Guild Chat - Episode 33

The following is an unofficial, player-written transcript of the episode. The accuracy of this transcription has not been verified by ArenaNet.
The 33rd episode of Guild Chat aired on February 26, 2016.
"Host Rubi Bayer is joined by guests Crystal Reid, Jason Reynolds, and Matt Tate to discuss animation in Guild Wars 2. They feature Slothosaur, the boss of the second wing of the first raid coming on March 8th."
Transcription[edit]

Below is the raw unformatted transcript from Youtube.
[Music]
hi guys welcome back to guild chat happy
friday
um i'm here with three of our guild wars
2 developers today we're going to be
talking about
animation in guild wars 2. uh since
we're talking about salvation pass a lot
lately and the sloths or boss
we're going to be focusing on that
primarily and then expanding into a few
other animation things
in guild wars 2. speaking of salvation
past crystal reed is one of the
developers with me today we've been
talking about the sloths or guy
a lot the past few weeks yes um we have
not answered a very important question
which is
it's very nice hearing about salvation
pass it's very nice hearing about these
sloths or boss but
when do we get to play with this when is
it released
can you tell us oh you want to play the
raid i want to play the raid it's fun to
talk about i want to say when
march 8th march 8th you guys salvation
pass
like that's like real soon yes it is
march 8th 2016. we should
just in case specify that it is 2016 of
this year
so a week and a half yep week and a half
salvation pass is coming
all right that was a good guild chat see
you no i'm just kidding um
all right so crystal's with us you guys
are familiar with crystal we have
a couple of other guys with us too matt
jason
you do it again hi ruby hi matt
um for those of you who are new i will
go down the line and
start with you let you guys introduce
yourselves and talk about what you do
here at arenanet
uh my name is crystal reed and i'm a
game designer and i work on the raids
team
hey my name is matthew tate i'm an
animator and
uh been doing a lot of creature stuff
lately which i love
how about you buddy uh my name is jason
reynolds i'm also a game designer and
i'm
also on the raids team i can't help but
notice that we
left the sass king thing off of your
name title i don't understand
last time last time jason was the sas
king but that's okay oh you didn't bring
that back i've been demoted
we didn't bring that back request
business cards i love that idea i
seriously would want a business card
that said sasking
for you yeah that would be great all
right well why don't we just
kind of jump on in we could do this for
a while we've been doing it for like an
hour now but
we should talk about animation because i
thought that might be cool to talk about
today
i like animation do you you should do it
for a living
i think it'd be pretty great um all
right so let's start talking
by talking about the sloth thesaur and
jason you worked on
gorsuval yes a lot and we talked a few
weeks ago in the creature live stream
about
how we reuse a lot of rigs just to give
us some building blocks to work with
so you guys don't have to throw
everything out start from scratch and
i'll let you guys kind of run with that
as far as course of all and
slot the sore and the rigs we used for
that they have something in
common they they do or they used to well
they used to for time
uh they have a similar lineage
um so so course of all started off as a
prototype and story wise
which changed spoilers um he used to be
like a wood demon like lord of the woods
lord of the woods uh and so
he was actually on an oakheart rig and
he was he was all
bramble based um internally his name is
actually still bramble
boss um so yeah so he was based off of
that rig which is the same rig as sloth
boss and uh
we decided that when we were changing
the story over to like be more ghostly
that the the the oak heart wasn't really
a good fit
and we also had some really cool budget
time which i
love so we we pitched this idea to the
creature team
uh and then they dug it uh the idea
being that he's actually uh
like sort of a voltron of ghosts they're
just like
mushed together into this super being um
and so description makes sense yeah that
i mean
when that idea came up i was just like
oh my god i'm so excited
uh so we took that over there and and
and ronald
had some concepts that he had had
brought up um with uh with katie i
believe
and um i'd also handed them some
pictures that i pulled off of google
image search of just like like gross
like skinned
things attached together and like icky
sticky
anime things um and he took that idea
and sort of
merged it into a gorsball concept and
then brought that into the model
um the model turned out really well uh
it's not
it's ghostly it's ghostly um it's
disturbing at the very least
it's disturbing at the very least uh so
then from there we worked with scott
and and gave him a little bit more
personality so
one of the issues is that um we ended up
putting him on the the wyvern
or wyvern it's wyvern
uh i've been corrected so many times
putting him on the wyvern rig which is
interesting because wyverns have wings
and he does not so that's why his arm's
all gangly and long
it's because he's on that cool dragon
rig
instead of the oakheart rig or minotaur
land you guys have this discussion like
four times now
and we're gonna get it right at some
point
let's look at the oakart rig and
distract from this discussion
all right so where are we
what are we starting with here oh well
this is one of the evolutions of the
biped minotaur rig the the first one was
just set up for
our sort of a little more fantastical
creature several variants were done off
