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Last of US 2 frame per frame animation analysis by Motive senior tech animator (Read OP)

Stealth X Hawk

Stealth X Hawk

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,099
Memento said:
Guys, my friend is telling me that the facial animations on the enemies are pre-rendered. Is that even possible in-game?

I am not a tech guy so idk maybe I am misunderstanding what he is saying?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

The animation of the face is precalculated sure... Rendering takes place in real time. You can't prerender a rendering animation

Edit: basically your buddy is making up definitions of tech terms
 
jediyoshi

jediyoshi

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,142
Poutine said:
I've seen Blur studios make really good "fake" gameplay videos, wouldn't be the first time. That being said, I'm pretty sure it's real but HEAVILY scripted, won't make it in the final game. Ghost of tsushima was scripted as hell too.
Click to expand...
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If only we had other Naughty Dog presentations and games to compare to instead of completely unrelated teams and works.
 
Stealth X Hawk

Stealth X Hawk

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
1,099
Remember the scene where Nate gets dragged along the road and then stuck under a crashed jeep in 4? That was shown at E3 and people including me said "bullshit".... When I got the game it played exactly how the E3 demo played. Animation and everything. Naughty dog can do this. It just takes money and a patient publisher
 
Tusken77

Tusken77

Member
Oct 27, 2017
730
England, United Kingdom
Ha, nice twitter response from Michal Mach, a Naughty Dog animator. :)

pdKFL5e.png
 
nycgamer4ever

nycgamer4ever

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
861
Stealth X Hawk said:
I dunno what everyone is fighting about. Game looks great, ND has always had awesome animation and transitions. God of war didn't have them and I consider that the best game I've ever played. It's now on top of my old favorite Zelda oot. Im sure other games I'll play and love more than this won't have animation like this and I still won't care.

Sony shares tech between studios, im sure they gave ND a.. ton of money to do these things. Everyone arguing is just silly. With the right amount of money any studio can pull this off. Constantly screaming "naughty gods" is just silly...
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

This is far from the truth. You need resources, time and talent. Lots and lots ofotalrnt. Saying anyone can pull this of with just money is basically confirming you have no clue what goes into creating somehing like this.

This isnt the only AAA game with big budget available so why havent anyone else done it? Why is it ND are always above everyone else? Rockstar has close to 1,000 people making their games, takes 5-6 years and has plenty of funds and yet their animation isn't close to this. It's much harder than you can imagine, which is why industry peers are marveling on social media about their work.
 
Nintendo

Nintendo

Prophet of Regret
Member
Oct 27, 2017
13,388
Stealth X Hawk said:
Mediocre hack job? Really? So ND is the only studio in the world who makes good animation now? How was that animation different than 99% of games? Man you guys have gone nuts
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I wouldn't call TR animations a hack job. They're fine but also subpar compared to other AAA animations like Ubisoft games.
 
noyram23

noyram23

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
9,372
Stealth X Hawk said:
Remember the scene where Nate gets dragged along the road and then stuck under a crashed jeep in 4? That was shown at E3 and people including me said "bullshit".... When I got the game it played exactly how the E3 demo played. Animation and everything. Naughty dog can do this. It just takes money and a patient publisher
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
They don't even need to be that patient given how efficient ND is
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Memento said:
I see

Thanks
Click to expand...
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Just to add to that point (and others can correct me if I am mistaken) for further simplification- It's essentially a sophisticated "If", "then", "else" loop where context within the game world determines which animation (from an assortment of them stored within the RAM) to pick and render in response to the player action. Pretty much all of the animations in the game world is done this way- from your player movement to enemy reaction. Over time, a multitude of animations (hand crafted and motion captured) are now combined together with program generated "blending" frames acting as interstitial to respond to the surrounding game world and player actions. With time, evolution of technology and commensurate improvement in programming, these blending algorithms have been made to be more and more capable. TLOU II is the showcase for the pinnacle of said tech at this point in time.
 
nycgamer4ever

nycgamer4ever

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
861
Stealth X Hawk said:
Mediocre hack job? Really? So ND is the only studio in the world who makes good animation now? How was that animation different than 99% of games? Man you guys have gone nuts
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Wow you are smoking some good shit. Same as 99% of all other games. You will havea a hard time finding anyone who agrees with you there buddy. Tomb Raider animation isn't even as good as Ubisoft games. I mean like it looks good enough but it's not in the same class as ND. Just look at the crouch walk. It's terrible. Maybe they change that before release.
 
gamerman

gamerman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
219
For those that didn't watch the video by the Senior Tech Animator at Motive Studios. Here is a summary.

