12-12-12 - Principles of animation don't apply to games

https://pure.ltu.se/ws/files/31041116/LTU-CUPP-07172-SE.pdf

This has a nice in depth description of why the principles are animation don't work for games. Sorry this post is so ridiculously short.

09/12/12 - A.I, Role of Emotion, Links and Lynn

A.I
"Each computer character in the game has a set of associated personality attributes. We have chosen to use the
“Big-Five Factor Structure” based on work in the field of psychology [5]. The major factors are: introversion extroversion,
pleasantness or agreeableness, conscientiousness or dependability, emotional stability, and intellect
or sophistication. Each of these major factors consists of 7 different sub-parts, which are given a value on a 9
point scale: the entries for the introversion-extroversion scale are shown in Table . Similarly, there are a set of
physical skills which are particularly important in this game, since the characters have to perform in the circus.
The personality aspects which determine moods and change of mood are given in the next section."


http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.55.1447

Role of Emotion
"The  idea  of  believably  has  long been  studied  and  explored  in  literature,  theater,  film,  radio  drama,
and  other  media.  Traditional  character  animators  are  among  those artists  who  have  sought  to  create believable  characters,  and  the Disney  animators  of  the  1930's made  great  strides  toward  this  goal. The  first  page  of  the  enormous classic  reference  work  on  Disney animation  [12]  begins  with  these words:
         "Disney animation makes audiences really believe in ...characters, whose adventures and misfortunes make people laugh - and even cry. There is a special ingredient in our type of animation that produces drawings that appear to think and make decisions and act of their own volition; it is what creates the illusion of life""

Bit of quote-ception there...

http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/180000/176803/p122-bates.pdf?ip=193.60.167.114&acc=ACTIVE%20SERVICE&CFID=153602807&CFTOKEN=63560333&__acm__=1354814983_b62530e9fb9263cee0e99794381ab4c5

Immersion in games
http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/SebastianAlvarado/20121008/178967/Immersion_Getting_into_the_game.php


context body language
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2FBF01324126?LI=true#page-2


LOOK THIS UP.
courtesy of Michael "it has a section on Memorable Characters, Believability and Credibility"
http://uad-live.lib.ed.ac.uk/vwebv/holdingsInfo?bibId=104173



Uncanny Valley note:
interesting point brought up by my brother... if making something too realistic causes people to become unnerved then could you use that information to make more unsettling bad guys?


Cinema and Game crossover thesis
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:http://www.gamecareerguide.com/education/theses/20040515/Thesis_Watching_Games.doc


creating virtaul characters: some assembly required
http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.19.6030


Looks at Facade and Oz project.
http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=1024751


Appraisal for a Character-based Story-World
http://emotion-research.net/projects/humaine/ws/plenary2005/modeling/RankPetta-AfaCbSw-submtoIVA2005draft.pdf




On a bit of a side note:
I had a meeting with Lynn because I was struggling quite a lot with my project structure. Unfortunately I was pretty brain dead by the time the meeting came round so coming to any conclusions was probably like getting water from a stone. Eventually I had a structure which made sense of everything and I'm incredibly grateful for Lynn's help even more so the next day when I'd gotten a good night's sleep and could think straight. Things are looking a little better. Still difficult to write but at least it's going in the right direction.

06/12/12 - Uncanny Valley, minor on body language

This is another one of those days where I find something which could have been so useful to my research if i'd have found it earlier.

"Believable Characters"
Magy Seif El-Nasr, Leslie Bishko, Veronica Zammitto, Michael Nixon,
Athanasios V. Vasiliakos, and Huaxin Wei

Link:
http://www.sfu.ca/~magy/conference/believablecharacters.pdf

Useful things found (so far.. it's a pretty huge journal)

• Look more at Uncanny Valley (Adds extra argument to believable over realistic and the difference between the two.)
  http://www.movingimages.info/digitalmedia/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/MorUnc.pdf

• Assassins creed and prince of persia series demonstrating the progression of games towards more story driven gameplay.

"In order for a character to adapt, it needs to not only be able to automatically select its motions

and execute its actions, but to also select nonverbal behaviors that convey and maintain its attributes."

"This character should be able to select its actions based on the current context and its own goals"

Another piece of literature which i clearly didn't include in my blog and now regret as it's needed in my proposal is about body language. I need to reference the impact of context on animated performance and one of the places that verify this is in the world of body language. Everything i read basically mentioned that all meanings of body language changes depending on the situation the person is in.

http://abertay.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?s.cmd=setTextQuery(context+animated+performance)&s.q=context+animated+perfomance

01/12/12 - Character Diamond

Still attempting to get my proposal done. I've come across this description of a book on amazon.

"...ways to give emotional depth to an NPC (non-player character), even if the NPC has just one line of dialogue; techniques to bond a player to a game's NPCs" -Creating Emotion in Games: The Craft and Art of Emotioneering, David E. Freeman

GAAAAHHH, WHY HAVE I NOT READ THIS BOOK YET.

