Forum #6: 3D Animation Wolf

 

    One of the most important aspects in animation, is going to be fluidity. You want your character to move with ease when running, jumping, attacking, etc.

    Arcs will be important as well. Whenever your character moves, there's an arc involved. Be it the arm moving which is connected to a joint, the character may jump and there's an arc from where he begins to where he ends, or even if your character is throwing something like a ball, there's an arc where the ball goes from the player's throw to the end of the balls path. 

    You may want to have appeal as well, but that doesn't mean it needs to be shiny and all happy. There are plenty of games where there may be disturbing imagery, epic monsters, etc. There's an appeal between the game developer's creation and the audience they're "appealing" to.

    There may be exaggeration as well. This being a game, it doesn't always have to be hyper-realistic. In GTA, the characters and environment are meant to be realistic in how the character act with their world. But in, for example, Minecraft, the look of an enemy may be look like a somewhat exaggerated version of a real thing. The skeletons in Minecraft don't LOOK like a regular human skeleton, there are proportion sizes that are different for the sake of game design.

    And of course, there's feel. As you can see in the screenshots of the game code, the entire point of that is to link things together so they move together. The controller needs to react with the animation so you, the player, can control where the character moves and what actions they make. 

Sources: 

Unreal Engine. (2019, April 23). Setting Up Blend Space and Anim BP. Retrieved October 27, 2020, from https://learn.unrealengine.com/course/3742980/module/7246888?moduletoken=UHxxnDLPW8SRDhT8FtgV7S69FsfyLRr0E6P5WebOdisISuQqKJb875xrNmLvVGoY