  • He says that this demo in Holy Grail for animation teams. Naughty Dog has made the animation seem completely seamless like it is one long piece of motion instead of separate mocapped animations. He believes it's a combination of motion capture, physics, and a lot of animation coverage to get it to be systemic versus scripted.
  • It is rumored that Naughty Dog is using a new animation system called motion matching, which is the newest approach to animation blending that involves using a motion database.
  • What motion matching does is that it matches poses that are the closest to each other so you can seamlessly blend between the two animation poses.
  • If the combat is fully systemic, it is very impressive. The fact that there is facial animation on the characters at all times, camera effects, and interruptible hit reactions, make it very believable.
  • Enemies have a ton of hit reactions and even react from different poses such as on their knees and can smashed into walls. It might be ragdoll but it looks too good to be so.
  • When enemies are hit, even their feet stay in the correct place based on their previous animation state. This would require a ton of hit reaction animations to provide coverage for every scenario. He says this is why people say the scene is canned, but he believes that Naughty Dog has achieved this feat.
  • One way the hit reactions could be done is if the game knows ahead of time that you will land an attack. There has to be a lot of lead up. The game carefully adjusts the enemy's pose so that it will move closer to the hit pose to make it easier to blend. Characters can even block your attacks, making it all the more impressive.
  • Enemies perfectly blend into their looking around animation state. This is evident from their feet position. The enemies don't have a uniform speed. Instead, the enemies seem animation driven taking actual steps in the game world. It appears to be systemic.
  • Enemies may be looking at different points of the environment to move between or the behavior may be scripted. If the enemy AI is scripted, it has to be interruptible at any point.
  • Scripting every encounter in the game in this fashion is a lot of work.
  • The transition from the initial stabbing animation sequence into gameplay is flawless. You would normally see popping when the physics initializes.
  • When Ellie puts away her flick knife in her pocket, it teleports to her back pocket indicating actual gameplay.
  • The soft cover system is similar to what Naughty Dog has done in the past. She automatically transitions into cover and out.
  • The vegetation doesn't simulate her interacting with every branch, but there is enough approximation to make it look convincing.
  • Ellie is able to go into a prone stance that allows her to crouch. This looks player controlled.
  • The gutting looks scripted.
  • There is a lot of cloth simulation on everything including Ellie's sleeves and jacket. This not only gives the characters life but helps cover the animation blends.
  • The enemies seem very aware of their environment. The enemies aren't doing typical path locomotion. The enemies transition into spots where they look around.
  • The way characters address each other by name is impressive and makes them feel like real people.
  • When Ellie turns around to run and gets shot, she grips her shoulder, walks backwards, and doesn't immediately turn just like a real person would.
  • Ellie flips the hammer to the claw side to bash in the heads of enemies.
  • When Ellie jumps over the wall, the machete clips through, indicating this is game play.
  • He believes when Ellie goes under the truck and gets pulled out, all the Enemy AI is scripted because it feels like a cut scene.
  • When Ellie shoots the lady ,when she is under the truck, it appears to be the lady is animated and not using ragdoll.
  • When Ellie picks up the bottle and throws it, it is systemic. When Ellie reaches for the bottle, it is magnetized into her hand. When it is played at normal speed, it looks completely natural.
  • When Ellie takes the hostage and the hostage gets shot, Ellie looks at the hostage before throwing the hostage aside.
  • There is a robust dodging system. It looks like Naughty Dog built a bunch of animation around it as evident from Ellie dodging and bumping into the car.
  • Normally you don't want to create narrow gaps because of limitations with physics capsules so it's impressive Ellie can move through narrow gaps which makes the world believeable.
  • If not scripted, the way the enemies line up outside the store is very impressive. Even more impressive is how they patrol and clear a space. They even check corners transitioning perfectly between animations.
  • In most games, if you get shot with an arrow, the arrow will fade away. When Ellie is shot, she actually pulls out the arrow. The facial animation is incredible when Ellie pulls out the arrow. He thinks when Ellie is shot, the arrow might be magnetized to certain points so that Ellie can actually grab it to pull it out.
  • When Ellie pulls out the dart from the dead guy, it is probably animated versus systemic.
  • The way Ellie puts on her backpack from a crouched position is impressive and he would not want to animate that.
  • When Ellie shoots the sign in the store, the letters fall down. That arrow could be shot anywhere so it would be interesting to see if it actually affects the environment.
  • While gruesome, he loves the particle effect on the exploded body.
  • The way the enemy falls over after the explosion; there might be a full explosion reaction system. You have to think about the enemy's current state, his direction, the direction of the explosion, and how far the explosion was. There are a lot of variables that you have to consider when you are capturing all the animation.
  • The enemy throwing Ellie over the counter could be done systemically using motion matching. You would look at the environment and do a bunch of environmental interactions similar to what Naughty Dog did with Joel in the first game.
  • When the hammer dude swings at Ellie his swing gets interrupted by the shelf so there would need a way to interrupt the animation or a lot of animation coverage for different scenarios.
  • The chopping head off sequence at the end is scripted.
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
gamerman said:
For those that didn't watch the video by the Senior Tech Animator at Motive Studios. Here is a summary.