Feel like an idiot. So clearly this is being added to my reading list... if i can find it =/


YOU CAN PREVIEW IT ON GOOGLE BOOKS! YAY!
Theres some interesting stuff concerning a character diamond to help make the major NPCs have a more interesting personality which is useful research for when i'm in the personality section of animating. I can definitely and will definitely use this as a base for experimental testing. Adding a trait then animating then adding a trait then animating then i can put the four different animations in front of someone.. see which they prefer. Page 56 gives a good list of ways to create a good character diamond.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=gC7oAV_ZTSkC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q=NPC&f=false


Extra notes to help with proposal writing:
The character diamond is used in conjunction with the context of the situation the encounter is happening in. Useful because it shows the method used in Games as opposed to those found in Robert McKee's book about film methods.
Differences



Update: This proposal has been switched round more times than i care to remember. Kill me.

30/11/12- Painting skills

Writing my proposal was killing me a little so an evening a couple of days ago I decided to have a break and practise my painting skills. I decided I was going to brush up on my ability to caricature and chose this wonderful picture here as it had a lot of personality already. 

Started by creating a rough sketch taking into account key parts of the animal. He looks a bit crazy but I kinda liked that.

Then i went on to add colour, I've made some similar style cartoons previously but this one seems to be of a higher quality due to the practise I've done in the last couple of years. Practise is certainly paying off. I added a Christmas hat because "holidays are coming" and it added to his crazy a little.

Never really managed to render a picture properly before. I've always been a little afraid to or lost confidence halfway through and ended up abandoning it but I pushed through with this one. I'm pleased with the result even if he seems to have lost some of his crazy expression.

Because this was practise though I'm going to critique it.
Things that could be better:

• The material on the hat doesn't have much form to it, some studies on painting material would come in handy to help fix that.
• Similarly the fluffy section on the hat doesn't look how I'd have liked and finding a method of producing a fluffy texture would be nice to find
• The left side of his face needs to have some higher contrast shadows as I think it loses some of its 3Dness
• The eyes probably would have benefited by being done individually and put more work into creating eyes that feel like lenses more than stickers stuck on a cue ball.
• The feathers I didn't make into actual feathers again due to lack of knowing how to go about creating them, same with the body,

To summarise main points to improve on in the future and ways to go about doing it.

• Texture : Tutorials
• Lighting : Value painting

It's not all bad though. I've definitely improved which is encouraging.

28/11/12 - Old Literature returns!

INTERESTING POINTS!

Parts of my proposal talk about the similaritied of creating films and creating story based games and applying theories used by the older medium film to help create better games and i just remembered the book i got last year for Brians module! At least i think it was last year...that doesn't matter.

Anyway.

The book is called story by Robert McKee and i remember at the time finding some of the theories in it pretty fascinating but due to time contraints and me being a little bit rubbish i never got the the parts concerning character.

So back to the proposal i was hunting around trying to make my proposal feel a little bit more in tune with itself and maintain the themes of comparing the two industries methods when i get to my example of personalities of NPCs reflecting the personality of the protagonist (using the example of ICO mentioned in a previous post) and i realise i dont have anything which shows how this has possibly evolved from films so i spend a little time searching journal archives and google scholar to find a decent reference for this or find how they actually approach creating characters at all when i remember the book and bring it out.

IT A GOLD MINE OF QUOTES AND INFORMATION

Seriously want to finish reading this book at some point but for now i've skimmed the parts concerning character and here are some of the interesting points as advertised in the first two words of this post...

Firstly there is a part which says exactly the same thing the ICO article described which was perfect beginning with this quote which i thought summed it up quite nicely.

“In essence the protagonist creates the rest of the cast.”

It also had some pretty interesting stuff about how to create a three dimensional character and what one actually was, it spoke about two sides to a character. The Characterization which is all the characters visable traits plus their basic personality, their values and opinions on things and then what he refurs to as the characters true character which are all the traits and choices made by the character when they are under pressure or are put in a difficult position. 

“True character is revealed in the choices a human being makes under pressure – the greater the pressure, the deeper the revelation the truer the choice to the characters essential nature”

It also spoke about the difference between characters and real life. Giving an interesting point to consider when finding the balance between truly realistic character personality and those that are suitable for a game.

“their aspects are designed to be clear and knowable; whereas our fellow humans are difficult to understand, if not enigmatic."

Finally if this wasn't enough information he produces a diagram which displays how each supporting character is designed to help bring out certain aspects of the character.

28/11/12 - Still proposaling

Sorry i havent been all that "daily" recently. Been trying very hard to stay motivated and get this proposal written which is pretty difficult when you're me and easily confused by writing. Found this lovely animation though which has nothing to do with my project but i wanted to put it somewhere so i can stumble upon it again at a later date =]

See you when proposal is done for a much more regular update of mainly my practical work.

17/11/12 - Proposal and life drawing

Today I'm working on my proposal pretty much solidly. Not really sure if there's much point in posting my results other than what I've managed to get done.