that and then it was tweaked a bit more
to
make the skeleton we just saw with
continued little extrusion joints and
stuff for like his shaky branches
and a longer tail like just things that
would come up
and um oh yep that's the original
and it's by the way because it has two
legs
it may walk on its hands a little bit
but it's biped
that guy and then it turns into this
yeah out of out of the oak family which
was based off the biped minotaur we
developed a bunch of sloths
and um the one you just saw there
actually internally we call buff sloth
cause he's super buff cause he's jacked
yo
that was a decision by the creature team
what to name it and like when i first
clicked on it to open them up like well
we'll see about this and like oh that is
a buff sloth
it's a very buff sloth i want jason to
describe
everything what i just want jason to
describe
ruby just say she wants me to shut up
not even a little bit
nope nope i want jason to describe the
things that i want matt to elaborate
[Laughter]
oh my gosh all right so out of this out
of the
wyvern slash oakheart slash
biped minotaur i don't want i don't want
any i'm scared i'm going to get the
biped minotaur conversation wrong so i'm
very hesitant
well you call it the biped minotaur to
begin with so that so
pretty solid okay so out of all of these
things were born
buffsloth yes all right
he's buff he's kind of bigger than
normal how did the animations work when
you
scale them up does it just oh i don't
know i just
i change a value and i go bigger and
then i show it off to the animator and
the animator says
oh you have to leave now that is my that
is my concerned face that she's got
there but
that was pretty good i he had a
concerned face
so we had we had a bunch of work to do
on the rig
to make him not uh slide around or to
make them animate properly is like a
larger creature
yeah and the the way it works with that
is a it's a boss it was going to be
bigger
i think we usually scale up times three
for that
for raid bosses yeah they're about three
times bigger than regular creatures i
just would be like tell me what crystal
did and how it made you feel
it's like therapy i feel like i could
work
through some things but uh no when we
scale up something that large our engine
just automatically uh
scales movement and motion by a third so
it's that big it's that much larger but
it's just sort of slowly
lumbering around moving it moving at one
third the pace
and um you know what normally that works
out fine but
we have an unusual case where sloths
already begin
they sort of move slow to begin with so
we had to go through some
complicated exports to actually make it
work and appear how we wanted to in game
which okay
at one point meant authoring special
walks and runs and
other animations and then having to
export them out by
three times the speed so it's got kind
of this uh benny hill
wacky 70s comedy review field let's take
a look
yeah oh yeah here um here's everything
working at normal scale
uh twitch chat if you guys have
questions go ahead and put them in chat
we'll be talking about that later okay
go ahead matt that's our normal run
but to make it work for something three
times the size uh
that's that's a little aggressive oh and
here comes uh wait first it's the best
runway like that's what we have to do to
make it
move around three times the size and
still appear like that
but we did it yeah that's what he'll
look like now
but like on the back end the the second
two pieces of animation that's what matt
had to do to make him look
proper to make it look normal basically
i
just created a bunch of work for an
animator and i was like it's no problem
right
you guys just yeah we're doing it it's
crystal who
all those animators like personally but
you know when it's someone else we
will make an excuse or something not
feeling well
can't do it i made that otherwise that's
when i go to production we fix that
yes on there oh my gosh
but that that's really was just dealing
with very specific locomotion stuff like
that
uh moving around um we did a couple
other things that we can't reveal just
yet because they're a little too
talk about the mechanics you'll see that
soon but
i think we can show our sort of little
over-the-top super dramatic
yeah the sloth he's got a new death
animation
yeah he's super dramatic when you kill
him off
boom this is the first time you've seen
this jason you're reacting so strongly
to it
have you really not seen this before
yeah of course i've seen it okay
he just had a little excited like the
light fades
is that you there's a story behind that
but
they'll have to wait until no you'll
have to i thought there was like a work
story behind it
i got excited oh god so many work
stories no there's an actual like
lore story behind that but that will be
revealed
later it will wait for it it will be
revealed soon and like
legit soon not just nebulous in the
future sometime soon
week and a half yeah yeah okay
so we can't tell about that can we
tell about my little friend who you
murdered last week can we see some
that could be so many people she's not
peter
yeah like peter is legit
killed some things i think anyway that
was joel
joel super murderous too but peter's
just like
kill all the things it's true
it's people we work with you don't know
this no i was just
wow i was just sitting over here i
wasn't ready to learn of all this did
you know
no i didn't know yeah i said i
specifically didn't want to work with
murderers and they assured me that
have you really had to work with peter
freeze that much
he's over there right where i sit oh
dude against the window looking over
every now and then
his little dog no he's got a little dog
running around yeah he has his own he
has his own twitter account
