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  1. #41
    Mechagnome Indigenously Abled's Avatar
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    Quality post OP, thanks.
    Thanks for the ad-hominem; it supports your inability to support your argument.

  2. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by Scrysis View Post
    Does the OP have PROOF or veracity of what they're asserting? Because from where I sit, there nothing stopping them from re-creating animations on a new skeleton. And my animating experience tells me that you STILL have to create a new skeleton for a new models that are very different from each other and then bind the model to that skeleton.
    Phew.. where do I start with this?

    First of all, they wouldn't fully recreate a new animation that is exactly like the old one on a new rig. They'd probably make it unique.

    As for how animating a 3D rig is done? Generally, bones are established, the hierarchy of which is a very important feature in the case of the retargeting process. However, the skinning isn't actually uniquely tied to the bones, but to the mesh instead. It dictates how a mesh must deform when bones (of any kind) manipulate them. Of course, before the rig and mesh are connected, the bones need to be correctly placed, or that's gonna cause issues later, but the whole process is actually more fluid than it seems, so long as you have some knowledge of it. If you don't.. it can cause some weird and silly problems.

    Quote Originally Posted by Scrysis View Post
    Just to use the example stated, you CAN'T share skeletons between Sethrak and worgen females, and it should be dead obvious why. Worgen females DO NOT have that long neck or that super long tail. Both the long neck AND the tail are animated during the walk/run sequence. You can't animate what isn't there. So that means that the Sethrak use their own skeleton, not the female worgen one.
    In the case of the Sethrak, they probably do have their own rig/skeleton, but that doesn't have much to do with the animations. As mentioned before, something called "animation retargeting" exists. That means that rigs that share a similar bone hierarchy can share animations, and even those with different hierarchies can share them where similarities exist, or where the animator wishes to fix the tiny discrepancies manually.

    This makes you half-right. For the neck, head and the tail, they probably did animate that separately, like they did for the Saberon tails. Saberon also used the worgen animations (quite obviously), but the tails were animated uniquely. For the other parts, like the hands, they probably did not actually change the animations much if at all. This works because the retargeting process tells the separate bones that coincide to copy the "transform information" (rotation, movement or scaling; rotation in the case of animating characters)

    See it like this: You have a forearm that is twice as long for one model than the other. Problems, right? No. It just transfers the transform information to the other rig, so it tells both forearm stubs that on frame 15, it rotates by a degree or 5 in the y axis (side to side), or 10 in the z axis (up and down) rather than trying to make the two skeletons conform to each other.

    Quote Originally Posted by Scrysis View Post
    It's been known for a long time now that you can share skeletons among similar types. One would expect to use the dwarf skeleton for the black iron dwarves, for instance. I would consider it perfectly reasonable for the high mountain tauren to share a skeleton with the tauren, and the nightborne and void elves to share a skeleton with blood elves and night elves. But you're going to have to show me proof that you can do wild, cross-character skeleton sharing between wildly separate types before I believe it. And not with unreal engine either. I believe that Blizzard uses Maya for their animation purposes, so that might work.

    Until proof is presented, I'm taking this with a large grain of salt.
    First of all: watch this. Furthermore, Unreal Engine 4 is an Engine, Maya is a 3D modeling, unwrapping and animation package. They're not the same, but they can have some similar features where need be. Chances are that they built animation retargeting into their engine, however.

    Dark Iron Dwarves, Highmountain Tauren and Void Elves are for the most part literally the Dwarf, Tauren and Blood Elf meshes, too, so that's not only sharing a similar rig, but also most of the same 3D model.

    As for proof? First of all, Blizzard themselves said they can do animation retargeting now - they've made sure to mention it at Blizzcon.

    Secondly, the new class combat animations in Legion. You don't really think they animate it 100% the same way for every race and gender combination? Even Pandaren males and females have the DK 1H Frost animation where the character points a weapon like the Lich King does.

    All-in-all, your post isn't 100% wrong. For, say, Tauren to Night Elf, you would need changes to be made for, say, the head, as well as the leg bones to account for the different leg structure, but these are relatively minor things, especially compared to creating a whole new animation from scratch

  3. #43
    I noticed this too weeks back. One good testable option is, first, be a druid (in my case, Nelf). Then use Orb of the Sindorei to transform into a Belf. Use Wild Growth.

    Belfs have the new Wild Growth casting animations, but Belfs cannot be Druids so they will never "naturally" be casting WG. At first I thought it was a hint that Belves would be allowed to become Druids next expac, as I discovered it before Blizzcon. Then shortly came to the same conclusion that you did OP: That this is because their animations/skeletons are now shared.

  4. #44
    Quote Originally Posted by Steampunkette View Post
    ... no... you... No.