  • He says that this demo in Holy Grail for animation teams. Naughty Dog has made the animation seem completely seamless like it is one long piece of motion instead of separate mocapped animations. He believes it's a combination of motion capture, physics, and a lot of animation coverage to get it to be systemic versus scripted.
  • It is rumored that Naughty Dog is using a new animation system called motion matching, which is the newest approach to animation blending that involves using a motion database.
  • What motion matching does is that it matches poses that are the closest to each other so you can seamlessly blend between the two animation poses.
  • If the combat is fully systemic, it is very impressive. The fact that there is facial animation on the characters at all times, camera effects, and interruptible hit reactions, make it very believable.
  • Enemies have a ton of hit reactions and even react from different poses such as on their knees and can smashed into walls. It might be ragdoll but it looks too good to be so.
  • When enemies are hit, even their feet stay in the correct place based on their previous animation state. This would require a ton of hit reaction animations to provide coverage for every scenario. He says this is why people say the scene is canned, but he believes that Naughty Dog has achieved this feat.
  • One way the hit reactions could be done is if the game knows ahead of time that you will land an attack. There has to be a lot of lead up. The game carefully adjusts the enemy's pose so that it will move closer to the hit pose to make it easier to blend. Characters can even block your attacks, making it all the more impressive.
  • Enemies perfectly blend into their looking around animation state. This is evident from their feet position. The enemies don't have a uniform speed. Instead, the enemies seem animation driven taking actual steps in the game world. It appears to be systemic.
  • Enemies may be looking at different points of the environment to move between or the behavior may be scripted. If the enemy AI is scripted, it has to be interruptible at any point.
  • Scripting every encounter in the game in this fashion is a lot of work.
  • The transition from the initial stabbing animation sequence into gameplay is flawless. You would normally see popping when the physics initializes.
  • When Ellie puts away her flick knife in her pocket, it teleports to her back pocket indicating actual gameplay.
  • The soft cover system is similar to what Naughty Dog has done in the past. She automatically transitions into cover and out.
  • The vegetation doesn't simulate her interacting with every branch, but there is enough approximation to make it look convincing.
  • Ellie is able to go into a prone stance that allows her to crouch. This looks player controlled.
  • The gutting looks scripted.
  • There is a lot of cloth simulation on everything including Ellie's sleeves and jacket. This not only gives the characters life but helps cover the animation blends.
  • The enemies seem very aware of their environment. The enemies aren't doing typical path locomotion. The enemies transition into spots where they look around.
  • The way characters address each other by name is impressive and makes them feel like real people.
  • When Ellie turns around to run and gets shot, she grips her shoulder, walks backwards, and doesn't immediately turn just like a real person would.
  • Ellie flips the hammer to the claw side to bash in the heads of enemies.
  • When Ellie jumps over the wall, the machete clips through, indicating this is game play.
  • He believes when Ellie goes under the truck and gets pulled out, all the Enemy AI is scripted because it feels like a cut scene.
  • When Ellie shoots the lady ,when she is under the truck, it appears to be the lady is animated and not using ragdoll.
  • When Ellie picks up the bottle and throws it, it is systemic. When Ellie reaches for the bottle, it is magnetized into her hand. When it is played at normal speed, it looks completely natural.
  • When Ellie takes the hostage and the hostage gets shot, Ellie looks at the hostage before throwing the hostage aside.
  • There is a robust dodging system. It looks like Naughty Dog built a bunch of animation around it as evident from Ellie dodging and bumping into the car.
  • Normally you don't want to create narrow gaps because of limitations with physics capsules so it's impressive Ellie can move through narrow gaps which makes the world believeable.
  • If not scripted, the way the enemies line up outside the store is very impressive. Even more impressive is how they patrol and clear a space. They even check corners transitioning perfectly between animations.
  • In most games, if you get shot with an arrow, the arrow will fade away. When Ellie is shot, she actually pulls out the arrow. The facial animation is incredible when Ellie pulls out the arrow. He thinks when Ellie is shot, the arrow might be magnetized to certain points so that Ellie can actually grab it to pull it out.
  • When Ellie pulls out the dart from the dead guy, it is probably animated versus systemic.
  • The way Ellie puts on her backpack from a crouched position is impressive and he would not want to animate that.
  • When Ellie shoots the sign in the store, the letters fall down. That arrow could be shot anywhere so it would be interesting to see if it actually affects the environment.
  • While gruesome, he loves the particle effect on the exploded body.
  • The way the enemy falls over after the explosion; there might be a full explosion reaction system. You have to think about the enemy's current state, his direction, the direction of the explosion, and how far the explosion was. There are a lot of variables that you have to consider when you are capturing all the animation.
  • The enemy throwing Ellie over the counter could be done systemically using motion matching. You would look at the environment and do a bunch of environmental interactions similar to what Naughty Dog did with Joel in the first game.
  • When the hammer dude swings at Ellie his swing gets interrupted by the shelf so there would need a way to interrupt the animation or a lot of animation coverage for different scenarios.
  • The chopping head off sequence at the end is scripted.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thank you for the detailed summary.
 