it's amazing because it's always just
like run run run
the man's dog has a twitter account yeah
it's true
yeah we're talking about yeah animation
animations
the dog weighs four pounds it's the
cutest thing ever it's a door sound
pretty adorable i'm not even kidding
i'm sorry we're back let's talk about
slumbling because
he has some animations yeah so this
leveling is on the
oh what's it called no light grub no leg
grip yeah so it's on the same right
with legs
oh we need someone who has some science
grubs
like little legs can you do that again
rig has we a bunch of new animations are
added to it for the expansion and there
was scott dickey that worked on those
maybe you know what i think it was scott
dickey when i opened up i think that
was his work uh and so
there's a bunch of different like they
have new dodging animations and new
jumping animations
um and so we've got some footage of what
that looks like let's see because we can
show this off without giving too much
away yeah so this is just me
like using hacky dev commands and
showing off like how the creatures can
move so he can bounce around and he
he can back up we should uh we should
have asked audio guys a little truck
backing up noise yeah i love he looks
over his little shoulder
when he's backing up it's cool can we do
it again
because it was probably once more
because he's so adorable he's not going
to die in this video because i don't
want to
traumatize ruby again thank you i'm
sorry thank you
you just didn't understand the depth of
our friendship it's okay
it i do now crystal's like what the hell
is wrong with you
no more traumatizing ruby with with
deaths of
cute adorable little slumblings he is
pretty cute should we answer some
questions from
the whole wide world you can absolutely
answer questions
these are all on you or you can just
answer questions from the people in
twitch chat
fair enough yeah let's see from uh
i think that's reg 944 asking what what
is your animation software uh we still
animate in maya here
i'm very happy with that i really prefer
that to 3ds max
but sometimes i'm trying to think uh
sometimes we do some stuff with
motionbuilder but it's pretty much all
it's pretty much entirely all a
keyframed animation done with maya
which is it's really nice
working on that as opposed to cleaning
up a lot of walk cycles or just how many
different ways i can shoot this gun
right in front of me
we get to do a lot of really fun stuff
here it's it's pleasant
that kind of leads to that bottom
question oh
favorite creature animation you've
worked on for the guild wars 2 um
i didn't unlurk for the wyvern where
he's tearing up like the side of a cliff
and then
pounces down and sort of slides in at
you i
i'm trying to think specifically where
that was used in game i can't remember
but i had a lot of fun with that one
nice that sounds kind of too quadlish is
that
where takwado comes up lands on the
castle and no
no just okay every every ord everyday
ordinary river
nothing special yeah no big deal just
your regular but no
actually i'm remembering like uh i think
that was
i think that was ian who did that to
quality stuff a long time ago yeah i
think he did all the original
quartal stuff and then i worked with ian
when we redid the model first
yeah but that was a lot of fun like
making him like i was like all right
just make him do something really cool
when players fail
he's like he's gonna run up he's gonna
bite down on that cannon and throw it
off in the distance and i was like
do it just do it god bless
do it now i gotta find a fail map i keep
i keep being in maps that succeed so i
haven't seen that in a while
i just realized there were well
you have to i love how that river and
animation turned out but i had a lot of
challenges a lot of technical challenges
with it
when i'm thinking about the most fun
i've had was probably working on uh
probably the tree frogs hilac tree frogs
really
oh are you kidding with their little
i'll cut you dual blades and their bows
and
smoke bombs and stuff when i first
pitched out smoke bombs i thought there
was no way but they did it
those were super fun i like those they
look good
they look a little murderous eyes no the
original model had
wide big bug eyes as they occur in
nature i'm like no he's going to be
sinister
certainly unpleasant to be around that's
they are that they hurt
so they're ambitious and misunderstood
how's that all right that's fair
i like it
let's distract jason from his anger
by talking about other things in guild
wars 2 animation
since we talked about crystal
making sloth buff sloth and you had to
kind of go in there and fix some of that
we talked about some of the gliding
animations you had to fix
we've been we've been having a lot of uh
creatures are suddenly
gliding in our game and you know just
uh it just does something to us
animators once we see something in game
that's not quite right
it may take months and scrounging for
time to get it but just
it's one of those things you really just
have to work on until it's not broken
anymore
just i actually feel kind of bad because
i was
really laughing at it i thought it was
super funny and then matt was he was
like in pain
as i'm giggling about these things and
it was difficult i'm sorry but it was
mostly what was going on your laughter
was probably only like responsible for
seventeen percent of that pain
most of it was what i was seeing okay so
that that's that's a fair number that's
not too bad
yeah i rained it in a little bit i'll
take it all right um
but very specifically we were talking
about um ships
in-game um i i'm trying to remember this
specific event it's it takes place in um
yeah the octavine event uh you transform
into a mushroom and then you glide and
