242 on 17/11/2008 at 18:35
Quote Posted by vurt
The animations are truly awful, the game is unplayable in third person because of how you'll look. It's a limitation with their motion engine i believe.
I believe it's the result of not using motion capture, AFAIK Bethesda never motion captured their animations. And vurt, if you consider FO3 animations "truly awful", what games have good or excellent animations in your opinion? You guys are quite picky.
june gloom on 17/11/2008 at 19:20
Bethesda's animations are notoriously bad; same with their character models, which in Oblivion's case look like someone had anal sex on a keyboard with Poser open.
Best animations I've seen yet? Valve, of course. Not to slobber Valve's knob (huaglhalughlaughulahglagh) but they put a lot of work into their character anims. I think they used technology either licensed from or similar to that Pixar uses.
vurt on 17/11/2008 at 19:28
Quote Posted by 242
I believe it's the result of not using motion capture, AFAIK Bethesda never motion captured their animations. And vurt, if you consider FO3 animations "truly awful", what games have good or excellent animations in your opinion? You guys are quite picky.
Most games has awful animations, but FO3 is really bad, especially your own character in third person (kinda funny how Bethesda said in an interview that Oblivion wasn't really playable in third person because they couldnt get the animations right and that they had fixed this with FO3 - yeah right..!).
I've been playing too much WoW probably which has some of the most fluid animations i've ever seen + characters doesnt hover above ground, it actualy looks like they're walking on the surfaces instead of above it, like they have weight.
I still think it's a limitation with their engine, it's like it cant do animation transactions properly, it's glitchy.
Quote:
which in Oblivion's case look like someone had anal sex on a keyboard with Poser open
+1, and GOD how i hate when characters in a game reminds me of Poser, that generic look can almost kill a game for me.
Jason Moyer on 17/11/2008 at 19:33
If it's the engine, it's something proprietary that Bethesda added to it, because the Firaxis games have no problems with animations that I can see.
june gloom on 17/11/2008 at 19:41
Quote Posted by vurt
+1, and GOD how i hate when characters in a game reminds me of Poser, that generic look can almost kill a game for me.
Invisible War had that exact same horrible bugeyed look that drove me insane. It's one of the reasons I can't play it anymore.
van HellSing on 17/11/2008 at 20:01
I started playing Fallout 3 just after I finished yet another Deus Ex runthrough, so that's probably why I completely don't get the bile towards the Fallout 3 animations. :p Also, didn't notice the sliding/hovering effect everyone's talking about - the animation seems nicely synced.
Maybe someone could post video examples of the bad animations or something?
Sulphur on 17/11/2008 at 20:15
Quote Posted by van HellSing
Also, didn't notice the sliding/hovering effect everyone's talking about - the animation seems nicely synced.
Maybe someone could post video examples of the bad animations or something?
From what I've noticed, it seems to happen when you're looking at NPCs a ways away from you.
It's like an LOD system of a sort for animation; the further something's away from you, the lesser the number of frames that are rendered for it by the engine. In my experience, once you're near enough the hovering/sliding resolves into the usual (full) animation cycle.
The animation isn't the best in the business, and the 3rd person view/avatar animation is rather clunky, I'll agree. But the rest is generally pretty damn acceptable.
Angel Dust on 17/11/2008 at 20:26
Fallout 3's animation isn't as shit as Bethesda's usual stuff but it is certainly sub-par for a AAA game. Gears of War has some of the best animation I've seen in a game. There is real weight to the characters movements.
Anyway I'm having fun with this game again now that I've entered the museum area.
heywood on 17/11/2008 at 22:42
Quote Posted by van HellSing
I started playing Fallout 3 just after I finished yet another Deus Ex runthrough, so that's probably why I completely don't get the bile towards the Fallout 3 animations. :p Also, didn't notice the sliding/hovering effect everyone's talking about - the animation seems nicely synced.
FWIW, I don't get it either. I don't play games like FO3 for the graphics.
And I don't really think it's fair to compare it to a Valve game. Half-Life 2 took 5 years and $40M to finish, and the game world is relatively small and linear. To put the same level of polish and production values in a game as big as FO3 would take so long that the engine tech would be out of date before the game got released.
242 on 17/11/2008 at 23:04
Quote Posted by heywood
I don't play games like FO3 for the graphics.
Besides, only few games have graphics better than those of FO3. Also, I don't get why everybody so praise animations of Half Life, they didn't seem incredibly fine to me. I may be wrong, but it seems to me they didn't use mo-cap either. It's usually clear when game uses mo-cap: SHs, Fahrenheit, Stalker, RE4. Just from top of my head.