    Their models are designed from the ground up to fit the new skeleton. It's not the Nelf model moved over and slightly modified, it's a whole new model with the existing player rig, able to access existing animations but not necessarily being bound to them.

    It means we could get Ogres. Or Naga. Or whatever other race we dream of with -vastly- less overhead cost on the part of the developers. Less bottlenecking of animator's time, less time spent on it, in general, means faster turnaround time.

    They're not "Copy Pasted".
    He isn't that wrong.

    PC nightborne do use skeleton that's originally designed for nelves, they also share majority of (all?) animations. Model obv is different. At least that's how things are now in 735, they may give them a set of unique animations.

    I dunno why you don't like the phase "copypaste", we do a lot of copy-pasting w/ slight adjustments at work, there's nothing wrong w/ that and there's nothing wrong w/ calling it what it's to a certain extent.
    Last edited by ls-; 2017-12-10 at 08:40 PM.

  5. #45
    The Patient inico's Avatar
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    There are some huge misconceptions in this thread:
    -Models use similar skeletons, that's true. However they don't share most of their animations.
    In MoP blizzard created the exact same monk animations for all models, but they were baked into every single model file. If they used the same animation file for all races, there would be huge graphical bugs, since their skeleton size is different, and translation doesn't work the same way for humans as for gnomes. Even when you copy an animation from a model to another you have to manually adjust each translation.

    -Skeletons are not identical and don't have the same amount of bones. You can't just copy-paste an animation. It requires some extra manual work.

    -You can merge the animations of two different models into one with scripts and some manual adjustment. It's not that difficult. That's why the Sethrak model uses pandaren and worgen animations.

    -Allied races DO copy the same animations of older races. For example, if you open the void elf .skel file it references to the blood elf male model, and copies the exact same skeleton, attachments and animations. However they can use some of their own animations, such as the nightborne idle pose, and that's stored in a different .skel file.

    Quote Originally Posted by Steampunkette View Post
    The Zandalari and Nightborn do not use "The Nelf Skeleton" and the Dark Iron Dwarves don't use "The Dwarf Skeleton".
    No, but they do use the same animations, and the .skel file is the proof, since they take more than 250 animations from the night elf model.

  6. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by Steampunkette View Post
    All Player Character Races use one skeleton. Allied Races included.

    The Zandalari and Nightborn do not use "The Nelf Skeleton" and the Dark Iron Dwarves don't use "The Dwarf Skeleton".

    They all use the exact same single skeleton as Worgen and Goblins.

    Yeah. I know. CRAZY. But lemme show you how it works!

    Back in Cataclysm the Developers started working with an Adaptive Animation Model. That is, a rig or skeleton which can animate different parts independently of one another, and which can be stretched or altered in shape while still retaining functionality. This Skeleton was shared between Goblins and Worgen, though you wouldn't know it by looking at them.

    When MoP came along, the Developers had to create monk-specific class animations for every race, which was -super- time consuming and kind of highlighted how damned hard it is to make new classes while adding new races to the game every other expansion. The Worgen and Goblin were excluded from the animation-batching because of how much time it would take to put all of those animations on yet another skeleton.

    When WoD came out, however, with it's newly remodeled races, it wasn't just some random decision to make PCs look better: The Developers and Producers had decided to shrink their overall animation workload going forward by moving all races to the new Unified Player Skeleton. It took -boatloads- of work but it had to be done because you couldn't just slap the old models onto the new skeleton and have it work correctly, you needed to make models that specifically anchored to the appropriate points on the new skeleton.

    This is also why Goblins and Worgen didn't get model updates: They didn't -need- them. They could use them, sure, since they look kinda bad compared to the rest of the races, but their re-design wasn't needed to move forward with the Unified Player Skeleton since they were already on it.

    Then, with Legion's "Class Fantasy" focus, the Developers -further- lowered the need to design every new race's specific combat animations for the different class attacks and spells. Using the single skeleton and adaptive animation design, they created one "Charge" animation that all warriors share, regardless of race. One "Mongoose Bite". One everything. The amount of animation workload required to add even a single new race is now -massively- lower.

    This is why when you have a Worgen in the WoWhead model viewer you can view the Monk animations. This is why when you're playing a Demon Hunter in Court of Stars and get transformed into a Nightborn (Which did use the old Nelf Skeleton) the model got stuck whenever you used Blade Dance even though the "New" nelf can use Blade Dance.

    This is also why Nightborn had to be remodeled for Players to use. Because they're using the new Unified Player Skeleton. And yeah, they're currently using the Nelf Animations. But they don't -have- to.

    Check out this Sethrak from Battle for Azeroth.



    Notice anything about their weapon attacks? Those are Pandaren Male attacks, but that is clearly not the Pandaren Male "Skeleton".

