Why skeletons are so important to video game animation
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Date: 2023-12-10
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Comments and reviews: 22
-EagleScout2019
As a 3D modeler, this is super cool to see. Not enough people focus on the rigging and skinning.
All animations have to have a rig, otherwise you have to move each and every single vertex (can be from under 500, to more modern stuff being closer to 10-20k
There-s also a bunch of different kind of rigs. Different people prefer different things. But there-s cat rigs, bipeds, dummy-s, or just bones (which is shown in this video)
One of the most complicated rigs was for Bob from Monsters vs Aliens. Yes Seth Rogan has one of the most complicated rigs ever. It took the guy 2-3 years to make it. This is because bob does a lot of small things that we barely notice, or don-t notice. Stuff like his arm going into his body, is all done with rigging, even though most people would make multiple models for it. Or having his arm rotate around his body and be on top of his head on some parts of it (it-s unnoticeable, but if your looking for it you can see it in some parts. Look up a clip of him talking to the giant robot on the bridge)
It-s absolutely insane how much work was spent on Bobs rig, and I wish I could see it, but I doubt he-s going to let anyone see it without a high price.
Also people get paid a lot of money to skin models. Creating a rig is 1 part of rigging. Next you have to attach that rig to a model. This is called skinning. They have to attach each individual vertex to a rig and make sure it moves like to should. If you move the arm this vertex should be complete moved, while this vertex moved about 50% because it-s closer to the elbow. And a lot of fine details stuff later you have a skin. People get paid a lot because no one wants to do it.
Most 3D modelers probably won-t like that Im saying people get paid a lot for it because they like to get new people to do it for low prices, or they don-t want people to start taking their jobs for the money. It-s always one of the two.
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As a 3D modeler, this is super cool to see. Not enough people focus on the rigging and skinning.
All animations have to have a rig, otherwise you have to move each and every single vertex (can be from under 500, to more modern stuff being closer to 10-20k
There-s also a bunch of different kind of rigs. Different people prefer different things. But there-s cat rigs, bipeds, dummy-s, or just bones (which is shown in this video)
One of the most complicated rigs was for Bob from Monsters vs Aliens. Yes Seth Rogan has one of the most complicated rigs ever. It took the guy 2-3 years to make it. This is because bob does a lot of small things that we barely notice, or don-t notice. Stuff like his arm going into his body, is all done with rigging, even though most people would make multiple models for it. Or having his arm rotate around his body and be on top of his head on some parts of it (it-s unnoticeable, but if your looking for it you can see it in some parts. Look up a clip of him talking to the giant robot on the bridge)
It-s absolutely insane how much work was spent on Bobs rig, and I wish I could see it, but I doubt he-s going to let anyone see it without a high price.
Also people get paid a lot of money to skin models. Creating a rig is 1 part of rigging. Next you have to attach that rig to a model. This is called skinning. They have to attach each individual vertex to a rig and make sure it moves like to should. If you move the arm this vertex should be complete moved, while this vertex moved about 50% because it-s closer to the elbow. And a lot of fine details stuff later you have a skin. People get paid a lot because no one wants to do it.
Most 3D modelers probably won-t like that Im saying people get paid a lot for it because they like to get new people to do it for low prices, or they don-t want people to start taking their jobs for the money. It-s always one of the two.
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polygon
I always wondered why so many videogames were so limited in their character customization. I'd presumed it was probably a narrative thing. I always try to make 2 characters to test the limits. First, I check and see if they would let me play as a child, then I check to see if they would let me play as an elderly person, at least in terms of the character model. Some almost accomplish the elderly possibility, but children are just too short and proportioned different. Mostly, both ends of the age scale are cut off, typically same is true of builds. I've also always figured someone should make a single character creator that is just balls-to-the-wall supportive of absolutely everything, and sell it to game companies as a bit of middleware so that you could have one character 'archetype' that you could maybe even use across different games (how cool would that be. It would certainly involve dealing with all of these technical issues, but if you're selling middleware, you'd best be bringing something to the table that is giving the customers the benefit of a large team working ages so that you're saving the customer way more in dev costs than the product costs.
Once we get GPUs to the point they can essentially do photorealism without flinching, I figure the next thing we need an accelerator for is collision detection. That's what's really needed for touch to look decent. Collision detection is pretty much never done on an actual exact basis with full inverse kinematics (or whatever the kids are using these days) because it's just too much compute, but improving it could have extreme benefit to perceived fidelity.