I've started with a plan I made but I'm pretty sure the plan needs revising after my meeting with Robin. I've gone into a little too much detail in some parts which could be reserved for the actual dissertation. I need to go into more depth with my methodology and I'm still uncertain as to whether I've actually included any theories. I could have but just haven't realised it.

So just to confirm, my plan for the day is to revise my plan to a point where i can begin writing properly and then begin while properly referencing as I go.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Plan has been successfully updated slightly and I managed to make a good start on my methodology and introduction sections. Bit of an odd selection to choose to write but i figure they are the ones I'm kinda struggling with for some reason so the sooner i have something to get advise on the better...


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Film and Game comparison?

Games becoming more like playable films graphically can almost match what is shown
Extra level of interactivity adds a more personal feel to playing a game. You decide how you character acts during the storyline.
Games are outselling films

Life Drawing! Blogger doesn't hate me anymore!

15/11/12 - Supervisor

This should be a two part post by the end of the day.

I have a meeting at half 3 with my newly assigned supervisor Robin Sloan so what I've been doing this morning is getting a good idea of what i want to talk to him about.
 The first thing I'll probably need to do is give a quick run down of my  recent presentation as he couldn't make it to Crit week then I'll probably go through my plan of attack. If he has any suggestions on how to improve it or if he has any advice on articles that might be relevant I'd be very interested to hear.

The main thing i think I'll try and talk about it how I'm doing with my proposal. At present i have about a third of my word count but that's purely my plan for structure and things i need to say which is a little worrying. I want to ask how much i need to include of the research I've been doing and how much i should be saving for the actual dissertation. I also think i need some guidance when it comes to methodology but more in the terms i should be using not how I'm going about it. The same with theories i should be mentioning. I'm fully aware i only have a month left before the hand in the proposal and this is panicking me a little. The written work was always going to be my downfall but I'm not prepared to give up yet.

I might need to talk to him a little about what would happen if I'm accepted to take part in eucroma next semester. But I'm more interested on when I'd actually find out if i have been at the moment. Its a lot of planning in such a short amount of time. All i know is that the deadline for applications is the 3rd of December.


PART 2
Proposal Woes
I just need to remember that everything i write in the proposal needs to be clear and concise  I need to say what I'm doing why I'm doing it and why it's relevant. When it comes to the specifics i can touch on it but it most likely will be expanded on in the dissertation.

Methodology.
Iterative/Cyclic testing, Animation tests i produce are more to help confirm my results than for any real analysis.
case Studies into existing games and media main method.

Theories i need to include I'll need to read the book on blackboard (well skim it) Check if there is anything particular that relates.

THERE IS STILL TIME.

Quotes don't have to be quotes i can paraphrase and use the little numbers to show which references I'm using.

Keep on top of practical work for January hand in. Might want to start collecting it into one place. All sketches, storyboards, animations etc...

Final Note.
The lecturers seem to be quite positive about me going to eucroma which makes me think the only real barrier is if they accept me. I don't really want to think about that until i know more though.

14/10/12 - Case Study Continues

I had other things i needed to do yesterday which stopped me from doing anything towards my case studies but i think that's not such a bad thing as this morning I read my Crit reflection post again and decided a better Case study to do would be on Wheatley and his character. If I analyse what makes him a great character and look into his animations a little more in depth then i could find out something which would influence my study on personality a little later.

Little case study plans.

Skyrim.
Approach NPCs as varying Races and note if there are any changes to animations as well as dialogue.
If not create small animations suggesting what should happen.

Will look more into it soon.

Wheatley - Portal 2




"Wheatley’s animation process involved creating an extensive and intricately planned library of reusable movement and acting components that could be rapidly composited together to create unique actions for each of his hundreds of lines of dialogue." Karen Prell, Animator.
http://www.karenprell.com/Video_Games.html

Reminds me of the technique i read about for facial expressions in RPGs where they attach certain expressions to keys on the keyboard and press them at the right times to record the animation for that bit of dialogue.

Pretty interesting method and would explain how they produced animations filled with personality for each individual bit of dialogue in the time allowed. Am currently hunting for a clue as to the animation list or how they went about planning the reactions they'd need. It would be interesting to see if there was any research into eye movements done and how they'd affect personality.

Knowing the method and watching the animations again does mean i start noticing the little movements that are repeated but that's just because I'm looking for them.

The main challenge this method would have if I tried to apply it to my research would be the number of factors that would have to be pre defined. You could have a set of whole body expressions to choose from because it wouldn't be flexible enough to cope with the variety of interactions players might try.

Interesting Links to things

Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (Juul) 

http://www.ted.com/talks/torsten_reil_studies_biology_to_make_animation.html
 Torsten Reil Ted Talk on methods they used to overcome repetitive movements in games. They use muscle structures and AI evolution to help create realistic reactions to impacts. This was from 2003 and they used GTA3 as an example of what was wrong so a lot of the information they found out will be used in games i've looked into such as GTA4 so if i were to do a comparative study this would explain the differences.