drop little bombs and stuff
so cute yeah for a long time i remember
um
i don't know if we actually had an image
for it but the glider was bisecting
yeah just sort of oh man cleaving right
through that little guy while he was uh
floating around and whatnot after i saw
that i was just so upset
that i i didn't realize how much work we
were getting into but we did about
five additional animations to make it
look right and feel good
because you fix it can we see everyone
playing guild wars 2 deserves that
see how pleasant how much better it is
how much more right it looks
you have to think we're always starting
from right or hopefully
i'm getting there hey did you get a
better view of its bum
exactly it's right up there i don't
think that was the point that's just
kind of a bonus no that's what people
were asking for
all the time or mushroom butt
when you have your little tonic and
you're gliding around just oh yeah being
a
being a mean person what rig is are
these guys on again
they're all scripted it's the spirit rig
actually they're basically like
script with their arms cut off so
they're just like little feet they just
have this
the way they originally animated they
have this great like sort of little
tearing across warner brothers cartoony
motion to them and stuff so
you know just lopping off the top part
of them putting a little mushroom
hat on top it worked great and it's not
as bad as it sounds
they love it they can't feel it
yeah they're now they're fine okay yeah
look at that look there's a question
okay
you're so popular how long does it take
to do animation
i am sure there is a range depending on
the complexity
but can you give a range of time
as you mentioned in your question it
really all depends on exactly what
you're animating uh
i've taken uh days to make certain
things happen with wyvern just
right a lot going on with that um
on the other hand i remember i did like
the main fireball animation for him uh
i think that like took just over half a
day we just knew exactly what we wanted
a very simple mechanic
but um i
i'd say about a day a day and a half uh
depending on which animation you're
doing
might take a little bit longer to do it
death might be a little easier to do a
certain antic or spell cast
it all depends and this is the actual
time
spent animating before that you want to
do lots of drawings of your creature you
want to figure out how it moves the
personality you want to give so
the more you do that uh the more you do
that sort of like
preparing work the easier it'll be to do
the actual animation the more it'll
inform it
and of course asking crystal and making
sure that it'll be what she needs
even if it's not raids anything in the
game
anything in the i mean it depends on
like the size of things too like the
the really big dragon world bosses like
i don't remember quaddles uh the fail
animation he does when he eats the
the laser that took ian probably a good
three weeks to do that
there was some back and forth because we
had to take sections of the map
and like export that as a scene and then
give that to ian so he could actually
animate him so that like
he would look like he was stepping on
the ground and not like clipping through
things
yes he had to know the exact positioning
and then we gave all that
information to uh james barwick who is
like one of our prop artists and he does
a lot of the animations like the really
complicated animations a lot of our prop
sets
so that he was able to take all that
information and import it and then
like cue up the the mega laser i think
there's like a point where it gets like
kind of
chunked down where he bites onto it and
then animate it at the exact same timing
as tequatl was throwing and then just
have it like fly off in the distance and
explode
uh so there's a really big team effort
between and all i had to do was like
look i just i pressed some buttons
and i'm like you guys just tell me when
to fire some stuff
uh and then between the two of those i
got that stuff working out but like
stuff like that can take a while
so i'm gonna expand on that one myself
what's one of the
more complicated projects you've had
thrown at you
you're speaking to him or me you oh
let's see more complicate
things that crystal just brought up
dealing with the quaddle situation
whenever we're having to work really
closely with certain effect timings or
props that have to have their own
animation sets anytime we need to bring
in like uh
i guess an environment sort of into into
maya like just a rough version of it so
that we
we can make it appear as though it's
it's moving across things in games yeah
like
making it look right
now that you're on the spot there's so
many just a list of so many different
things but
um
you know i i guess off off the top of my
head it'd probably be any of the prop
boss work that we've done
um you did some work to clean up the
morgan preachers
at one point didn't you i believe so
yeah yeah it
hang on let me have you define a prop
boss first because we know
not everybody there knows oh well um we
have crete
we have different types of exports and
game for things that you'll be
interacting with or fighting
uh creatures of course
and we've been trying to make more
bosses based off creatures recently but
for a long time uh
the really big bads would be prop bosses
because it just gave more control of
like certain aspects of modeling
keeping things in place and maps all of
that
but uh yeah those can be a hassle to
export and there's always a lot of
different things going on
and anytime you've got more
collaboration going you do have to go
back and forth and check and
look into these things and it
it takes time but it's really satisfying
when it all comes together it was one of