    Notice anything about their walk animation? That's the Worgen Female walk, but that is clearly not the Worgen Female "Skeleton".

    It even uses the Pandaren Male Generic Casting animations! (Which will soon be depreciated outside of things like casting your Hearthstone or other non-class-specific spells)

    This is because all three models (Pandaren Male, Worgen Female, Sethrak) use the same Unified Skeleton.

    Blizzard now has the ability to mix and match animations pretty much at will. In any direction or order they like. They can make new races without having to spend weeks re-animating the class-attacks and class-spells. Even the new Caster Pose Animations are meant to offset the issue. Go load up a Void Elf Female in WoWhead's modelviewer and do the Shaman and Druid casting animations (she looks kinda great doing them!).

    This stuff could be the basis of a massive explosion of new potential player races because the effort required to put them into the game as NPCs can be directly turned around and made into the effort required to make them into playable races without having to go back to the drawing board for a redesign. It's also the best chance we have at a Dance Studio option, since they can now make a single new dance emote and allow any race to use it.

    And if that's not the coolest shit coming out of WoW, lately, I dunno what is.
    Nice find OP. Thanks!
    <inactive>

  7. #47
    Quote Originally Posted by inico View Post
    There are some huge misconceptions in this thread:
    -Models use similar skeletons, that's true. However they don't share most of their animations.
    In MoP blizzard created the exact same monk animations for all models, but they were baked into every single model file. If they used the same animation file for all races, there would be huge graphical bugs, since their skeleton size is different, and translation doesn't work the same way for humans as for gnomes. Even when you copy an animation from a model to another you have to manually adjust each translation.

    -Skeletons are not identical and don't have the same amount of bones. You can't just copy-paste an animation. It requires some extra manual work.

    -You can merge the animations of two different models into one with scripts and some manual adjustment. It's not that difficult. That's why the Sethrak model uses pandaren and worgen animations.

    -Allied races DO copy the same animations of older races. For example, if you open the void elf .skel file it references to the blood elf male model, and copies the exact same skeleton, attachments and animations. However they can use some of their own animations, such as the nightborne idle pose, and that's stored in a different .skel file.



    No, but they do use the same animations, and the .skel file is the proof, since they take more than 250 animations from the night elf model.
    Everything major in this post is correct, except for the continuation of the "Sethrak use Male Pandaren animations". They don't.


    The Male Pandaren never makes this pose in any of the attack animations.

    This pose appears to be the base special melee attack animation for the Sethrak, whereas the Mel pandaren's base special attack has them spin around once before they raise their weapon high and bring their weapon down, never spinning the weapon in the air.
    Last edited by Cradix; 2017-12-10 at 08:43 PM.

  8. #48
    The Patient inico's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Cradix View Post
    This pose appears to be the base special melee attack animation for the Sethrak, whereas the Mel pandaren's base special attack has them spin around once before they raise their weapon high and bring their weapon down, never spinning the weapon in the air.
    It has a lot of custom animations, though.
    Even if they didn't use the pandaren animation the point is that it's not difficult to merge animations and Blizzard has done it before with other creature models.

  9. #49
    Quote Originally Posted by inico View Post
    It has a lot of custom animations, though.
    Of course it does. However, those animations are Sethrak animations, not Pandaren or Worgen animations, as the OP claimed.

    Even if they didn't use the pandaren animation the point is that it's not difficult to merge animations and Blizzard has done it before with other creature models.
    Of course. But I'm just jumping in to say that Sethrak attck animations aren't Pandaren attaack animations.

    Expecially the snakebite one, because Pandaren do not bite their enemies by extending their neck like a snake.

  10. #50
    Quote Originally Posted by Cradix View Post
    Expecially the snakebite one, because Pandaren do not bite their enemies by extending their neck like a snake.
    Hey, don't you limit the Pandaren. If they wish to attack their foes by extending their necks and biting them, that's up to them, not you.

  11. #51
    High Overlord PrinceOfThaWest's Avatar
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    Thanks for the info, OP. This surely was an enjoyable and at the same time informative read. And I completely agree that this has nothing to do with laziness, but instead it boosts effectiveness and content production rate at the same time.

  12. #52
    Rofl about the dance studio part, people are still waiting for that useless piece of no value/ no gameplay improvement feature.

  13. #53
    Quote Originally Posted by Eggroll View Post
    I don't think it's cool at all. I am not a fan of the "new" casting animations. They are not new at all, they are just copy pasted from different classes or races.

    Like the spell animation on many classes that was originally the casting animation from that ele shaman talent casting form. I watched in horror when I saw a nelf druid rezzing someone with a worgen rezz animation.