Life Drawing
Blogger is being a bit of a pain. Its not letting me see the upload form for pictures and videos so the life drawing from last week and this week will have to wait till tomorrow when it might show up.

12/11/12 - Case Study

In the tutorial today we were asked to create two case studies based on subjects relevant to our projects. We'll be given the time between this tutorial and the next to expand on them.

The first I'm planning on doing is the NPCs in Skyrim. This seems like an obvious choice because of the progress I've been making with my proposal. I've started to notice that a lot of the examples I'm using come from Skyrim for example the way NPCs recognise my chosen race as something to help dictate their actions towards me which I've found is uncommon in games that i have played. On the flip side of this there are also examples of major gaps in interaction such as the way NPCs don't seem to form an opinion of you as an individual. I would be interested to see whether there were reasons for leaving out this sort of interaction that possibly link to the limitations I've already looking into or possibly new ones i haven't come across.



Maybe i should look at Heavy Rain for the second? More to do with making games more like playable films and removing cut scenes than NPC interaction but it's still a key point as to why my research is relevant to the current game developers. Also if i look at the method used and try to see how it could be applied to my research or could be improved by conclusions I've already made.

Interview with David Cage creator of Heavy Rain. Interesing insights into what they were trying to achieve.
http://www.fastcompany.com/1558681/heavy-rain-creator-david-cage-reveals-secrets-his-photo-realistic-serial-killer-ps3-game
http://www.fastcompany.com/1558728/conversation-heavy-rain-creator-david-cage-continues-spoilers

Create tests based on findings
Skyrim- film animations of a guard reacting to various characters. Create using existing conclusions what i think should happen.

Heavy Rain- Not sure.

10/11/12 - Plan of attack

Presentation Plan

• Continue with Likert Tests showing research into body language theories.
• Set up test and evaluate results
• Depending on results loop back or continue.
• Choose characters to use as basis for further testing. (protagonist and pivotal NPC)
• Justify choice of characters
• Produce character studies on chosen characters including character profile.
• Use research to decide which factor is the more important (and if there are any others i should consider)
• Figure out a way to test animations effectiveness.

Presentation Feedback main points

• More research into the importance of NPCs in story driven games.
• Compare tests against games
• Game designers use of NPCs at the moment and their potential
• Look into modding skyrim
• Case study wheatley portal 2 as an example of great character animation within a game.

How i could combine them

Body Language
General western opinion for simplicity (other cultures outside my jellyfish)
 not taking into account individual personality but taking into account level of familiarity.

Create 5-7 short animations with evidence to back up actions performed. Iterative approach where i research the body language required then use knowledge to create each animation.

Testing
Research methodology related to tests, appropriate protocol, variables that might need to be considered before testing.
Variable: Think about who I'm testing? Or does that really matter as it's purely based on body language and effectiveness?

Evaluate
Do the results i gather indicate the body language used is diverse enough for a range of people to understand? Any anomalies in the results? Any patterns? Any that people repeatedly get mixed up?

Revisit body Language for the tests that are shown to need more work

How long does it take for people to gain familiarity, Do people form negative opinions more quickly than positive (Harder to gain someones trust than to lose it theory?)

Stereotype Study?
Should prejudice play a role in how quickly someone warms to you?

Personality Study
"Foundation of character" useful phrase?
Case study wheatley when investigating personality and how it affects performance
Role of Personality on body language
Does personality play a role in how quickly someone will warm to you.

PARALLEL
Further research into role of NPCs in story driven games
Game designers use of NPCs? Do they use them in any specific ways?


Later on
Investigate modding skyrim possibility of comparing my personality system to the existing NPCs



Other notes
Start having more meetings with lecturers they may point me towards interesting articles and their opinions could influence some of my research. Also have meetings focusing on structuring proposal.

Blog like you've never blogged before! Keep better track of quotes that could be useful for write ups.
Keeping track of this stuff is hard... It's making my brain fuzzy so here's a kitten...

9/11/12 - Crit Reflection

 I put up the presentation yesterday so anyone reading should have a pretty good idea of what i wanted to say at my presentation. I think i got most of the key facts i wanted to out but my nerves did mean some of my carefully rehearsed phrases came out jumbled. Fortunately the lecturers seemed to understand what i was trying to say and gave me some nice positive comments on my working so far. I tried to write the comments and suggestions i received down and then immediately went to try and expand on my notes so i didn't forget anything.

Here's my notes:

Look into why NPCs should react more? How the movement breaks the suspension of disbelief? Maybe look more into what the suspension of disbelief needs. Look at more games with my theory in mind and point out more things that are missing?
Do game designers use NPCs to tell us more things than just what i found with reflecting personality in the protagonist if they even do that on purpose in the first place?
Compare tests I'm doing to situations in games? Side by side comparisons and notes
Suggestion to look into modding skyrim so i could put my findings into a guard perhaps? then have an original guard for comparison?
Look at wheatly more as an example of good character animation in an NPC the only thing he's missing is the interactive side.