reKon

Member
Oct 25, 2017
13,773
gamerman said:
For those that didn't watch the video by the Senior Tech Animator at Motive Studios. Here is a summary.

  • He says that this demo in Holy Grail for animation teams. Naughty Dog has made the animation seem completely seamless like it is one long piece of motion instead of separate mocapped animations. He believes it's a combination of motion capture, physics, and a lot of animation coverage to get it to be systemic versus scripted.
  • It is rumored that Naughty Dog is using a new animation system called motion matching, which is the newest approach to animation blending that involves using a motion database.
  • What motion matching does is that it matches poses that are the closest to each other so you can seamlessly blend between the two animation poses.
  • If the combat is fully systemic, it is very impressive. The fact that there is facial animation on the characters at all times, camera effects, and interruptible hit reactions, make it very believable.
  • Enemies have a ton of hit reactions and even react from different poses such as on their knees and can smashed into walls. It might be ragdoll but it looks too good to be so.
  • When enemies are hit, even their feet stay in the correct place based on their previous animation state. This would require a ton of hit reaction animations to provide coverage for every scenario. He says this is why people say the scene is canned, but he believes that Naughty Dog has achieved this feat.
  • One way the hit reactions could be done is if the game knows ahead of time that you will land an attack. There has to be a lot of lead up. The game carefully adjusts the enemy's pose so that it will move closer to the hit pose to make it easier to blend. Characters can even block your attacks, making it all the more impressive.
  • Enemies perfectly blend into their looking around animation state. This is evident from their feet position. The enemies don't have a uniform speed. Instead, the enemies seem animation driven taking actual steps in the game world. It appears to be systemic.
  • Enemies may be looking at different points of the environment to move between or the behavior may be scripted. If the enemy AI is scripted, it has to be interruptible at any point.
  • Scripting every encounter in the game in this fashion is a lot of work.
  • The transition from the initial stabbing animation sequence into gameplay is flawless. You would normally see popping when the physics initializes.
  • When Ellie puts away her flick knife in her pocket, it teleports to her back pocket indicating actual gameplay.
  • The soft cover system is similar to what Naughty Dog has done in the past. She automatically transitions into cover and out.
  • The vegetation doesn't simulate her interacting with every branch, but there is enough approximation to make it look convincing.
  • Ellie is able to go into a prone stance that allows her to crouch. This looks player controlled.
  • The gutting looks scripted.
  • There is a lot of cloth simulation on everything including Ellie's sleeves and jacket. This not only gives the characters life but helps cover the animation blends.
  • The enemies seem very aware of their environment. The enemies aren't doing typical path locomotion. The enemies transition into spots where they look around.
  • The way characters address each other by name is impressive and makes them feel like real people.
  • When Ellie turns around to run and gets shot, she grips her shoulder, walks backwards, and doesn't immediately turn just like a real person would.