    I am not a fan of streamlining things that determines the character and flavor of a class/race. Especially in art. If everything is the same, there's no more character/flavor
    to the class or the race. But these are the building blocks of the world - among other things. The distinct characteristics of classes and races.

    If they all look the same now, what is the point?

    And btw, if they are bragging with being lazy, they can at least lower the price of the next xpac by 10 Euro or something.
    It's not lazy, it's a perfect example of working smart, not hard!

  14. #54
    Quote Originally Posted by Yarathir View Post
    Phew.. where do I start with this?

    First of all, they wouldn't fully recreate a new animation that is exactly like the old one on a new rig. They'd probably make it unique.

    As for how animating a 3D rig is done? Generally, bones are established, the hierarchy of which is a very important feature in the case of the retargeting process. However, the skinning isn't actually uniquely tied to the bones, but to the mesh instead. It dictates how a mesh must deform when bones (of any kind) manipulate them. Of course, before the rig and mesh are connected, the bones need to be correctly placed, or that's gonna cause issues later, but the whole process is actually more fluid than it seems, so long as you have some knowledge of it. If you don't.. it can cause some weird and silly problems.


    In the case of the Sethrak, they probably do have their own rig/skeleton, but that doesn't have much to do with the animations. As mentioned before, something called "animation retargeting" exists. That means that rigs that share a similar bone hierarchy can share animations, and even those with different hierarchies can share them where similarities exist, or where the animator wishes to fix the tiny discrepancies manually.

    This makes you half-right. For the neck, head and the tail, they probably did animate that separately, like they did for the Saberon tails. Saberon also used the worgen animations (quite obviously), but the tails were animated uniquely. For the other parts, like the hands, they probably did not actually change the animations much if at all. This works because the retargeting process tells the separate bones that coincide to copy the "transform information" (rotation, movement or scaling; rotation in the case of animating characters)

    See it like this: You have a forearm that is twice as long for one model than the other. Problems, right? No. It just transfers the transform information to the other rig, so it tells both forearm stubs that on frame 15, it rotates by a degree or 5 in the y axis (side to side), or 10 in the z axis (up and down) rather than trying to make the two skeletons conform to each other.


    First of all: watch this. Furthermore, Unreal Engine 4 is an Engine, Maya is a 3D modeling, unwrapping and animation package. They're not the same, but they can have some similar features where need be. Chances are that they built animation retargeting into their engine, however.

    Dark Iron Dwarves, Highmountain Tauren and Void Elves are for the most part literally the Dwarf, Tauren and Blood Elf meshes, too, so that's not only sharing a similar rig, but also most of the same 3D model.

    As for proof? First of all, Blizzard themselves said they can do animation retargeting now - they've made sure to mention it at Blizzcon.

    Secondly, the new class combat animations in Legion. You don't really think they animate it 100% the same way for every race and gender combination? Even Pandaren males and females have the DK 1H Frost animation where the character points a weapon like the Lich King does.

    All-in-all, your post isn't 100% wrong. For, say, Tauren to Night Elf, you would need changes to be made for, say, the head, as well as the leg bones to account for the different leg structure, but these are relatively minor things, especially compared to creating a whole new animation from scratch
    Thanks. This is a bit more of what I wanted. Everything these days has made me more cynical, and some of the initial posts claiming that animators were getting lazy gets under my skin.

  15. #55
    Quote Originally Posted by Scrysis View Post
    Thanks. This is a bit more of what I wanted. Everything these days has made me more cynical, and some of the initial posts claiming that animators were getting lazy gets under my skin.
    Oh yeah, it's not just "hahahaha i transfer this older animation and it'll translate perfectly from wolf person to snake person." like some people like to proclaim. Work is still put into it, but it's manageable work. It merely means that they can take on multiple things at once rather than one animation update per raid tier or something like that.

    Nothing lazy about it, just efficient. Some people are silly and have major confirmation bias going on, don't mind them.

    If anything, this is a good thing, as it gives both us and Blizzard more freedom to add cool stuff, but negative nancies will always be negative.

  16. #56
    Reusing animations doesn't necessarily mean that they can't make new ones as well.

  17. #57
    Quote Originally Posted by shoc View Post
    It's not lazy, it's a perfect example of working smart, not hard!
    This. Making whole new animation sets for the sake of it, when there are existing ones that already do the job or partially do the job is not less lazy, it's inefficient and wastes time.

  18. #58
    The Lightbringer Steampunkette's Avatar
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    I want to reach out to thank Inico and Yarathir for correcting some of my misunderstandings, here.
    When you are accustomed to privilege, equality feels like injustice.

  19. #59
    Makes sense why there is that weird bug with the nightborn model shifting into a tauren or worgen, thanks OP

  20. #60
    My my, that's pretty damn interesting.

    Here's to a glorious future of all the races with all the animations! :P

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