> two was that in my experience it's more difficult to change motions that have been mocapped. When we hand keyed we have more control over the motion and can do more iterations
 * %Russ_Cahalan> that results in motions that work better with the gameplay
 * %Russ_Cahalan> and finally, we realized it would be hard to put a mocap suit on dragons and other fantasic creatures


 * Nalerian asks: can you describe what you think is the coolest looking thing you have helped create/place in Telara so far?
 * %Scott_White> For sure the coolest thing is the rifts themselves.
 * %Scott_White> Was a serious team effort to bring the rifts to life, visual effects, animation, modeling, audio, huge amount of work in those things.
 * %Scott_White> We got to see the life rift on a 3d display early on, and it was pretty awesome.
 * %Scott_White> One more cool thing is I'm really happy how much animation we're able to accomplish on world objects. We're able to bring a lot of motion and life to the world itself.


 * Oabe asks: Will there be emotes and can they tell us their favorite?
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We do have quite a few emotes for the player characters, and we have a set of emote-like animations on almost every creature as well (we call them attractors)
 * %Russ_Cahalan> my personal favorites vary depending on the character, but I like the dances, and some of our more humorous emotes like /facepalm and /rude.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> Because we made unique motion sets for each of our race/genders, each has unique emotes and dances


 * Anasazi asks: are there going to be weapons that drip acid or have live fire swirling around them etc doing elemental damage?
 * %Scott_White> Quick answer, yes!
 * %Scott_White> We're currently working on a number of awesome new weapons which all will include visual effects.


 * brammator asks: will there be weapons with unusual animation, like flying around swords and bending staves?
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We don't have any animation sets that will have flexible weapons like chain swords, whips, or flails currently
 * %Russ_Cahalan> the player animation sets are currently pushing close to 500 each, and those include 10 different sets per race/gender to cover the weapon categories we have in game
 * %Russ_Cahalan> those cover a pretty wide variety of weapons, and give a good amount of visual variety between players of different races
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We do, however, have some weapons that contain motion. But those are generally VERY special weapons, and are highly desirable.  You will probably learn more about that as we get closer to release.


 * WarpCode asks: what kind of challenges have you faced in getting the static content and dynamic content to mesh together seamlessly?
 * %Scott_White> That has been a real challenge.
 * %Scott_White> The greatest question there was how much lies on the design vs art side of creating the world.
 * %Scott_White> I think we've reached a good balance on that, leaving enough dynamic while giving art enough control to make the world look great.
 * %Scott_White> We loved seeing a rift open, but then had to ensure as much as possible that the npc's for instance, react to it and don't just go about business as usual.
 * %Scott_White> Artists like to set much of the world to make it beautiful, but design needs to leave a lot which can be changed. Just a balance there.


 * Daft asks: For combat animations, are we going to see multiple movements for certain spells or single movements for each spell?
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We have a variety of combat animations per race/gender. Those include separate animations for melee and magic combat moves.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We have taken a lot of effort to let designers (and players) have as much freedom and flexibility as possible, so we made sets of those combat animations in each weapon category as well.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> so for example, for fireball, you will have a different animation depending on whether you are holding a staff or a dagger. Melee moves are similar in this respect
 * %Russ_Cahalan> for melee, we have a variety of moves, light slashes, spins, thrust, uppercut etc, and magic we have ones that throw projectiles, or are more omnidirectional
 * %Russ_Cahalan> The designers have given each class a variety of abilities which can help vary the feel of the animations as well. Cast times, channels, instant etc
 * %Russ_Cahalan> and this is sort of tangential, but it was critical to us that the animations never restrict the player (except when the designers wanted). What I mean by this is that when you do an instant ability, you can do that while running, jumping, swimming etc.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> so we have "upper body only" versions of all of those animations across all of the weapon types as well. So you can see how all of that can add up quickly =P


 * Oabe asks: Particle effects... how about lag? We all love lush particle effects, but it sucks when they take our frame rates down to nil.
 * %Scott_White> There are a number of questions about particle effect performance, so I'll try to address those.
 * %Scott_White> We haven't yet optimized the particle effects so they will be getting faster. Also theres a system coming to adjust what you see more based on your settings.
 * %Scott_White> Right now everyone pretty much sees all visual effects and it can be pretty processor and graphics intensive.
 * %Scott_White> Pretty sure I'll be spending a lot of time in the near future improving exactly that.


 * Haaken asks: Are we gonna see character mood stances / posture animations similar to EQ II, where you can choose a "mood" and have your character act accordingly in both walk and idle animation? (Sneaky / stealthy, shy, scared, proud etc etc)
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We do not have a SWG style "mood" stance change. We had considered trying to do this, but it would have severely limited the number of race/gender combinations we could have made for launch.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> Instead we focused on giving each of our race/genders more animations in general, and making their basic "personalities" significantly different from each other.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> MMO gamers come looking for a wide variety of experiences, of course. Some demand humor, some want serious drama, others want super aerobatic moves and others want realism.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> we tried to balance all of those things (and more), and provide as many diverse options for gamers as possible
 * %Russ_Cahalan> while not breaking the fun for any one group


 * Ravel asks: How do you combine effects with sound. Is that a team effort or done by one person per effect?
 * %Scott_White> Adding audio to effects is a team effort.
 * %Scott_White> We have a sequencer tool to combine visual effects and audio, as well as time the different visuals together.
 * %Scott_White> The audio dept has done some pretty amazing stuff with the audio in the game, effects and otherwise. It's really an underappreciated part of the game but sooo important and powerful.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> since there's limited time left, I am going to run down a few quick answers to some of the questions I see on the list:
 * %Scott_White> sounds good
 * %Russ_Cahalan> we have lie down (sleep) emotes already in game. We have sit on the ground already as well.  We are in the process of discussing sitting in chairs.


 * %Scott_White> Someone asked about vfx on flowers, when you see something like that it generally means something can be used. In this case that's likely a harvestable resource.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> we have limited face animation controls. Due to the amount of characters that we want on screen at any time, we limited these controls severely so it would not hamper performance in game for something that is usually subpixel
 * %Russ_Cahalan> We do not have cloaks, but we do have long robes
 * %Russ_Cahalan> there are currently no attacks that you can do while mounted
 * %Russ_Cahalan> your character will animate during crafting and gathering
 * %Scott_White> Someone asked about colorblind gamers. Yes we have that in mind, and at least a few of our team are colorblind as well. Different shape banners and symbols in addition to different colors, for instance.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> your character can be affected by explosions by getting knocked back, but it is up to the designer's discretion if the gameplay makes use of that (we have both kinds)
 * %Scott_White> Generally buffs will not have a lengthy or permanent visual effect.
 * %Russ_Cahalan> there are camera shakes in game. Some large monsters and other things make good use of this =)
 * %Scott_White> Yes, there are camera shakes. A number of larger monsters use camera shake in animation or combat, as well as some seriously big visuals such as rifts.
 * %Scott_White> Ditto russ.


 * %Abigale> Ok, folks... that's about all the time we have for today. These guys are pretty busy and have to get back to work :)