  • Ellie flips the hammer to the claw side to bash in the heads of enemies.
  • When Ellie jumps over the wall, the machete clips through, indicating this is game play.
  • He believes when Ellie goes under the truck and gets pulled out, all the Enemy AI is scripted because it feels like a cut scene.
  • When Ellie shoots the lady ,when she is under the truck, it appears to be the lady is animated and not using ragdoll.
  • When Ellie picks up the bottle and throws it, it is systemic. When Ellie reaches for the bottle, it is magnetized into her hand. When it is played at normal speed, it looks completely natural.
  • When Ellie takes the hostage and the hostage gets shot, Ellie looks at the hostage before throwing the hostage aside.
  • There is a robust dodging system. It looks like Naughty Dog built a bunch of animation around it as evident from Ellie dodging and bumping into the car.
  • Normally you don't want to create narrow gaps because of limitations with physics capsules so it's impressive Ellie can move through narrow gaps which makes the world believeable.
  • If not scripted, the way the enemies line up outside the store is very impressive. Even more impressive is how they patrol and clear a space. They even check corners transitioning perfectly between animations.
  • In most games, if you get shot with an arrow, the arrow will fade away. When Ellie is shot, she actually pulls out the arrow. The facial animation is incredible when Ellie pulls out the arrow. He thinks when Ellie is shot, the arrow might be magnetized to certain points so that Ellie can actually grab it to pull it out.
  • When Ellie pulls out the dart from the dead guy, it is probably animated versus systemic.
  • The way Ellie puts on her backpack from a crouched position is impressive and he would not want to animate that.
  • When Ellie shoots the sign in the store, the letters fall down. That arrow could be shot anywhere so it would be interesting to see if it actually affects the environment.
  • While gruesome, he loves the particle effect on the exploded body.
  • The way the enemy falls over after the explosion; there might be a full explosion reaction system. You have to think about the enemy's current state, his direction, the direction of the explosion, and how far the explosion was. There are a lot of variables that you have to consider when you are capturing all the animation.
  • The enemy throwing Ellie over the counter could be done systemically using motion matching. You would look at the environment and do a bunch of environmental interactions similar to what Naughty Dog did with Joel in the first game.
  • When the hammer dude swings at Ellie his swing gets interrupted by the shelf so there would need a way to interrupt the animation or a lot of animation coverage for different scenarios.
  • The chopping head off sequence at the end is scripted.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks for this
 

Mysterio79

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,159
The original TLOU reveal was hilariously faked in terms of AI and it didn't stop it from being a great game.

Now whether this game is faked or choreographed or whatever is irrelevant. I've played ND's games and I know to expect; great animation, graphics, story, but they are pretty weak in terms of AI, and character pathing and I'm certainly not expecting anything next level in that regard.
 
Equanimity

Equanimity

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,992
London
gamerman said:
For those that didn't watch the video by the Senior Tech Animator at Motive Studios. Here is a summary.