the big things the because i was on the
creature team for a couple of months
on the expansion before moving over to
the raids team it was one of the big
things that everyone wanted were like
okay
we want to make big creatures we don't
don't want to just have them be
restricted to these like to quaddle type
things where they can't move
uh so i think the the chuck gerant is
like one of the first
big big ones we did uh and ian and i had
worked on that like initially and did
like all the prototype work for it
and that was like kind of one of our big
test cases for like we've got this big
huge thing like how does it work in the
world and
like the big concern is when they do
weird things like they get close to
walls and then half their body gets
covered up because they're standing
inside the wall
and it just doesn't look good so we had
to come up with a way and so the wyverns
were wyverns
what is it i forgot i think it's
boyfriends the wyverns i always say
wyvern
i feel like i have to because it's gonna
correct me right now i got mad yesterday
and went with weaver because i got
i just gave up what about hermione oh
god oh tell that you have to tell that
story i can't believe i forgot not for
my
so early early development of
the weberns uh when dave mark was here
consulting as like an ai expert for us
uh the creature team got a big debate
one day over whether it was wyvern or
wyvern
uh and you know like half the team was
like now what's this the other half two
was like no it's that then of course
someone goes to google
but google says like three or four
different things google said weaver
uh it said weaver well there we go so i
they're
years and years ago uh my old roommate
back when i lived in toronto he had read
all some of the harry potter books
before he saw the first movie and he was
reading it and he gets to the first time
they introduce
her character and he goes hermione
that's a that's a weird name
and so he just that's what he he just
that's how he pronounced it because he
didn't know how to pronounce it and then
he went and saw
the movie it was like hermione
oh my god and so you know and it clicked
but like that was i brought up that
story while we were having this big
debate and then dave mark goes
fine we're calling it hermione and he
just walked away that was the end of the
debate
that was like that was dave mark's
biggest contribution while he was here
i think he probably did more things but
that was that's going to be the thing
that stopped
it's just interesting about that because
the exact same thing happened to me
about two years before the first harry
potter movie came out i remember i was
working to register
at like an art supply store somewhere
just like
i'll read this second harry potter book
hermeone what the hell
i thought to myself oh it must be one of
those traditional british names
yes it goes way back it happened to me
it's happened to lots of folks i assume
okay maybe
cool no it's happened to two people two
people that's a start
yes it's probably happened more but
those are the only ones i know about
i have said i have said wrong words
because i only learned them through
reading so
it's totally allowed i don't remember
where we were when we got off track but
i wanted to make sure the hermione
story got told bosses
well there's actually a question that is
actually talking about that from
dome off doom uh he says he has a
question he's never seen a final fight
like dragon stand before how long does
it take
uh something like that to usually
animate uh and that's that's
getting into prop boss territory
you did scott did uh scott dickey did
all the animations
scott dickey's kind of a stud so he
probably turned that on a lot quicker
than
many of us would no he's an amazing
answer it's just beautiful to watch his
work
um how many move sets were involved in
that
uh i know there was like uh like a
an unlurk where it comes up and alert
uh and then there were a couple of
attack animations
and there's the crazy death animation
where he
like drives himself through that tree
that's right okay with with all that
going on that
i'd say like months wow really i think
it was a couple months
for a couple months with z like even
doing some of the design work
yeah it was a couple months to hook that
up for
mike on the design end and also probably
at least two months
i think it was it might be two two and a
half months of animation work
so it's a non-animator what's a move set
what defines a
single move set oh well i'm just listing
the
when these things are we animate them in
maya okay run them through our exporter
when they come to
crystal as like an asset there's the
creature and then just by selecting
through
it's got all the different animations
it'll do it's alert
idle walk wrong okay okay lyric only
gotcha all the things it can do
okay different sequences yeah all right
that's how we call it
lurk unlurk all of that that i
understand
you just have to find the words that i
know and we're all good
it's why often times when we're building
like raid bosses
we try to find a rig that like is cool
and like is going to work for what we
need because
getting a few extra animations for a
specific rig
means we could probably get like maybe
three or four if we needed them whereas
if it's something that's completely
brand new
on a totally new rig and then doing as
matt says like the move set that takes a
lot more time
yeah well like obviously the wyvern
wouldn't have a lot of animations that
gorsball had
so that's why it was an even bigger
ordeal that he got his own custom model
because i used uh the yo car because it
had so many reusable animations
like the ground slam and stuff that is
still maintained on gorsball right now
uh but because they had to do custom
