New animation ideas.

Some may have noticed that I've been giving a little bit of new emote animation love to the dragons but I don't want to leave out the bipeds. So I'm asking if any of you have requests.

A couple of things to keep in mind. Although bipeds are easier to animate than dragons, new animations have to be duplicated several times across race and gender so the simpler the better. Specific racial emotes can be made but for this pass I would like to focus on general emotes that all biped races can use unless a racial emote is very strongly desired. We are probably not going to make as many for bipeds right now because of the duplication thing and that dragons have not had many since launch, not including the player modified ones that were put in.

Note: No. "slaydragon" will not be accepted as an idea. :p

hmmmmm - how about a 'blowkiss' emote? seriously.......

i think a play dead... maybe fix the saris emote /excite ... a curtsy for the females.. a bow for the males.. a new sit for the saris and ssilk... if at all possible a nap sit for the saris where they curl up... hmmm a pounce emote!

I heard a bi-ped last night wish out loud for a /bow emote... but considering the Dragon thread, you probably have that in mind already. I'll second it, though. ;)

oh oh i thought of more xD how bout a blush emote dragons and bipeds.. and a dragon rage emote.. you know how dragons get xD.. and maybe a beg emote for hatchlings and other dragons for hoard xD for the pounce emote if u do that it would be cute if the dragon puts one foot forward then the other.. then raises hind in the air tail wiggles and a slight hop forward xD *goes to test on blight*

I'll put my vote in for /bow as well, especially if you need to do different animation sequences for all biped models and need to limit the number somehow.

Maybe some sort of /salute, but more in an Istarian style i.e. closed fist across heart and bend forward (think movie-style with soldiers in armor, rather than modern-day army salute).

Pity there can't be a hand-shake double-emote between two toons, that would be cool :)

Floodgates, open.

I'd love to see bow/curtsy; salute and blowing a kiss sound like neat ideas too.
Can we lie down? Also, a few dance moves - like maybe a hula step sideways and back, and a disco spin & point in the air could be fun (go herman!). :-)

Question: There are many thing we can adjust already like textures, and the UI, but can anyone edit the emotes or do you need dev tools to do it?

If it IS possible I would love to try and help the bow and salute ones be made.

If not, ( as I suspect ) then I look forward to your fine efforts!

You would need 3 things. A copy of Maya, version 6 specifically. The compatible Granny exporter plug-in. And various raw models for the different race types that don't share skeletons. So pretty hard to get all three.

I did a bit of experimenting a couple of weeks ago on just playing with the model for the gnome and I found that it is harder for me to convincingly animate a humanoid than a dragon. We are programmed to know how someone is supposed to move and it is difficult to get that just right. If only I had a mocap rig!

I would like to bump this up again to see if any additional ideas can be gained. We recently brought on another artist and this would be a project that I would like for him to take on. But this time, I am all for racial specific emotes. So as someone quipped above, open those floodgates.

Thanks!

A random thought that popped into my head a few days ago. Much like how dragons now have an alternate sitting animation- can the saris have an alternate running animation? Instead of on two legs, how about running on all fours like the werewolves? Always wonder how that would look. ^^

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Originally Posted by Xanthia

A random thought that popped into my head a few days ago. Much like how dragons now have an alternate sitting animation- can the saris have an alternate running animation? Instead of on two legs, how about running on all fours like the werewolves? Always wonder how that would look. ^^

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Does not work so well with weapons and shields in paw. Plus they are more bipedal in form and not proportioned for that kind of running/walking. Might be able to do a more cat like alternate sitting position but I doubt that running would work.

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Originally Posted by Xanthia

A random thought that popped into my head a few days ago. Much like how dragons now have an alternate sitting animation- can the saris have an alternate running animation? Instead of on two legs, how about running on all fours like the werewolves? Always wonder how that would look. ^^

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Maybe a nice idea for your comics, Xanthia. :D

I have a little idea, but it doesn't need new stuff (and not related to emotes). Why not adding the eating animation when the character... simply eats food instead of the lousy default punch/claw attack animation? The files already exist, they seems to be properly set up in the client, so it seems it only needs some work on the server to command it. Even if the animation wasn't perfect at this time, it would still look better than a punch.

Maybe adding the biped drinking animation for potions using. I'm not sure this is easily doable though.

Oh, and for emotes, if you could poke Steelclaw (or anyone relevant at Virtrium) to make chained animations (using several animation files) possible in the client that would be just great. :cool:

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Originally Posted by Solitaire

Does not work so well with weapons and shields in paw.

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Joking- So? That doesn't prevent me from using /drink to stab myself in the face. XD

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Originally Posted by Solitaire

Plus they are more bipedal in form and not proportioned for that kind of running/walking. Might be able to do a more cat like alternate sitting position but I doubt that running would work.

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Yea I figured that would be the case- but I still wanted to put it out there to hear it officially. Thanks.

How about some sort of "head butt" emote for bi-peds with horns (e.g., fiends and satyrs).

Another idea would be an emote (/whew ... or some such) whereby the biped would wipe their brow (I can really see a dwarf miner doing this after a hard day's work) with either an hand/paw or perhaps a kerchief.
(In retrospect, however, not sure if this could be done if a weapon or tool was being wielded.)

Remember the old cartoons with Wile E. Coyote et. al.? Remember how they ran in place in a blur of motion before zipping off? Don't know if that is possible, but it might be cool if it were :eek:

Oh well, just a few random thoughts off the top of my head.

agua the play dead should be simple to add, since I made a little mod that has a play dead emote. it just cycles the death animation.

also a request to solitare if and when you do an update to the emotes can you add an option to have two versions of each emote. in my emote mod i made i added a copy of all emotes for all races that have no emote text linked to them. example is in my emote pack if a dragon does /xxshake the dragon will do the the shake animation but no deafualt emote text will be disaplyed. this way the player can create a hotkey that can be like:
/xxshake
/emote shakes the slober of his/her scales


this will let player create thier own custom text for all emote aniamtions if they want and others will be able to see the animation and see thier personal emote text.