I also took some more notes based on Michael Rushford's presentation. His project is also animation based but it seems to be on performance in animated characters as a whole and a lot of his research seems like it could be relevant to my own.

Those Notes:

"Foundation of character" good phrase to use when looking into character personality
Power centres <-- body language?
Keith Lango- Power centres and Personality, good place to research
Context could be drafted in as an extra factor when considering reactions? Is that context of whats currently happening or possibly context of what environment is around the NPC for example a guard in a city street would act differently to a brawl than a guard inside a palace?


Finally an extra note i made to do with the tests I'm doing and how to write about my procedures was a reminder to take into account that the body language I'm looking at will only really relate to western culture as gestures meanings change depending on where in the world the characters were.


Tomorrow I'll attempt to form a little immediate action plan. i know i have a rough one already because of the work I've already been doing but I'll need to find a way to factor in some of the feedback from today without ruining my flow. I might want to reassess areas i may have veered away from such as the uses of NPCs in games and i definitely need to get back into the flow of blogging every day. It was a remarkably useful tool so far especially when it came to preparing the presentations and it's been pretty helpful when drafting my proposal too.

07/11/12 - Crit Week

There is a reason for me not posting every day. That summary i said i was doing so many days ago? It's been taking longer than expected. Who knew my thoughts could be so scrambled. So it's ended up that I've been using that still incomplete summary to create my prezi for Crit week. I'm going to give a write up of everything i talk about/ want to talk about right now so if you're in my crit group and don't want the advanced knowledge of what I'm going to talk about this is your SPOILER ALERT.

Slide 1:
As i'm in a group with people who didn't see my pitch i thought I'd have a quick slide which briefly sums it up. It shows that by the end of pitch week I'd pretty much managed to narrow down a topic to look into deeper but that was about it.

Slide 2:
This is a video of my initial research into GTA4 NPC animations, i chose GTA4 over the others I'd looked into as it actually gave you the opportunity to interact with NPCs outside of cut scenes that limit your options.
I spent time pushing NPC's from different directions and at different speeds, i pointed a gun at groups of people, i carried a gun around and walked around by a police officer to see if he or any others noticed and i spent some time stalking one NPC to see if he reacted in a believable manner.

Slide 3:
After watching the footage back and taking notes these were the four things that kept reoccurring and so i decided to create an animation that addressed those issues. I decided that i would create an animation of a gun being pointed at a group of NPCs and suggest what their reactions might be.

Slide 4:
I didn't want to assume any reactions so i started by doing a bit of research into defensive body language, from there i could make storyboards which reflected the findings. The top storyboard was a more generic reaction where one NPC reacts and the other notices the firsts reaction and then reacts them self so there is a slight delay. The second adds more personality where one of the NPCs might try to protect the other due to a close relationship between them or maybe the one NPC has a sort of heroic disposition. I chose the top more generic situation as i thought the personalities added a level of complexity that wasn't needed in this initial test. I also took out the third NPC as i didn't think it added anything extra that the two already showed. My main observation from this test was that yes it was more realistic but because i hadn't researched into existing limitations i didn't know how useful a suggestion it really was.

Slide 5:
Looking into Limitations i found they tended to cluster together so in an effort to make my findings easier to explain i decided to use an example.

Slide 6:
The limitations i found generally boiled down to the same things Time, Money and CPU power. I decided to start with Time and Money and come back to CPU power.
So the example i decided to use was a game called MechWarrior i found a reasonably detailed account of their animation process which i found quite useful when it came to researching limitations. When planning the animations for the game they discovered that they would need 152 animations for each of the 20 mechs the game required. This is clearly a massive amount of animating which they didnt have the time or money to create individually.

Slide 7:
This would lead to a Limited library of animations but as the project couldn't really sacrifice any animations due to the visual style they wanted to achieve they decided to go down another route.

Slide 8:
They managed to cut down the amount of animations to 30 vital ones and then blended them in varying combinations to achieve the full 152. This of course shortened the time it took to create the animations initially but blending has it's own problems.

Slide 9:
Using blending meant that the animators had less control over the performance  Whereas maths can easily bring a characters leg to the right position. The computer doesn't understand how to give the movement a sense of weight or timing that a skilled animators expertise can. This boils down to the revelation that earlier pioneers of animation found when forming the exaggeration principle and is nicely summed up by the bottom quote "Many times, looking real is not actually being real" and can leave the movements looking "unnatural and clunky"

Slide 10:
This meant that the Animators then had to check all 2440 animations that they hadn't created themselves  and due to the sheer volume by the time they discovered a problem with the landing animations they had pretty much ran out of time and the game ended up being shipped with the problem still intact in all 20 Mechs.

Slide 11:
Which leads us nicely back to the whole Time and Money problem. They had managed to produce all the animations in time but due to time they couldn't fix all of the problems they encountered.