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I always wondered why so many videogames were so limited in their character customization. I'd presumed it was probably a narrative thing. I always try to make 2 characters to test the limits. First, I check and see if they would let me play as a child, then I check to see if they would let me play as an elderly person, at least in terms of the character model. Some almost accomplish the elderly possibility, but children are just too short and proportioned different. Mostly, both ends of the age scale are cut off, typically same is true of builds. I've also always figured someone should make a single character creator that is just balls-to-the-wall supportive of absolutely everything, and sell it to game companies as a bit of middleware so that you could have one character 'archetype' that you could maybe even use across different games (how cool would that be. It would certainly involve dealing with all of these technical issues, but if you're selling middleware, you'd best be bringing something to the table that is giving the customers the benefit of a large team working ages so that you're saving the customer way more in dev costs than the product costs.
Once we get GPUs to the point they can essentially do photorealism without flinching, I figure the next thing we need an accelerator for is collision detection. That's what's really needed for touch to look decent. Collision detection is pretty much never done on an actual exact basis with full inverse kinematics (or whatever the kids are using these days) because it's just too much compute, but improving it could have extreme benefit to perceived fidelity.
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polygon
on the topic of size diversity in character models. i still desperately want like. ONE (1) game where the default characters are just. fat. or AT LEAST not skinny/way too muscular. in not one game iver ever played could i play as a character that is more than, say, a size 6 or whatever. granted, ive not played that many games, but i know that there just are not many games where you even approach anything remotely plus size in general! and its kinda sad. ppl are like -well, its not like the main characters in tomb raider or uncharted or whatever could be fat! - and im just wondering. why? the shit that these characters are doing is not remotely realistic anyway, so whats the harm in having a big character doing that exact same unrealistic shit? also, those are not the only kind of games lmao. but people will literally try to grasp for any excuse, ANY -reason- that lets them say -see THIS is why you will never get representation in games! - and maaan. i just want a cool, plus-size main character for once in a game is that so horrendous?
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on the topic of size diversity in character models. i still desperately want like. ONE (1) game where the default characters are just. fat. or AT LEAST not skinny/way too muscular. in not one game iver ever played could i play as a character that is more than, say, a size 6 or whatever. granted, ive not played that many games, but i know that there just are not many games where you even approach anything remotely plus size in general! and its kinda sad. ppl are like -well, its not like the main characters in tomb raider or uncharted or whatever could be fat! - and im just wondering. why? the shit that these characters are doing is not remotely realistic anyway, so whats the harm in having a big character doing that exact same unrealistic shit? also, those are not the only kind of games lmao. but people will literally try to grasp for any excuse, ANY -reason- that lets them say -see THIS is why you will never get representation in games! - and maaan. i just want a cool, plus-size main character for once in a game is that so horrendous?
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polygon
It's interesting to me to come back to this video months after the release of RE: 8 and realizing it wasn't just Lady D who got a lot of unique rigging. I suspect a lot of the Lycans, Sturms, and Uriases (Uraia? Uriasai) probably share the same skeleton as Heisenberg (Possibly Varcolac as well. I'd have to go back and look) but the other 3 lords all seem to have unique and diverse rigs to them which I really appreciate.
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It's interesting to me to come back to this video months after the release of RE: 8 and realizing it wasn't just Lady D who got a lot of unique rigging. I suspect a lot of the Lycans, Sturms, and Uriases (Uraia? Uriasai) probably share the same skeleton as Heisenberg (Possibly Varcolac as well. I'd have to go back and look) but the other 3 lords all seem to have unique and diverse rigs to them which I really appreciate.
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-penunyabiz
if yall did a little bit of more research into the actual cyberpunk 2020 manual, animalistic limb augmentation and tails are readily available for body modification. like you could replace your whole body to be an anthro animal if you wanted. cmon guys dont discount the origin of cyberpunk
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if yall did a little bit of more research into the actual cyberpunk 2020 manual, animalistic limb augmentation and tails are readily available for body modification. like you could replace your whole body to be an anthro animal if you wanted. cmon guys dont discount the origin of cyberpunk
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polygon
Im not sure why the notion in this video was that you cant scale a rig without entirely redoing animations. you can make rigs scaleable and have the animations still work perfectly, the only issues would arise if all assets they touch are not scaled respectively.