  • He says that this demo in Holy Grail for animation teams. Naughty Dog has made the animation seem completely seamless like it is one long piece of motion instead of separate mocapped animations. He believes it's a combination of motion capture, physics, and a lot of animation coverage to get it to be systemic versus scripted.
  • It is rumored that Naughty Dog is using a new animation system called motion matching, which is the newest approach to animation blending that involves using a motion database.
  • What motion matching does is that it matches poses that are the closest to each other so you can seamlessly blend between the two animation poses.
  • If the combat is fully systemic, it is very impressive. The fact that there is facial animation on the characters at all times, camera effects, and interruptible hit reactions, make it very believable.
  • Enemies have a ton of hit reactions and even react from different poses such as on their knees and can smashed into walls. It might be ragdoll but it looks too good to be so.
  • When enemies are hit, even their feet stay in the correct place based on their previous animation state. This would require a ton of hit reaction animations to provide coverage for every scenario. He says this is why people say the scene is canned, but he believes that Naughty Dog has achieved this feat.
  • One way the hit reactions could be done is if the game knows ahead of time that you will land an attack. There has to be a lot of lead up. The game carefully adjusts the enemy's pose so that it will move closer to the hit pose to make it easier to blend. Characters can even block your attacks, making it all the more impressive.
  • Enemies perfectly blend into their looking around animation state. This is evident from their feet position. The enemies don't have a uniform speed. Instead, the enemies seem animation driven taking actual steps in the game world. It appears to be systemic.
  • Enemies may be looking at different points of the environment to move between or the behavior may be scripted. If the enemy AI is scripted, it has to be interruptible at any point.
  • Scripting every encounter in the game in this fashion is a lot of work.
  • The transition from the initial stabbing animation sequence into gameplay is flawless. You would normally see popping when the physics initializes.
  • When Ellie puts away her flick knife in her pocket, it teleports to her back pocket indicating actual gameplay.
  • The soft cover system is similar to what Naughty Dog has done in the past. She automatically transitions into cover and out.
  • The vegetation doesn't simulate her interacting with every branch, but there is enough approximation to make it look convincing.
  • Ellie is able to go into a prone stance that allows her to crouch. This looks player controlled.
  • The gutting looks scripted.
  • There is a lot of cloth simulation on everything including Ellie's sleeves and jacket. This not only gives the characters life but helps cover the animation blends.
  • The enemies seem very aware of their environment. The enemies aren't doing typical path locomotion. The enemies transition into spots where they look around.
  • The way characters address each other by name is impressive and makes them feel like real people.
  • When Ellie turns around to run and gets shot, she grips her shoulder, walks backwards, and doesn't immediately turn just like a real person would.
  • Ellie flips the hammer to the claw side to bash in the heads of enemies.
  • When Ellie jumps over the wall, the machete clips through, indicating this is game play.
  • He believes when Ellie goes under the truck and gets pulled out, all the Enemy AI is scripted because it feels like a cut scene.
  • When Ellie shoots the lady ,when she is under the truck, it appears to be the lady is animated and not using ragdoll.
  • When Ellie picks up the bottle and throws it, it is systemic. When Ellie reaches for the bottle, it is magnetized into her hand. When it is played at normal speed, it looks completely natural.
  • When Ellie takes the hostage and the hostage gets shot, Ellie looks at the hostage before throwing the hostage aside.
  • There is a robust dodging system. It looks like Naughty Dog built a bunch of animation around it as evident from Ellie dodging and bumping into the car.
  • Normally you don't want to create narrow gaps because of limitations with physics capsules so it's impressive Ellie can move through narrow gaps which makes the world believeable.
  • If not scripted, the way the enemies line up outside the store is very impressive. Even more impressive is how they patrol and clear a space. They even check corners transitioning perfectly between animations.
  • In most games, if you get shot with an arrow, the arrow will fade away. When Ellie is shot, she actually pulls out the arrow. The facial animation is incredible when Ellie pulls out the arrow. He thinks when Ellie is shot, the arrow might be magnetized to certain points so that Ellie can actually grab it to pull it out.
  • When Ellie pulls out the dart from the dead guy, it is probably animated versus systemic.
  • The way Ellie puts on her backpack from a crouched position is impressive and he would not want to animate that.
  • When Ellie shoots the sign in the store, the letters fall down. That arrow could be shot anywhere so it would be interesting to see if it actually affects the environment.
  • While gruesome, he loves the particle effect on the exploded body.
  • The way the enemy falls over after the explosion; there might be a full explosion reaction system. You have to think about the enemy's current state, his direction, the direction of the explosion, and how far the explosion was. There are a lot of variables that you have to consider when you are capturing all the animation.
  • The enemy throwing Ellie over the counter could be done systemically using motion matching. You would look at the environment and do a bunch of environmental interactions similar to what Naughty Dog did with Joel in the first game.
  • When the hammer dude swings at Ellie his swing gets interrupted by the shelf so there would need a way to interrupt the animation or a lot of animation coverage for different scenarios.
  • The chopping head off sequence at the end is scripted.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Thanks for sharing.
 