Slide 12:
Moving on to CPU power i found a general opinion that if the game is causing too much strain on the CPU power available, the animations are one of the first things to go. This seemed to be because generally game play was thought of as being more important. As with before this leads to the possibility of a smaller library of animation.

Slide 13:
A smaller library can result in repetitive motions. This problem seemed more relevant to my project as at it's core i'm trying to find a way to make NPCs into more believable characters.

For now i'm choosing to ignore these limitations in regards to my research as i think both these problems can be solved by technological advances. The blending resulting in stiffness could possibly be resolved by giving the animator more control over how the animations blend together and the CPU power will no doubt become less of an issue as computing advances over time.

Slide 14:
Continuing with the idea that CPU limitations can lead to the limiting of animations. I attended a talk that Lynn organised between Sean Laverty who works at Blizzard and Fraser Maclean who i know off hand as the author of setting the scene. During the talk Fraser made a comment which i could have misinterpreted but it sounded like he thought characters weren't very important in games. I didn't agree with this at all as in my opinion story driven games at least seem to be heading towards being more like playable films where characters play a vital role in story telling. It seemed that Robin Sloan's Journal shared a similar view but i wanted to have more of a reason why so i dug a little deeper and found the second quote referencing the idea that NPCs actions can help define the players opinion of their character.

Slide 15:
 I thought this was an interesting concept and formed my own opinion that the NPCs animations should reflect both their own personality and that of the player they are interacting with. The second could be split into two catagories though and i thought the best example would be to combine the interactions from skyrim and fable. In fable the NPCs react to you as an individual based on your actions and reputation within the world, they recognise you on sight and the more extreme your actions the more extreme their reactions. In skyrim i found the NPCs reacted to me based on my race. I played as a Kahjit who have the reputation of being theives, sneaky and deceitful and the comments they made reflected that however they never reacted to me as an indivudual. The blacksmith in Whiterun who i interacted with an inordinate amount of times never changed their reaction towards me. I would have thought it would be better if depending on my actions around them and how much i saw them they grew warmer or colder towards me.

Slide 16:
This is what i'm doing now. I'm developing a test using the Likert Scale on the reaction to initially seeing the player. I'm looking further into body language to help dictate the reactions that might occur. Then i'll give the resulting animations to a selection of people in a random order and ask them to place them on the Likert scale as to how warmly they feel the character reacts. This should hopefully prove that the animations give them an impression of the characters opinions.

Slide 17:
Depending on the results i will either go back to the drawing board with body language or choose a game character and an NPC study their personalities and traits and devise some sort of animation tree which takes into account their own personality their previous stereotypes of the character and the past possible experiences of the player. I'll have to figure out which of the three is the most important somehow.



Thats the slides i have and hopefully what i'll be saying about them, just so my work isn't lost for all time as i think theres little things i might want to keep in there here is the post i haven't posted yet thats not complete at all...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Summary
I think i need to summarise what I've actually found and the direction I've been heading in the past couple of weeks since pitch. So kind of make a between pitch pitch, to myself. Because I'm getting confused and with so much information floating around i think i keep going off topic.

What am i looking at? I think i need to look at my aims and objects more when researching. I'm getting away from what i need to be doing with some of my research


Objective: NPCs Role within Story Driven games.

http://vgstorydesign.com/solutions.php

This looks at the role of NPCs and character within story driven games, it argues that its the levels and story elements involving the protagonist changing or growing in some way which are the most memorable and dramatically the best for the game.

http://rpgmaker.net/forums/topics/11519/
"NPCs are indeed crucial to the story as not every character presented can be a playable character ""Pivotal (NPCS) - those constituting the supporting cast of a video game - are essential to the telling of a game story. Particularly in genres that focus on story and characters" (Sloan, 2011)

"Then the article speaks about methods of portraying personality of the main character within the game and one in particular i thought applied to NPC personality. They speak about predefined action as a method of retaining consistency of personality and the example they give was the way characters (NPCs) react towards the protagonist. An NPCs reactions to the protagonists actions or presence will give the player some idea of the protagonist's personality. They use ICO as an example of this, Yorda's reactions to ICO within the game are trusting and obedient which will help to establish ICO's nature as friendly and caring." (My observations of an article on the importance of character)

Note, however, that the player will be affected by how NPCs react to the main character. Unless you want to lower a player's opinion of the main character, NPCs should generally react positively towards it. (Toby Guard, 2000) <-- backing up ICO statement above link to original article below

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000720/gard_01.htm

"I then picked out a reason why i thought skyrim had done better than a lot of previous games because when playing as a Kajit some of the NPCs in the world had almost a racist attitude towards me, and comments and reactions fitted with that, but what they didn't do is react to my character as an individual which is where it fell down a little. From this i thought perhaps a mix of skyrims reactions to the stereotype of my character and fables reaction to me as an individual would be the best way to approach a new system. So if you spoke to a character in skyrim often enough they grew either fonder or more aggressive towards you based on your previous actions." (My Final thought)



Objective: Research what technical limitations exist in game animation.