animations for them it took them a lot
longer to
develop because words don't have hands
to details the bongos with
that's a whole other great big argument
um
oh well always the first question do you
want to do
do you want to do a wyvern or do you
want to do a dragon which has four legs
and little wings or
do you want to do a traditional
old-school wyvern it's yeah
it's important that must have been what
he was doing when you know not to my
face or whatever he
he kind of made like a little shoulder
gesture okay a little shimmy well we'll
deal with that later
but we have some questions i think uh
another one from reg944
do you also use maya for your modeling
and texturing work
thank you for asking the question um
yeah our modelers they usually start off
working in zbrush
zbrush um that's
yeah when it comes to sculpts and then
they'll bring it back into maya and like
get it to
a point that they can have um an export
into game for that but
when they're in there really doing the
i guess the art of what they do the true
sculpting zbrush seems to be
what's really popular here uh in the
past i know
other other modelers have used other
software packages or even
brought some other stuff of their own to
like just do whatever it takes to get it
to make it
so they're most okay yeah oh
to make it sorry whatever can get it to
where they're most pleased with it as a
sculpt
then they can bring it over to maya and
start working on topology and like you
know
reducing the number of faces that
doesn't mean what i just said doesn't
mean anything to most people listening
but uh
if you're a 3d nerd
well i'm trying to think of the best way
to explain taxes versus faces versus
thanks for showing up actually i'm going
to i hope that i hope that helps answer
your question rich i'm going to grab
this last
one real quick from radical isotope
because you all deserve it
it's not a question but a comment slash
compliment
i have to say that as an amateur
animator the character animations are
the best in the industry
they're the standard against which i
judge other games and very few measure
up
wow thank you we try
we try very hard um if
you know what if you're looking
specifically for
i just want to throw some praise on a
guy here named hangman loong
i don't know if you can i don't know if
you could give me tongan to show up and
be on one of you one guild chat at some
point but
i know i i can't even believe i'm here
right now but
just uh watching that guy's character
animation it's just so beautiful
and it's all sheer effort like there
there's
there's no half step in there he's just
so focused and he'll do whatever it
takes to make it work and make it
beautiful
and we're very very fortunate to be able
to like just sit there and like take in
some of his work
that's extremely cool but um yeah man
well i'm part of a really really
excellent stable of animators here at
arenanet
that's it's very pleasant yes you are
it's nice
let's see did we get them all did we
miss one of those top two
okay
let's see oh
i don't know how to pronounce that can
anyone give me a shot
3509. the 3509 is important when you
animate a rig do you prefer ika
or reverse if both then when you might
prefer
to use each i i believe you're speaking
about the difference between um
animating limbs in ik versus fk
i i think that might be what we're
speaking about but
let's let's explain what that is this
will be fun and
really important for people that love
playing mmos uh
if you're animating if you're animating
an fk it's a little bit more like a
puppet like we have controls here like
lift this up this joint then from here
rotate this
rotate that that's fk animation called
forward kinematics
inverse kinematics is when at some point
we just say
okay this is planted right here
no matter what it's going to stick to
this light glue and we use different
controllers to sort of control the angle
or tilt of what's going on outside of
that
um i would say with the sloth death
animation we just saw i chose to keep
his arms
in um it begins an ik because he's all
hunched down and doing stuff like that
at one point we switch over and go into
forward kinematics because it makes it
easier to get those really dramatically
flailing starts and uh you know what
normally when he crashes to the ground
just because it's going to be just a
limb bouncing on the ground like that i
try to switch it back to ik
but um i chose to stay with fk just
because i thought there'd be a little
bit more of a natural role
i'd have to work a little bit harder to
make it a little more
giant buff sloth crashing into the
ground as opposed to
just what we would normally do for an
everyday sloth
that was a really good explanation it
was i feel like i
i was going into that like wow i can't
wait i can't wait for 20 seconds into
this while i'm suddenly like using a
bunch of bizarre terms and not making
any sense but if you can make it make
sense to somebody who has no animation
and programming experience
you've done really well i'm feeling good
about it i understood it so
there you go awesome
that last question i like that one fave
area of content sorry this is from kit
the traveler
hey uh wonder what the fave area of
their content they like to play besides
their own area of work
what jason
we're putting on the spot yeah i have a
lot of fun just running around doing the
meta events and hot
i totally dig that i like hanging out
with my hylic
and hottie the friendly ones at least
just the friendly ones
well i'd like to go up and just see how
they're just
just surly surly surly and the one who
was playing a loot
i worked pretty hard to get that in
there that
i insisted there there'd be at least
several musical frogs
and they'll be more in the future i'm
