Scythe Animation preview

Awesome! Criticism: [Spoiler]

Ideas: [Spoiler]

By the Lion King parody I suggest to consider idle animations where the Scythe looks watchful and prepared (in contrast to the other animations where it's slacking off on duty). The source is linked so if you can make use of it, feel free.

Animations are awesome but here are a couple of problems:
Scythes have particular weapon range associated with current "jab" animation.
By making a real use of its polearm this forces for the range of the unit to be extended. Thus affecting balance.
"special animation" looks a bit silly imho.

Somebody else tried to take on scythe animation in the past:

quote: Scythes have particular weapon range associated with current "jab" animation.

Scythe does have a weapon range, but it is not tied to the animation. The actual weapon is an invisible laser, and that's why you can sometimes miss because it will clip the closest target first. This laser is secretly fired from its eyes.

Having visually but not "physically" different-range animations against different-distance targets within the weapon range would be *cool*.

Current Scythe attack animation probably does almost the maximum possible range, too; two-handed stabs would likely be used for closer range.

In general: Awesome work, it's these little things that breathe (robot) life into a game :D

A few thoughts about some of them:

quote: https://gyazo.com/d670028f6bbbb2fd4c7607f878e899e7 Show off

It looks slightly clunky (could be more smooth), but I have no idea how hard that is. Might also be the gif.

quote: Idle damaged https://gyazo.com/5404ef64335aeb6f1db35ce27044923d https://gyazo.com/4d0718c8ed459a91aa458582c51ef2dc

Imagining a squad of damaged scythes... So much scurrying, lol. I'd probably tone down the entire animation amplitude by about 50-70% so it doesn't feel like they're bowing before everyone :D

Also keep in mind that they are robots (the size of 4 story building), so heavy breathing isn't exactly on their list of things to do when damaged ;)

quote: https://gyazo.com/2fd5bdf71d13979c5a3131df8ba509aa Cut-stab-slashx3

He's sliding around his left hand an awful lot :D
What I dislike the most here (and again, maybe it's the gif) is that it doesn't look... strong. The current animation is overdoing it with the warp-speed blade cut, but you need to get some momentum behind that blade to slice anything with it imo (unless somebody makes it look like a particle blade thing and not a piece of metal :P).

quote: Walking (Another note: I suck at making things walks.)

The main problem is that walking generally doesn't work by moving your legs back and forth on the same trajectory. It's the cheap and easy way, and with some rocking the model side to side it's credible (see shield bots I believe), but you can get so much more out of it by actually raising feet slightly higher while moving them forward.

PS: TIL that autoparsing/-linking urls requires a space in front of them.

quote: This laser is secretly fired from its eyes.

So scythes are superman....men?


[Spoiler]

Could it be possible to bury a scythe so it can attack but not be attacked back? :P

Honestly I'm loving the comments. :D

TheEloIsALie

to be said, there is always space for improvement even in the best professional practically works.
Basically it has its ease and hards in some sides, Its hard to work with some 'limits' the scythe has but every steps gets you closer I guess. :D

you're right in both sides, gif is bit eh... and in same time it needs some more smoothing for the "showoff".

as for walking, thats my very first attempt to make something walks.
when I rework it you will notice a much improved version(hopefully.)

they dont bow down upon 70-50% but they do bow-down under 50% down to 0%.
Maybe I should change that percentage to 50-25% and 25-0%.

If they get damaged around 75-50% they start holding their chest and 'breathe'.

I wouldnt call it breathe, and to be honest I dont want it 'breathing', its a robot, they dont breathe, its just placeholder till I think of better fittable animation where shows they are Injured(Open for suggestions on that one.)

for the cut stab slash3x I think I'm going to rework it Completely. -_- not satsfied with it but its a concept.

Sprung

Loving the image. xD

on side note... I really should find a way to make gif plays on forum and not use 'links' anymore, Not sure if thats possible if anyone can confirm and tells how would be highly appreciated. x)

Flipstip

Thank you that was helpful for future uses.

Updated animations:





will redit it into the main comment.(@Sprung thanks for your suggestion, made 2 out of them.)

That looks really sweet!

Flipstip you're right about that, however you need to consider 2 things!

This is stealthy ninja stepping toe-on-toe all sneaky, he needs to keep 'low profile' :D thus making his 'body motion' much less than any other unit.

another thing to consider, anarchid demanded the unit to be running/jogging, but not in extremelly fast as in olympics style.(my first rework attempt the animation of the foot was kicking superly strong.)

as for the feet-touch-ground thing, bare with me while I explain how blender works and what kind of limits I'm facing.

if you have ever looked at blender animation tutorials OR Gmod(from steam) where u animate ragdolls, the way you animate is by key frames.

meaning each 2 steps I would ask it to do, the programme itself 'predicts' how the movement should go in between those 2 steps.

how to make it looks more realistic? more key-frames of course. but; we're dealing with trasnferring an animation from 3D programme into an engine.
I dont want the engine risk going goofy with the animations because its too 'complex' if you know what I'm throwing at.

If you're familiar with either coding or any kind of 3D model/animations you would know anything could possibly go wrong. -_-

so for that's sake just trying to keep it decent-simple and not too much time consuming to do other animations and hopefully more units in future.

Edit: even with having 'more key-frames' you wont face any less of troubles, I had spent about 1 hour to fix one keyframe and decided to say fuck it, delete from the point the error starts and do better/different all over from there.