Heckler456

Heckler456

Banned
Oct 25, 2017
5,256
Belgium
Saucer said:
The original TLOU reveal was hilariously faked in terms of AI and it didn't stop it from being a great game.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It wasn't "hilariously" faked. Most of the things people point towards as not being in the game are in fact in the game, as has been demonstrated previously. Sure, it would never play AS cinematically, but it's not as far off as people claim.



The shotgun begging animation was demonstrated in a GIF I saw a little while back, but you're just gonna have to take my word on that one, because I can't be bothered to look that one up.
 
quotethis

quotethis

Banned
Jan 21, 2018
594
nycgamer4ever said:
Wow you are smoking some good shit. Same as 99% of all other games. You will havea a hard time finding anyone who agrees with you there buddy. Tomb Raider animation isn't even as good as Ubisoft games. I mean like it looks good enough but it's not in the same class as ND. Just look at the crouch walk. It's terrible. Maybe they change that before release.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I mean, this is all just personal opinion of course. People are speaking as if their opinion of ND is somehow fact. Some aren't impressed at all. That being said, the only ones that I feel do better animations are usually some of the Ubisoft games and easily Rockstar. For me, a lot of it is less about animations in these games, and more about the attention to detail on things in the environments or something like bullet damage. All three do it really well most of the time.
 
Raylan

Raylan

Banned
Oct 27, 2017
715
quotethis said:
I mean, this is all just personal opinion of course. People are speaking as if their opinion of ND is somehow fact. Some aren't impressed at all. That being said, the only ones that I feel do better animations are usually some of the Ubisoft games and easily Rockstar. For me, a lot of it is less about animations in these games, and more about the attention to detail on things in the environments or something like bullet damage. All three do it really well most of the time.
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If you like great animation, you have to be impressed by TLOU2. And Ubisoft doing better animation than what we saw in TLOU2? LMAO okay....
 
DonB(qv.YankeeTeachings)

DonB(qv.YankeeTeachings)

Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,128
There are tons of great details in ND's animations, but there's one thing that always bothers me, and it's still present here, including on Ellie (really noticeable when she's crawling) - the jointing/attachment of arms to torso is weird. It's like the arms are too free floating in their sockets/too far from the torso. I'm not sure why this is, and I assume this isn't unique to ND. It may just stand out in an uncanny valley way due to how realistically each limb is moving by itself.
 
Voxels

Voxels

Member
Oct 27, 2017
528
See the thing is, is it responsive? Tlou was kinda clunky. When you have a lot of frames of animations, you sacrifice control
 
MegaSackman

MegaSackman

Member
Oct 27, 2017
17,767
Argentina
Heckler456 said:
It wasn't "hilariously" faked. Most of the things people point towards as not being in the game are in fact in the game, as has been demonstrated previously. Sure, it would never play AS cinematically, but it's not as far off as people claim.



The shotgun begging animation was demonstrated in a GIF I saw a little while back, but you're just gonna have to take my word on that one, because I can't be bothered to look that one up.
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I don't recall watching that animation in the PS3 version of the game but was 100% included in the remaster so, either it was always in the game or they added it in the remaster.
 

Mysterio79

Member
Oct 25, 2017
2,159
Heckler456 said:
It wasn't "hilariously" faked. Most of the things people point towards as not being in the game are in fact in the game, as has been demonstrated previously. Sure, it would never play AS cinematically, but it's not as far off as people claim.



The shotgun begging animation was demonstrated in a GIF I saw a little while back, but you're just gonna have to take my word on that one, because I can't be bothered to look that one up.
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This covers pretty much everything faked in TLOU

 
Memento

Memento

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
8,129
Voxels said:
See the thing is, is it responsive? Tlou was kinda clunky. When you have a lot of frames of animations, you sacrifice control
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Uncharted 4 is one of the most animation heavy games out there and it is one of the beat controlling TPS games out there and by far the most responsive ND game

It is also the current pinnacle of the industry in regards to animations so...
 