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Im not sure why the notion in this video was that you cant scale a rig without entirely redoing animations. you can make rigs scaleable and have the animations still work perfectly, the only issues would arise if all assets they touch are not scaled respectively.
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-xxgatxx
Most engines won't let you -rescale- animations, we should invest more time to make future engines rescale, specifically modify angles of animations for different rigs. Also, developers are usually not the ones to animate, those are animators.
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Most engines won't let you -rescale- animations, we should invest more time to make future engines rescale, specifically modify angles of animations for different rigs. Also, developers are usually not the ones to animate, those are animators.
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-nuzzlebit
I wanna be a professional rigger.
-Oh what do you do? -
-I- work with skeltons. -
-Wow, in what way? -
-I make them. -
-- what? -
-I make the skeletons. Oh, then I skin them. -
-WHAT-
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I wanna be a professional rigger.
-Oh what do you do? -
-I- work with skeltons. -
-Wow, in what way? -
-I make them. -
-- what? -
-I make the skeletons. Oh, then I skin them. -
-WHAT-
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-etourdie
Wasn't the canon reason for there not being any furries in Cyberpunk 2077 because they went crazier more often and the modifications they were using essentially got banned?
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Wasn't the canon reason for there not being any furries in Cyberpunk 2077 because they went crazier more often and the modifications they were using essentially got banned?
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-IXIONStudios
Excellent video!
I just made a series of video presentations to a team explaining exactly these concepts. I wish I found this earlier, excellent examples!
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Excellent video!
I just made a series of video presentations to a team explaining exactly these concepts. I wish I found this earlier, excellent examples!
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-RomboutVersluijs
Isn the animation from rigs mostly based on rotation, therefor easily being able to transfer from rig to rig. Thats basically what retargeting does right?
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Isn the animation from rigs mostly based on rotation, therefor easily being able to transfer from rig to rig. Thats basically what retargeting does right?
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-jenbutace82
So- has anyone else noticed the title's changed? I don't remember what it was but it definitely wasn't this one mentioning skeletons. Am I going insane?
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So- has anyone else noticed the title's changed? I don't remember what it was but it definitely wasn't this one mentioning skeletons. Am I going insane?
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-mossypop9934
7: 56 wasnt there a whole bunch of elites in the hunger games where furries got body mods to look more like animals? Where did they go cyberpunk
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7: 56 wasnt there a whole bunch of elites in the hunger games where furries got body mods to look more like animals? Where did they go cyberpunk
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-aidenzach8911
the amount of diversity in body shape fortnite has is honestly impressive some characters are more broad and thicker and somehow it works
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the amount of diversity in body shape fortnite has is honestly impressive some characters are more broad and thicker and somehow it works
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-FishieKrackers
In one of the early versions of the Cyberpunk table top RPG, it's stated that animalistic mods were very common. Cyber Furries
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In one of the early versions of the Cyberpunk table top RPG, it's stated that animalistic mods were very common. Cyber Furries
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-dmanakell
Sol looks super young and already a professional. This is discouraging for someone wanting to become a cg artist in their 40s
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Sol looks super young and already a professional. This is discouraging for someone wanting to become a cg artist in their 40s
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-gabrielsandstedt
Have these animators never heard of real time IK for hand / arm animations?
Of course it is possible in realtime
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Have these animators never heard of real time IK for hand / arm animations?
Of course it is possible in realtime
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-theecube1
How did Jenna manage to go this entire video without making a single truck-based -big rig- joke? Will wonders never cease
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How did Jenna manage to go this entire video without making a single truck-based -big rig- joke? Will wonders never cease
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-kitkatliz1495
I learned so much, and also I love the memes you casually sprinkle in. I had to pause and cackle at a few of them
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I learned so much, and also I love the memes you casually sprinkle in. I had to pause and cackle at a few of them
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-mmm. mmm. mmm.
this feels really good to watch. thanks for all your effort, this was a hella interesting thing to learn about
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this feels really good to watch. thanks for all your effort, this was a hella interesting thing to learn about
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polygon
Uh yes the genders
Woman in flats, woman in heels, Mal civilian, male thug, large male thug, thantos, and meg
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Uh yes the genders
Woman in flats, woman in heels, Mal civilian, male thug, large male thug, thantos, and meg
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polygon
I was NOT ready for how that closing -thank you- hit. Like, ow my heart. I'm not crying YOU'RE crying.
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I was NOT ready for how that closing -thank you- hit. Like, ow my heart. I'm not crying YOU'RE crying.
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