Something I’m finding quite limiting is a lack of a decent skeletal mesh to work with. At the end of the day, most games use similar animations (whether it’s a walk/run/crouch cycle, or a melee attack, etc.)
I’m thinking that maybe it might be really beneficial if there was a community made skeletal mesh for prototyping game ideas / mechanics with a number of animation presets. The example content character just doesn’t cut it.
Unfortunately, It’s not something I have the understanding to provide, but I thought maybe just starting a discussion on this might bring the idea forward for those who could contribute?
The idea would be that we would make a list of animations for a humanoid character that would allow for quicker prototyping for certain mechanics that might require socket position information to properly function. With the simple skeletal mesh provided in the content examples, I’m sure it would be an awesome resource for everyone if we just had a library of walk, run, crouch, prone, shoot, melee, jump, etc. animations to play with.
I know some of these animations already exist, but one package with everything in it and some additional requested animations would be excellent.
nice idea but i doubt it will happen, the base content is there to get you started and you can migrate content from the demo game as well though i do know that each demo might/does use a different skeleton, the so called small list of anims you give is deceiving as in most cases would need adjusting for each and every weapon.
the other side is that each 3d program does character rigs differently eg bone axis , this is why its sometime hard to port rigs/anim from one program to another.
it’s unfortunate that we don’t have the range of anims that came with UDK but even they where not enough for some people.
the bottom line would be to get someone to create you a rig and then try and use the online mo-cap content for the anims that you need
I don’t think the list is really that long. While ideally, you’d be looking for hundreds of animations for a final product… When prototyping a mechanic, it’s not really about the amount or quality of the animations but just having a very basic version of certain actions that can better illustrate a mechanic or feature.
For example, a simple punch animation could also be re-purposed as a melee weapon attack. It doesn’t have to be pretty.
Naturally, it’s quite a lot to ask for someone to just provide this amount of work, although I think if anyone wanted to provide it the prototyping process would be a lot easier. As it currently stands I’m not really in a position to bring on additional members to my (very early_ project, and I’m sure that could be said for a lot of other projects too. Wishful thinking perhaps, but maybe opening a discussion on the subject might catch the attention of an animator/rigger who would be willing to do something along these lines. If not now, I’m sure we’ll see something like this on the marketplace when that goes live.