sure really
i animated them they're going to put
them in i'm hopeful
it is pretty darling i thought there was
like there was like real conviction that
it kind of faded at the end like i hope
no i'm like it's gonna happen i'm gonna
release i have no power over that i
better start being nice with crystal and
jason
i mean it's hanging out in the in the
lobby i like your dev lobby
so he's in the jungle the one with the
loot yeah it's part of a story style
like he won't talk to you in the game i
did this whole elaborate setup with
um with the hylic tree frogs and i even
grabbed um
some of the giant big bull frogs and i
did this entire little setup where they
were all hanging around a campfire
what one like once one's just roasting
something on the end of a stick i think
it's a fish
another one's just sort of sitting there
like staring off into the distance
because things aren't working out
and there's another and there's another
one sitting
sitting on a tree stump not standing
this time just playing his little heart
out
and there's another frog knight next to
him that you can tell
isn't that interesting what's going on
and yeah i took one of the giant
bullfrogs i think i've got him roasting
a cow leg prop that we have
and uh there's one where he's passed out
drunk sleeping holding a bottle of booze
yeah that's inappropriate for the frogs
to be
so good i don't know times get rough
crystal for all we know
that's how it had to work but there's
look there's packed rations all over the
jungle
that's true you just need a crowbar
there's no excuse
no i looted all those they're gone
i'm sorry there wasn't anything edible
this needs to be in game
we we have to have this i'm hopeful i'm
hopeful they'll get in there oh and
a couple of them are off to the side
gutting fish and cleaning them someone
has to do the work
yes it's true yeah i thought of
everything didn't i you did
are you not okay with the cow leg is
that what the problem is no no no
it was the frog jason said he's like
what if they were roasting a frog leg
and i'm like that is
that's not okay i like how ruby was
standing up for beef
i was i'm a little hungry almost lunch
time
burger it's after lunch time all right
what's your favorite part
oh well i'm not allowed to say raids
apparently i have to pick something else
uh you did work on raids i'm sorry shut
yourself right out of there
oh man i can't say world losses either
[Music]
you've worked on a lot of things we
might have done a lot i've worked on a
lot of random things
you have to leave out the things you're
working on right now how's that
okay um i mean i guess i could say like
the one thing i do like going back to
uh when you know randomly you get sick
and you're just like i can't really
think or function right now so i'm just
going to sit here
recently it's almost like it happened
last weekend where i got really sick
and i just binged on csi for like three
days
which which city uh original
i don't like new york i don't know why
it's a little boring and i love miami
though because it's
it's ridiculous and over the top but no
i i sat down and i um
i had like a mesmerized 80 recently and
i was like i have nothing
better to do i feel horrible i'm just a
congested
mess so i just sat down i started like
map completing again so i've almost
completed another i did another world
complete i don't know why i'm doing it
i don't know it's kind of fun that's
kind of all the reason you need
is you you do quite you make
questionable choices when you're sick
to have fun i had fun i had a lot of had
a lot of fun
nailed it you had fun at the end you're
all good
all right those are good answers my
questionable choices lead to me being
sick so
uh i'm doing it backwards oh that's a
whole different live stream
guild chat after dark i was waiting for
that like this whole pitch for guild
chat after dark sounds pretty good
yeah and remember how that conversation
ended was that i like my job and i want
to keep it
so we're not going to do that or do you
want to make very adventure adventurous
twitch tv
i like my job and i want to keep it fair
enough
is the decision here all right oh um
do we have mark just uh real quick
mike2272 do you use mocap or is
everything animated by hand
i'd say at this point 90
97 of what you see in game is a hand
animated key animated
as opposed to a motion capture i i think
we
i think uh years ago we might have used
a little bit of that for
there's a video floating around of leah
you know i remember i remember that day
like i
i think i just come back from lunch or
something and there were three of my
co-workers out there and the whole getup
rigs just running around
and just like
dark times i think that mocap suit is
right over there
oh heather what this is like this is
like four years ago before we even
launched we still
haven't yeah it was a long time ago but
we still have it um this is the mocap
room
i remember this now this room is this
room has been many things to many people
but it has
i'd say that when we're using mocap uh
it was very specific instances where it
plays to
plays to its strengths like uh you
really can't do a mesmer cast
in real life and then just have it
captured it's it it's hard to get actors
to float
it's true there are very many
i guess situations where you'll see a
player standing around or idling for a
long time
just doing slight little minor movement
that's where it really is
its greatest strength for us and most
useful but
through the halls in a mocap suit not
yet but if we could convince someone
that could help even though it wouldn't
it'd be funny as hell
you're someone i mean we could do like
crawls down the hall like get our get
our fitness on
chase bear crawl
and then you got your then you got
