Shattered dragon wings slightly disappointing
After checking out the original Holographic Dragon Wings i decided to work on getting the new Hologram shattered dragon wings, but after the long wait i’m slightly disappointed with several things.
First off the animation compared to the originals is completely different and a little off balance looking, this is noticeable when running.
They do not appear on my characters preview even thought i have them equipped(neither the Hero menu or log-in menu)
They disappear when you start another animation such as dancing.
These 3 reasons mainly make me wonder if any other Skin can do these things, since this is my first Skin back item i have no idea.
The latter 2 complaints apply to every back item (and weapons as well).
I’ve seen a number of requests to show weapons and back items in the Hero window and such, so hopefully that’ll get addressed. Weapons and back items are a major part of the characters’ appearance after all, so hiding them makes little sense.
Them disappearing during emote animations is probably intentional to prevent major clipping issues due to some of the emotes having very different body positions and the that weapon placement isn’t made to accomidate (dances have you twisting around and something like sitting would send your weapons clipping right into the ground), so I don’t really expect that to change.
As for the animation… yah. Lots of complaints on that, just read the forum a bit. Hopefully it gets some adjusting.
yeah thanks for quick reply was just reading a few others posts on it hope they can tweak it some soon.
The problem is fixing a lot of these issues isn’t a quick “tweak” that someone can do when they get around to it.
I admit I’m no expert on 3D animation but from what I do know fixing things like clipping during an animation like dancing would at best require moving the wings/weapons to a new position on your character. If a realistic and workable single position isn’t possible they’d need to keep moving with the animation – effectively scripting the weapons and back items into the dance. And they’d have to do this for every item on every race for every dance individually.
Alternatively they might be able to rework the skeletons to be closer to the actual image and let the physics engine do the rest, but that would mean your character would keep bumping into their own gear and the end result would look about as good as if you did that in real life.
Danielle Aurorel, Dear Dragon We Got Your Cookies [Nom], Desolation (EU).
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
“Life’s a journey, not a destination.”
I actually really like the shatterer wings. They look much better than the other ones on my Charr, and since I’m a big Charr fanatic I’m glad that one of my Charr can have a really nice looking back piece! =P
The animation makes them look very flimsy, like parts of it are about to fall off.
I don’t like animation in the preview window. And I have yet to equip them until I get a back piece I want to put it on.
The wings should move some. But we are not flying so a full flapping animation does not right.
The problem is fixing a lot of these issues isn’t a quick “tweak” that someone can do when they get around to it.
I admit I’m no expert on 3D animation but from what I do know fixing things like clipping during an animation like dancing would at best require moving the wings/weapons to a new position on your character. If a realistic and workable single position isn’t possible they’d need to keep moving with the animation – effectively scripting the weapons and back items into the dance. And they’d have to do this for every item on every race for every dance individually.
Alternatively they might be able to rework the skeletons to be closer to the actual image and let the physics engine do the rest, but that would mean your character would keep bumping into their own gear and the end result would look about as good as if you did that in real life.
Back when I dabbled with CGI I could hand animate something on par with this in a few hours. Once the full animation is done, tweaks usually require minimal work. The perfectionist in me might add an hour or two of additional time fine tuning things. It’s honestly not that difficult. I’d be shocked if one of their animators couldn’t fix this in half an afternoon, or completely revamp it in half a day. The “bones” and “joints” are now already in place, so it should be pretty easy.
If you watch the animation loop, there are two variations on the wings flapping that repeat 1:1. IMO, one of those motions looks fine. It’s the one that brings the wings in and up towards the character’s head that looks horrible.
If I were given an hour to fix it, I’d just resample the loop and have the good flap repeat 5:1 to the “bad flap”, or just remove the bad flap from the animation entirely.
The way I think it should have been done would have been to have the good flap while standing still and have the wings sweep back in a gliding configuration when running. The armors and hair in the game all have great dynamic motion. The wings should have been done the same way. Anyway, there are simple ways to fix these things with out redoing them entirely or spending too much time on them.