mabye to save money no body buys games for cool hair you fil me

What's most wrong looking to me is the walking. How the feet slide and there is no sense of weight or sense of their surroundings.

They just have this one walking animation and that's it.
They need weight shifting, different types of foot work, not have feet sliding, different speeds. Changing animations and speed depending on where they are and the situation.


Idle stances look very robotic. There's always this characters just swaying back and forth. Who does that???

They need to take some footage of real idle animations, have many and have them change constantly. This could also depend on the situation, location and state of the character.

Facial animations need to be done a lot better. Implement some kind of reaction system to it also, so it's dynamic instead of pre set.

Have characters face the opponent, unless they are running away or something. Even so, they may move away while looking back.

The fighters should look at each other, and whatever else catches their attention.

There need to be start up animations and transitions for everything, so you don't have that all of a sudden walk, or how you have to attack and wait to recover to do something else. In real life you don't have these restrictions.

Muscle and fat needs to jiggle

There should be cloth simulators, instead of rigged costumes that move like the rest of the body.

Loss of balance, fatigue...

Slight differences in the same animations when repeated.


When the opponent falls on the floor, they should do something to recover, not lay there like a doll.

There should be some anticipation animations like flinching or automatic blocking. Even if it doesn't actually block, have that sort of reaction instead of the character just standing there like they are blind.

Loop animations need variation. For something like a hold, have it so it doesn't last long enough that you need a loop.


Have several fight stances for normal stance and if they do go back to the same one, have it be a little different.


A special animation program can be used for these things, something like endorphin.


Don't have the ability to cancel from one step to another causing feet to slip. Have transition animations for this, timing restriction and buffering.

For hair, a simulator can be used, something like cloth. They can't make all the strands though because that would take up too much memory. Poly strips would work fine.

Realistic collisions, arms and legs colliding etc. again a program like endorphin can simulate this.

For any animation, there could be personality or mental state alterations.

Pretty much all these things can be done with a dynamic simulation system.

i think we're all still waiting on Sony to deliver those results they promised us in their "Mental Wealth" video.

http://www.gametrailers.com/player/usermovies/35773.html

Pred, you stated that creators can get the water down but not the hair? I have a perfect example for that. Raw vs. Smackdown games. I mean, they have everything good looking and yet when you look at the hair... it's like... not hair at all.

I guess environmental issues are more important than the acutal human. Okay, when people start to have block heads, a triangular body and arms and legs that are nothing but perfect round circles we will worry about human features. But other than that, we'll never get hair like Fabio's... or... WWE's Edge (Before he cut it)

MUFFINS!

actual hair simulation is very expensive on ram.

It's much faster to use polygons (poly strips) with hair texture on them.

Water can be faked in a similar way by having animated texture maps, and a jiggle effect on the water, which is a polygon sheet. The jiggle can be controlled by a low number of particles that act like bones to deform the surface. Similar to cloth simulation but not as complex because it doesn't have to calculate the collision with the body and it self.

Realistic water can also be done with particles, but that takes up too much ram like actual hair.

On the 3D models I make, the computer will be running fast but as soon as I try to do hair, it slows to a crawl almost.

I agree with you 100%.They should try their hardest to make the clothes in the game more realistic.The characters should also have facial expressions too.In Mortal Kombat if you are continually stabbed,cut,or sliced with a sword do the clothes have any damage...NO.Should their clothes get kind of dirty and torn up...YES.I'm not saying to show any nudity ,but at least make it some a bit more real than ridiculous.We were all amused about the animalities,ridiculous fatalities etc. but we need something new.

In MKA when Scorpion talks his mask just vibrates or doesn't move at all.They should do something about that.If the mask is made out of leather or cloth then make it look like that.Make his mouth move instead of vibrating the mask.Facial expressions are important too.While fighting someone Midway should make it look more painful by making the character look like he can feel all of the pain.The cuts, the bruises ,everything.

If the character is stabbed make his hands go to his stomach or wherever it is where he/she got stabbed.If the character is whacked hard with something on his face make him/her hold his head maybe for 1 second.I
I personally think all of these quialities in a game are very important.

The robotic look to mo-cap is caused because it is only to make the characters' movements realistic. It is still not designed to match the paces or movement distance of the mocap actor most of the time.

So if you get mocap from a guy who's walking, the animators will change the actual movement of the actor to make it suit the gameplay to their liking. That's why you can see the MK characters taking normal steps yet they walk across the arena in like 2 seconds.

Get it?

It's cuz the animators mess with the motion capture to fit the gameplay better and thats how we get that fake look or robotic look of the movements.

Also there's less fluid movement when having to change between different mocaps. So you get the guy doing the stance, then later you get him throwing a punch. Since he didn't throw the punch right then and there while he was standing, it'll be hard to get it to look like he did. The different captures won't match well.

This happens often in MK with the different stances. When characters get hit, they all do the same movements (head goes back with arms and legs in the same position), but they all have different stances so the hit-reaction movement won't match with all the different stances cuz one instance they're in their unique stance and the next they're in this generic position with their head back, both feet on the floor in the same position, etc.

What would solve this problem imo would be to make a program that gives the characters models a certain amount of frames to use for automatically "filling in" the missing positions from one motion-captured position to another.

10 blu ray discs are not enough to register 10+ movement for the same exact action,repeated in different ways.

in real life,is true,even tough we make the same thing we do it in different ways(inclinations of arms,head,or breath,etc) but..do we really thinks about it?

i don't waste my time on looking on this trivial elements that don't affect my personal life nor...the gameplay.

the motion capture s a good thing,but you have to lose entire months of work(or years) ONLY on Motion Captue to make this happens.

and BTW who really cares if there aimations for the same thing?

i suggest to concentrate more on characters and their moves,the gameplay and stages...this is the most impotant thing.
look at Doa4 actualy it's the best fighting game.

Actually virtua fighte 5 is. DOA4 has too many exploits with glitches. Not the best fighting game.

Bleed is right about the things like movement and weight distribution etc. also as QueenSindel(TheBitch) said, some of the animation is "tweaked" to fit the style of the game. For instance exaggerating a jump to make it look more super human.

But I also think it's more due to the fact that the MK team don't have the experience that other companies have, like namco for instance.

For me, MK's 3D animation always seems to be one generation behind what all the other fighters are doing.

Compare the animation in a game like SoulCalibur, Tekken, VF, or even DOA of the same era. Their animations are alot smoother, there are less of the stilted movements and most animations seem to merge seemlessly into another.

Maybe it's money, experience or even time constraints but I think if you had the namco animation team behind an MK game, it would be quite a sight to behold.