Problem"The high state of rendering fidelity exposes low-animation quality much more than on previous consoles. Characters look great in screenshots, but they can seem unnatural, clunky, and even robotic when in motion."
(Reil, 2006)
Solution
"The way to solve this, and to get in-game animation to the quality that the raw material already supports, is to provide animators with intuitive tools to perform the tasks currently carried out by animation programmers."
(Reil, 2006)Problem
"After playing any game for a little while, users will notice that the animations always look the same. " (Reil, 2006)
Solution
"Rather than pre-producing every clip beforehand, we can use the console's processing power to synthesize animation on the fly, as the game unfolds. This, of course, is not straightforward, as it requires a full (and real-time) simulation of the 3D character (including body, muscles, and motor/nervous system), but it is now possible on the Xbox 360 and PS3."
(reil, 2006)
Problem 
Key frame methods can create repetitive movements that break the suspension of disbelief

Solution?
New method of animation called "Mesh Skinning" 
"The mesh skinning technique has several distinct advantages compared to the traditional computer game animation techniques such as key framing and rigid articulated body animation. It can produce realistic and smooth character animation in real time by allowing more than one transformation matrix to affect the vertices that form the "skin" of the character. With advances in both hardware and software, it has now become more practical to implement this technique in PCs in real time." (Zhigang Wen, Quasim Mehdi, Norman E Gough, 2002)




Objective: Develop my understanding of human interactions"Making a character aware of its environment has an incredible impact on its believability. If your character examines its surroundings and the other characters in it, it automatically appears to be thinking about what it's looking at." (Toby Guard, 2000) (reffering to awareness in the illusion of life)"Besides just awareness of presence, emotional responses by NPCs toward the main character add immeasurably to its substance and believability" (Toby Guard, 2000)

 Practise using the book Force : Life drawing for animators i've been practising adding more movement to my drawings

Dishonored Note: There is a part when you reveal your identity to a character who knew you at the beginning of the game. His animations should really reflect that but they don't.

Dishonored Note: There are times when civilians will wait till you have your back turned then run for help. Nice little bit of self preservation.

25/10/12 - Void

Today's post is being postponed till tomorrow. I'm collecting my thoughts from the past 2 weeks as it's got a little out of hand. I'll be relating my research so far (where possible) to the aim and objectives and then i'll be able to see which parts i need to look at a little more to balance things out. Hopefully by doing this is will help me with writing my lit review.

I'll be including the notes from today's tutorial in tomorrows post as well.

24/10/12 - Tech limits, dishonored, Spec Ops, Life Drawing

http://petebottomley.wordpress.com/do-technical-limitations-hinder-creativity-part-4/

This article is kinda interesting and goes into some of the technical limitations around at the moment. It talks about how the introduction of the PlayStation eye and kinect has made it possible for smaller companies to create mo-cap. It also talks about creative decisions that the Enslaved team took when it came to merging the divide between cut scene and game play by adding in an extra camera which would be cut to at moments the developers thought were appropriate. Also because of the availability of mo-cap to them the work flow changed meaning they could add in extra little things they thought would add to the immersion as the process went on.

There are more parts to this article which are all really interesting to read but this section had more about animation processes


I found a forum where someone was asking about facial animation in games, limitations and work flow for their own thesis. It seems that the people responding in this forum have experience although how much is unknown so these responses could not be complete ones. Here's one of the responses

"Limitations are a key thing with games, in general. In fact it might be easier to ask what limitations they don't have.

As far as I know, most game engines are limited to bones, although some can also use blendshapes. Some engines are limited further by the number of joints they can use per character, the number of joints that can influence each vertex, and so on. More bones and weights requires more memory and processing. Many games will save resources by have separate models for game play and cinematics.

As far as animating the bones, sometimes you'll have controls similar to what's used elsewhere. Other times, you may have to animate the joints manually. One game I worked on even treated facial animation like music, or typing - specific expressions would be assigned to keys on the keyboard, and you would try to hit those keys at just the right moment while playing everything back, while a script recorded the keystrokes and translated it to bones."

The last part of this was particularly interesting. And this approach would explain a lot of the unnatural facial expressions in games currently.

"With games, you're a slave to the frame rate. Everything has to be optimised so that the game can run at a consistent rate, even in scenes with dozens or even hundreds of characters. The second the action starts to slow down, the developers will look for corners to cut, that don't affect the game play. Usually model detail, texture resolution, and extra bones are the first things to be sacrificed."

Another reason why Animation is often simplified.


Is low poly really a reason for limited facial animation? I don't think so.  Ken Perlin's rig clearly demonstrates a large variety of facial expressions with very limited polys

Anticipation in game animation
I wanted to look into game animation while thinking about the principles of animation, one i was particularly interested in was anticipation as i felt it was one principle that generally is cut short. This sentence backs that theory up

" In games, an animator will be asked to strike a fine balance between instantaneous character response and believable movement. " (Mark Garabedian from animation mentor)

And added to by Sam Yip who works at Disney Interactive

 "The anticipations in video game animations could be just a few frames,"


 "if the frame rate is low and those few frames are skipped, then the player will not see the anticipation at all, which lessens the impact and believability of the animation."

