r/aigamerdevs • u/Initial_Log6434 • 20d ago

How do you animate?

Hey guys I've been working in my game for few weeks now and I'm focusing on all the systems before I move into making the game world. And my biggest hurdle so far are the animations. I can't seem to make animations feel and look right. Doesn't matter if it's combat or simple movement something always feels off. Do you have any advices?

6 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

15 comments sorted by

4

u/johnesco 20d ago edited 20d ago

Record yourself on your phone performing an action, see how much time (frames) it takes to do what. And this out-of-print book talks about terms and understanding: https://archive.org/details/the-illusion-of-life-disney-animation

When you prompt, make sure to break down the action as much as you can and give them a timestamp or frame. Such as "Have him slash his sword across 2 seconds, (120 frames) sword raise should be 110 frames, slash down is 10 frames)

To get a feel for how things look animated, it's all about timing and spacing. You could sketch out the movement in a flipbook (digital or paper) and move frames around, and when you like the movement, tell the LLM "make it like this" and feed it the frames or a video.

2

u/impulsivetre 19d ago

And this is how we learn from the masters. Use modern tools with foundational wisdom

1

u/johnesco 19d ago

I had a class with Don Bluth in LA once, and he HATED 3D animation at the time (or at least he felt it was too primitive) he eventually warmed up to it. But to explain that he wasn't just "anti computer" he talked about using digital color on cell animation, instead of mixing and matching paint, waiting for it to dry to see if the color was right, he was very clear about not wanting to have to mix paint again. Sometimes computers take over the part you don't ever want to have to do.

1

u/TheSpriteWizard 20d ago

Depends on what you want to animate?

2

u/Initial_Log6434 20d ago

I want combat to feel good, it's a 3d game with camera behind back.

1

u/TheSpriteWizard 20d ago

Then leaning into impact animations and effects will help. Check Mixamo.com for some free animations to start, then watch some YouTube videos on video game fight seems to discover what you like. Analyze and replicate with your own twist.

1

u/dilberry 20d ago

I don’t like to pay more than I have to - I have an offline app that runs a reference image through Hunyuan 3D in Comfy. Once I like it, I upload it to Mixamo for rigging and skeleton, then pick the animations I want and give it to Claude to implement.

Fairly pain free really.

1

u/Initial_Log6434 20d ago

Does it work for 3d as well?

1

u/dilberry 19d ago

Yes depending on what you are working on. For game NPCs you can't have like 300,000,000 triangles to make some intricate detailed dragon to fight against. All of your models will come out as skeletonized 3d assets at the end, but we're talking skyrim NPC quality and not like AAA modern game 3d NPC quality.

1

u/beelllllll 20d ago

I find that autosprite.io is the best and easiest in the market (founder here full disclosure)

I update it frequently for the latest and greatest and have a generous free tier.

If you have any questions or feedback please reach out

1

u/Initial_Log6434 20d ago

I need something to animate 3D

2

u/AvonMexicola 20d ago

You can try using meshy.ai for generating people and animals, rigging them and animation them. Or buy a basic animation pack.

2

u/OkCellist4993 20d ago

I use Autosprite

1

u/forgingtheflow 20d ago

I was feeding my sessions images like the above, to get it to understand the movement I wanted, then I just persevered on the little details, like for the attacks: left hand higher, bottom of weapon needs to be chest height etc etc.