Wednesday 29 July 2009

Skeleton vs Bins: a walk on the smooth side

We've been dropping hints about Mark's new walk code for months, and we can finally show you what it actually does.



QA chappie Dave#6, who made this little movie, says:

In the old days, this poor skeleton would tackle these bins like a tank. Stopping to align himself, needing strict user supervision, pondering the lack of flesh on bones. Not especially like a tank then, but he felt like one.

These days, he's just pointed where he needs to go and he... just goes. Any obstacles he faces can be swiftly and most importantly, smoothly navigated. He's still concerned about the lack of flesh but feels less like a tank.

But really, this marks a big leap in visual quality and intuitive user accessibility. Less time spent navigating bins means more time thinking up clever stuff, and there's still more to come in this regard.

Sweet, huh? Combined with the rest of the animation improvements, this takes Moviestorm another huge leap forward from clunky old game style machinima to something much more natural and realistic.

3 comments:

Overman said...

So the navigation is automated, then? If so, will you be giving us the ability to turn that feature off for a movie? So say, perhaps, I wanted Mr. Skeleton to run a tighter slalom between the bins, or I wanted him to be a ghost and walk right through them. Perhaps this comes into play when laying down the initial path, but we'll still have the ability to edit the path like we do now? That would work nicely.

roland303 said...

Automated, no. You still plot the movement and if you need finer/tighter control, just add more waypoints - you still have full control over editing.

Shortly a system will be added to handle navigating other objects. We should have more details on this soon.

Unknown said...

Interesting, since the post says you point him where he needs to go and he just goes, and the rest implies there is no need to edit the walk path, hence leading to the belief that the puppet auto-navigates.

I do have to say, it looks a LOT smoother and more realistic, so that in itself is exciting, whether it's automated or not!