HardRojo

HardRojo

One Winged Slayer
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,157
Peru
starfox said:
This is too damn funny... just look at this mediocre hack job on animation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CxnHUduelKA&t=1m37s

Crystal Dynamics, nothing more to add.
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Holy shit I didn't watch anything from SotTR since I don't care about as I found the reboot lacking in several aspects, but this really puts in perspective how far ahead of the game Naughty Dog is, like, I look at that TR video and it seems like we're talking about 2 games that are more than one generation apart.
 
The GOAT

The GOAT

Member
Nov 2, 2017
856
Interesting watch. Some of it seems to good to be true, but I trust ND will have 85-90% of what was shown. There had to be a reason it wasn't a live demo after all. I'm sure ND polished the shit out of it, and cleaned up animation here and there, and sprinkled in some extra cool shit on top.
 
DangerMouse

DangerMouse

Member
Oct 25, 2017
22,402
HardRojo said:
Holy shit I didn't watch anything from SotTR since I don't care about as I found the reboot lacking in several aspects, but this really puts in perspective how far ahead of the game Naughty Dog is, like, I look at that TR video and it seems like we're talking about 2 games that are more than one generation apart.
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Yeah. (I like the reboot Tomb Raider games so far)
 
Equanimity

Equanimity

Member
Oct 27, 2017
14,992
London
The GOAT said:
Interesting watch. Some of it seems to good to be true, but I trust ND will have 85-90% of what was shown. There had to be a reason it wasn't a live demo after all. I'm sure ND polished the shit out of it, and cleaned up animation here and there, and sprinkled in some extra cool shit on top.
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It was demoed live to the press.
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
This narrative of the trailer being faked needs to rectified immediately.

Here's the "E3 Highlights" from EasyAllies. Please go to the time mark of 1:10:00 to learn that the demo was being played by a real person live as evidenced by one of the EasyAllies contributors (Huber) sitting next to him:

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/272726877
 
nycgamer4ever

nycgamer4ever

Banned
Oct 30, 2017
861
quotethis said:
I mean, this is all just personal opinion of course. People are speaking as if their opinion of ND is somehow fact. Some aren't impressed at all. That being said, the only ones that I feel do better animations are usually some of the Ubisoft games and easily Rockstar. For me, a lot of it is less about animations in these games, and more about the attention to detail on things in the environments or something like bullet damage. All three do it really well most of the time.
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Having an opinion of a developer is one thing. Those opinion can differ. But the games are there for us to see and play. While there are many deverlopers that hold there own, two of which you mentioned, it's pretty clear ND are a step above . I totally agree with you about the attention to details in the environmental and bullet damage. What is particular impressive is how the models in the game react and intereact with the surroundings and how everything is just seamless or so it seems to the naked eye
 
Voxels

Voxels

Member
Oct 27, 2017
528
Memento said:
Uncharted 4 is one of the most animation heavy games out there and it is one of the beat controlling TPS games out there and by far the most responsive ND game

It is also the current pinnacle of the industry in regards to animations so...
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It is not the in the league of ND most responsive games. The animations creates a heft which interferes with responsiveness. And TLOU falls even further down this hole. Difference is TLOU is a slower paced game which does not require snappy controls.
 
dragonbane

dragonbane

Member
Oct 26, 2017
4,587
Germany
Most of it is legit imo with maybe some minor things being scripted for that specific moment like in the original TLoU reveal to make it seem more cinematic. The entire rest is simply heavily staged/rehearsed to have a near perfect demo of all the systems, specifically avoiding situations where it can break
 
Laughing Banana

Laughing Banana

Member
Oct 27, 2017
11,525
Bandung Indonesia
Stealth X Hawk said:
Remember the scene where Nate gets dragged along the road and then stuck under a crashed jeep in 4? That was shown at E3 and people including me said "bullshit".... When I got the game it played exactly how the E3 demo played. Animation and everything. Naughty dog can do this. It just takes money and a patient publisher
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Well, those uncharted 4 scenes was actually the very definition of scripted sequence of events, you know....
 
Salamande

Salamande

Member
Oct 25, 2017
526
A primer on motion matching, the technique that Naughty Dog seems to be using here. (Scrub to 5:50 to skip the background info.) The part around 20:40 with the stumbling and hit animation blending is especially impressive.

 
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