VictorKane

Hello everyone, as the Lead Animator within the DayZ Dev Team, I'm responsible for our team of animators and for the overall look and feel of all the player character animations, as well as animations of the infected. Most of the work of the animation team, as of now, relates to the switch to a new animation system that our player character is supposed to use. Our main task on the new animation system is to prepare a completely new animation graph (feel free to ask if you don't know what that is) and we're also there to correct all the character animations so that you feel more natural and "comfortable" while moving with your in-game character. Of course, we're also here to implement what our game design team needs in order to create the desired gameplay experience - that covers things like types of character movement, animations for interaction with the in-game environment, or interaction with things like ladders, cars, weapons or different kinds of obstacles. Long story short: everything that moves in DayZ, we've probably done some work on it. To help you a bit with what kind of questions to ask: our animation team is not directly creating any in-game models, so beyond animation, we're not really able to influence the overall art direction of the game, and we're also not doing the programming part of the animation system, so I won't be able to answer most of the questions related to the engine level implementation of our animations in-game. Other than that, I'll do my best to introduce you to what we animators do for DayZ, and I am looking forward to your questions. Cheers!

The animation is not final. It should be tweaked in upcoming patches :)

We will have to be very careful with this because istead of adding the realism we can make the gameplay very frustrating. Legs in pain should not be affected but broken leg most likely yes in some way. The injured players in it's worst form will have problems even using guns. And one thing is certain once players become injured their only goal will be to heal the character. But I really believe it will bring whole new aspect of gameplay :)

I see there are more topics in this thread. 1. We are working on the pistol animations right now. Very soon there will be one handed walk, run and sprint at least as long as you stay lowered. 2. Injured player or limping animations were removed because of problematic implementation. We are still designing and considering the injured player. 3. The military vs civil style. We are definitely not planning to go military way. DayZ is civil and always will be. Although some animations might feel a bit as trained soldier. They will always do since you don't want to see your player struggle with every weapon especcially after you have spent hundreds of hours in game. We are trying to stay somewhere in the middle. Civil who knows what each gun does.

I agree with this. But after this points I mentioned are fixed, you should be able to do that. btw, there wasn't any crouch sprint in 0.46, the character always switched to stand sprint.

This sounds like interesting discussion over here :) Okay, so I would like to bring some light why a what the hell... Actually after we introduced so called "0.46 controls", we realized it is not as we originaly intended. The main issue with 0.47 for most of the people is the fact we took away an option to go to a full speed by one key. This will be a less of a issue after we finetune and fix bugs which occured. If you are asking why we released WIP... well simply because often updates everyone is exiced about won't allow us to spend two or three weeks doing some changes. The crouch was never meant for long distance transitions. In real life it is really difficult to run in that position. Also crouch is supposed to be the stealth move. So it was just about the time to prefer walking, because you can now easily and very fast go to the stealth. As the DayZ player is not a trained soldier but a survivor (the character), the previous default aimed jog was changed to aimed walk so when you raise a gun you can precisely shoot but there is still an option to go faster. There are some known issues we want to be fixed soon. It is impossible to raise or lower a gun when sprinting. This adds a lot to the clunky feeling everyone is talking about. The 2xW for faster movement doesn't fit well. It is unconvenient to switch raised and lowered by spacebar. Some animations/speeds may feel needless now. There are missing some transitions, some animations need to be changed slightly. From what I see and read, there are good arguments on both sides so obviously it is not a completely bad move the 0.47 changes. Yes it may break some gamestyles and some custom controls presets, but it will support new playstyles and encourage others. We believe the overal upcoming changes in default controlls will be for better for everyone.

To create a static pose 5 minutes is more than enough. Problem with a new animation in DayZ is it's not just one static pose... To bring new way of holding a machete means creating bunch of new related animations. It is not it would take us a month or so... we could make that in few days. Unfortunately we are working on other things which have higher priority for the game right now. Once we have all basics in game, we will look in this kind of stuff, to make animations more diverse.

that is a bold statement :)

Glad to hear you like new running animations. More polishing to come... ;)

1,930,745 and counting, oh dear :D :D

Well, all I can say, we have this animation ready for a while. ;) Hopefuly it gets in game soon, so you can enjoy it along with other gestures :thumbsup:

I am really happy you like it guys. The swings and attacks should get polished a bit in upcoming days so they feel even better. The goal was to have different attacks for different weapons since in real life you perform different move with an axe, baseball bat or farming hoe. The new way two handed melee works is something you really need to get used to. The purpose of raised and lowered stance is actually as you say. Players should see if you are threat or not. We wanted to bring consistency with other weapons (guns). The actual bug is after you click left mouse button you won't get to the rised pose, spacebar is needed. There is also a chance we enable attacking from lowered stance if players will demand it, but then again raised stance will loose its purpose.

:D

Yes, the game has changed a lot indeed and will change in upcoming year. It is easy to loose a track when you see the game changing constantly, but comparing mod / early version of the game with current build... you immediately will notice how huge difference it is.

Graphic Artist use 3ds max and Animators use Motionbuilder. As mentioned above, the main problem you might face is the export.

That is a good one.

The left handed axe (and other melee weapons) is basically a placeholder now, that was the only way how to get two handed melee in alpha. One of next upcoming updates will include huge change to the two handed melee system. Unfortunately we have to do all relavant animations first before you see any of the changes in game. This will include new moves with two handed melee weapons, stances, attacks and most of all - it will be right handed. Also I'm pretty sure melee system in general will be further updated to be more and more advanced :)

Thanks! Just wait how they will look after the aplha :) We know about being not able switch a weapon while moving in crouch. We might add this in one of next updates. Prone is a problematic one, we can surely make that work, but would you be able in real life move in prone and take a gun from your back? ;) Lying down with hands on head sounds interesting. Pointing in a direction plus other gestures almost ready to add in game :) Opening of doors and ladder is something we definitely want to improve. Agreed!

Never say never :)

This is an injured player animation. Injured player is not implemented yet.

you should check this: also changing stances will be updated in one of the next patches, so the player should become more responsive

Well I might consider thriller at 2M milestone ;) ;) ;)