yourself i don't know what a bear crawl
is what
that's when you like when you walk like
a bear and you do it like back and forth
through the room
i'm pretty sure he knows and he's just
trying to get you to do no i have no
idea
i really i didn't know this was a thing
really oh yeah
or did you learn about bear crawls
[Laughter]
see this is one of those things where
it's like i feel like people that talk a
lot about how much they love crossfit or
something do that
where i learned it was crossfit i was
like i'm gonna do this
oh we have two oh man okay i like those
videos where people get hurt
there's another question at the bottom
geez
what who would you say are your biggest
animation influences
well immediately the people around me
that i'm really inspired by the people
i have to come in and work with some of
the absolute best so it really pushes me
to my max but
probably um if i could think of two
animators that uh
whose work really means a lot to me i'd
say milk call
um like one of the disney originals and
do you remember the jungle book
he did sheer khan and like just
the amount of detail and holding volume
and just like
personality that he like injected into
what originally was supposed to be like
more of a wimbly cowardly
like conniving character and then he
milked got in there and he's just like
no we're going to do it this way
just kind of insisting upon it and
really working to make sure that's what
it was uh
not just probably in my opinion the best
animator that ever worked for disney
also just his attitude his his
outright rejection of laziness you can i
there's several animation podcasts where
they've brought up like these old like
audio lectures that he was giving people
like in the 70s or something and he's
just
you could just hear it in his voice how
he's just not taking any crap
he's like oh well of course of course
reference is important
you're going to need a lot of that
reference there and stuff but you can't
just be
based right office or you're just you're
a lazy son
you know you just i like you you're not
expecting that to come out of him but
like just his insistence on
form and like just doing it right
better than right good old good old milk
call and
i love it on the exact opposite end
there's glenn keane
who's just you can be an animator and be
a wonderful
human being who's nice to be around and
has a happy family life and all these
other good things going on i
steers away from the animator as
drunken malcontent stereotype that you
hear about so much
what did he do glen keane oh like um i'm
so
i'm so surprised everyone hasn't been
following glenn keane's career
sorry i get i guess his most standout
work would be
he did ariel and the little mermaid and
my favorite performance
probably the work he did for
the beast and beauty and the beast cool
i remember like just
once again going back to there's some
really great animation podcasts where
glenn keane just this super super nice
guy
really not coming from an art background
and stuff i remember like there's this
famous animation school called calarts
and i remember when he first like was
thinking about going there he's like do
you guys have a football team
they don't if if you're into animation
or understand these things but
just how he threw himself into it i
i remember he was talking one time this
like pre-recorded speech he had from
this interview
he was talking about he was trying to
find like this one this end scene that
he had to animate
for beauty and the beast and
he's just he's completely at a loss he
does not know what to do
he's he's so upset with himself and i
remember him like just saying like he
was going through these things it's like
i'm going to go in there tomorrow and
they're going to realize i don't know
what i'm doing they're going to realize
i'm a fraud
they never should have trusted me to any
of this stuff at all
they'll know that i should just give up
and like i remember he was saying
he sort of found hope in some of that he
was like
it's not so bad i'll i'll fi i'll
finally be able to spend time with my
wife
i'll finally be able to spend all this
time with my wife he's making himself
he's like
crying i'll be able to i'll be today a
little sad
i'll be able to learn how to paint i'll
be able to like see my kids all the time
it's just like this heart-wrenching
stuff coming out of you but
he went in and of course like his
writers his whole production team
totally supported him
they said just do what you have to to
find this go out like
i think he went over to like um i think
he went over to like
a library where they have some more sort
of arches and he was like looking at
just like these classical
drawings from like the middle ages or
things like that and just
sitting there drawing in front of them
and like it eventually came to him but
even one of the best animators there is
and this really great guy
when it comes to art we all go through
these sort of roles and
picking ourselves up from that and going
through to complete the best
wyvern alert coming up the side of a
cliff and crashing into your can
is it's a universal thing oh i also love
chris sanders
lilo and stitch thank you for the
reference without
having to ask for it i mean i totally
know all these people i just want to
make sure they know
oh obviously i like ruby i'm so full of
crap
on that i still like ruby getting really
really late
this is really good thank you guys thank
you all so much
i appreciate it yeah and march 8th
for salvation pass yeah yay
next raid win thank you guys have a good
time and game and i'll see you next
friday
thank you so much for tuning in and your
great questions
[Music]
Guild Chat - Episode 33

Transcription[edit]

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