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Games with great animations

I find the animations in LucasArts classics like Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and the first three Monkey Island games to be incredibly effective. The smoothest, most buttery? No. The most realistic? No. But the aim was to effectively convey the emotion and/or humor of the story and characters, and I think they pulled it off perfectly. Just watch the opening to Full Throttle again. So much personality, even with the simple lip/mouth animations.
 
Uncharted series, Battlefield 3, KillZone 2/3, A. Creed series, if that's real gameplay footage from TLG then it as well, God of War 3, and the Ratchets this gen.
 
Why would you do that? said:
nomurderzqwv.gif
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I don't get this image. Why does he lick towards the camera, and not just lick Link?
 
Emonga said:
Mortal Kombat 9.

So smooooth. <3
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I find that the animation is great during gameplay, but it's horrid during cut scenes. The character models too, god they're so ugly and weird looking during the cut scenes, especially the cut scenes. And their robotic movement.. Uncanny valley for me.
 
I always thought Chun-Li's Ultra (Ultra 1 I guess) in SF4 was super graceful. Some people might think their designs were too bulky, but seeing them in motion was always impressive.
 
DR2K said:
http://youtu.be/A_DSrlN9wsU?t=7m50s

Gif doesn't really do it justice. Just out of curiosity, specifically, how would you improve the animation?

http://youtu.be/N-VHW7ChboQ?t=3m41s

Kokor's Katas are also really nice. Bikini is NSFW though, lol.
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well, I'm not a professional animator or anything, but it just felt lifeless. there's barely any facial animation at all, even the hands barely changed during motion, I presume the circular arm movement are supposed to be graceful, but it comes off as flailing to me. just a bit more movement on her wrist could make it better, like when her arm is moving down, have the wrist bend a bit upward.

stuff like that I guess.
 
_dementia said:
The Street Fighter III series had nice, expressive animation.

BwIfb.gif
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Aaaand we have a winner.

EDIT: Also, I don't get how anyone can pick Zelda Wii, have you seen the actual lock-on strafe animation?
 
The obvious answer is SF3. Just stunning.
Radogol said:
That's some good rotoscoping but horrible pixel art. You can almost see the digitized model underneath, except for the face which looks inconsistent with the rest of the body.
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Well...someone needs to post footage of the digital model.
 
Are there actually any sources / references online which outline how Third Strike's animation was accomplished? Would be really interested in knowing what techniques they used exactly...
 
chronos4590 said:
oh and god of war 3 duh
http://img38.imageshack.us/img38/8003/hadesk.gif[/MG]
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/abl34l.gif[/MG]
[IMG]http://s52.radikal.ru/i135/1008/8f/6139e02e31ed.gif[/MG]
[IMG]http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_l6whekellG1qbzf0vo1_r1_500.gif[/IG][/QUOTE]

man, GoW3 is so good looking. I know people like to say Naughty Dog as the console graphic king, but imo, Sony Santa Monica is still the one to beat. can't wait for their next game. my only fear is 3D mandate by Sony to potentially somewhat hurt their visual.
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Callibretto said:
well, I'm not a professional animator or anything, but it just felt lifeless. there's barely any facial animation at all, even the hands barely changed during motion, I presume the circular arm movement are supposed to be graceful, but it comes off as flailing to me. just a bit more movement on her wrist could make it better, like when her arm is moving down, have the wrist bend a bit upward.

stuff like that I guess.
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I get the feeling that it hasn't been captured on real martial artists (or not captured at all). At best it looks like well rehearsed motions, but it feels really different when it's executed with someone who's been practicing for years to master such moves. That's what made the difference in several Soulcalibur katas. You can see it in the flow, the balance, the weight of the attacks,...
 
aperman said:
Five pages in and no one's mentioned Battlefield 3?

http://www.abload.de/img/bf3_faultline_ep1_pegi4jz6.gif[IMG][/QUOTE]
Don't understand it either. Definitely the best I've seen in a shooter.
[B]
Fifa 11[/B] has some pretty amazing animations and FIFA12 looks like it will one up it again.

FIFA 12(first trailer I found). It doesn't even feature the awesome trick animations.
[URL="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh5S_E_ysig"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh5S_E_ysig[/URL]

GAF really fails for not mentioning these games earlier tbh.
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Shadow of the Colossus was pretty amazing too if you take abstraction of the low framerate. The horse animations have yet to be topped (after some thinking, maybe Red Dead Redemption), and the colossi's animations are pretty damn good too, it's amazing how those giants statues look alive, I can't wait for the PS3 remaster.
 
[Nintex] said:
There's Leon reloading his bolt action rifle.
th_25hlm9y.gif

wow.
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Wow, that's like creepy good, is that mostly motion capture? or little bit of both?

chronos4590 said:
oh and god of war 3 duh
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Yeah, also came here to mention the God of War series, and funny enough the ones you posted aren't even good examples, and IMHO I think GoWI and GoWII have better animation than III, yep call me crazy ....
 
Why do people mention Zelda games in every topic..? beatiful skybox-great animations-etc..
Zelda games have never ever (and probably never will) been a technical marvel .. they look ok.. but it´s not the graphics that make the Zelda games great. It´s blind love if you put Zelda games up there with Gears, Uncharted and God of War games..
 
54-46! said:
Aaaand we have a winner.

EDIT: Also, I don't get how anyone can pick Zelda Wii, have you seen the actual lock-on strafe animation?
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Its really not that impressive...I can do that move in real life (its nothing special) and the timings of the animations don't look all that great or smooth to me
 
Some of those I can think of right now.

Bayonetta
Vanquish
Battlefield 3
L.A Noire
Some of the Super Robot Wars games.
Garou: Mark of the Wolves
SF3: Third Strike
 
So many people saying Uncharted, so few people paying respect to Naughty Dog's work before that. Their Jak and Crash games were just as impressive.
 
Visualante said:
Cool thread. I know everyone's got their own opinions but Skyward sword looks dated, gaudy and tasteless. Unless melodrama is what you want (which is kind of a faux pas in animation) I struggle to see how anyone can appreciate it without having that Zelda fanaticism.
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Are you serious?!

Hanmik said:
Why do people mention Zelda games in every topic..? beatiful skybox-great animations-etc..
Zelda games have never ever (and probably never will) been a technical marvel .. they look ok.. but it´s not the graphics that make the Zelda games great. It´s blind love if you put Zelda games up there with Gears, Uncharted and God of War games..
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Who the fuck is talking about technicalities? Good animation and visual presentation in general is accomplished with artistic talent AND tech. The first being the most important thing, obviously.

Oh and i came here to post Skyward Sword too. Nice to see it in the OP and mentioned several times throughout the thread

capenoutoe.gif


soooogood.gif
 
I mentioned this game the other day because VVVVV reminded me of it. It was the last NES game I ever bought. I believe it was released after the SNES came out. Never beat it until just the other day. It does some impressive stuff, like parallax scrolling, but the thing that I always loved about it and I think still looks great today...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bRQ0LIJ3jzU

Enh! Dat walk cycle.
 
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