DishonoredSide Note: Noticed an issue with dishonored (probably more about AI but i thought it was funny) A guard was stamping rats and then another came and joined him. A third appeared and decided it would be a good idea to shoot the rats killing both the rats and the two guards in the process. He then wandered off like nothing had happened. No animations for accidental friendly fire? Or interactions between NPCs? GTA4 had animations for when they bumped into each other but is that enough? I guess it's not that often that it would happen but would it make the game feel more alive if NPC's did interact more with one another. Like when they're having conversations with one another would it help if they didn't just stand next to each other and maybe gestured when they speak?

Test: Animate a gesture that people use when speaking, test if the gesture would be usable for multiple lines of dialogue. Can a few different gestures be enough to make it look convincing.

Evidence: Look at games where NPCs interact to see what (if any) gestures are already used, evaluate how effective they are.

Spec Ops: The line
Other Side note: James has been playing Spec Ops: the line for me today. It does seem to be more in line with the sort of Call of Duty and Battlefield sort of game play but as the review from Yahtzee and other sources suggested it has a lot more focus on how the story affects the characters psyche. He animations and actions get more extreme as the weight of his past choices play on his conscience. As James has played we have noticed that the way he attacks hand to hand has changed to be a little more extreme than when the character was calm and collected at the beginning of the game. An example is a new animation that been cropping up is as a take down move, beat an enemy to the floor and shove the nozzle of your gun into their mouth. A little excessive. His walk and run cycles have been affected by the injuries he's sustained as well.

If you want a game to make you feel completely horrible then this one is for you. I'm just watching James play and i feel guilty about some of the options.

Life Drawing
 The past 2 weeks I've gone to the extra life drawing class on a Tuesday  I went all through last year as well for a few reasons.

• Drawing from life is far better than drawing from photos
• It's helping me get better with proportions and weight distribution
• It's relaxing and a nice little constant for the week 

I forgot to upload them last week and i didn't manage to upload them yesterday so you get both weeks in one this week.

Week 1.
A collection of 2-5 minute sketches, one moving sketch and two 20 minute sketches.

Week 2.
We hadn't got a model so we drew each other (I'm so sorry.)

Reference:
Sam Yip and Mark Garabedian http://www.animationarena.com/video-game-animation.html
Forum comments http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=884223
Ken Perlin Facial Demo http://mrl.nyu.edu/~perlin/facedemo/

23/10/12 - Tech Limits

Technical limitations

http://web.ebscohost.com.libproxy.abertay.ac.uk/ehost/detail?sid=d538878e-5339-4476-b250-db0e517d4793%40sessionmgr14&vid=1&hid=16&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=buh&AN=24682503

Nice Journal with suggestions for how animation could be done in the future to add more realism by giving more control to the animators when it comes to blending methods, it would eliminate the need for an animation programmer who may not have the eye for what works best


Everything else

I have a lot more tabs open with things to look at but other than Life drawing and some animation practise I've been a bit lazy with my research. I found a collage of facial expressions, some including hands, in an article so I'm mimicking them. I've done three today but I'm not used to the controls on the eleven rig so it's been a little tricky, i do like the rig on the hands though. I think I'll upload the life drawing I've been doing as well because that counts as personal development and it's helping me understand weight a little better.

22/10/12 - Dishonored and Proposal/Lit Review

Dishonored

I've played a little way into dishonored now, at the beginning i think i was getting too focused on particular animations for NPC's and whereas the notes I've made have been valid points that would need to be improved to add more of a sense of realism they don't seem to have been helpful towards my theory form the previous post. In a way my analysis went backwards. Fortunately i noticed this fairly early on and decided it would be best to play properly and let myself become immersed in the game and think about the personalities with them fresh in my mind, then if i realized anything specific i could go back and record it.

My opinions on the main character (Corvo) so far have been mainly influenced by the introduction to the game and the safe parts in between each of my "missions" as during the missions he wears a mask which effectively makes him completely anonymous meaning the enemies and more important characters won't react to him as they would react if they knew his identity (however as the story goes on i would expect them to start reacting to his new persona in the mask as it gains more notoriety). All of my opinions are based on how NPC's react towards me and what options are available to me in the world.

Corvo, formally the Lord Protector and seemingly good friend to the Empress and her daughter. Good at his job, well known and respected throughout the kingdom until he is framed for the Empress' murder and the kidnap of her daughter. Specially chosen (for an as yet unknown reason) by the outsider (some sort of illusive magical dude, and yes that's the technical term) Not afraid to get his hands dirty and assassinate people presumably either because he was trained that way or because he will do anything to save the Empress' daughter? The later i'm not so sure about as as a character Corvo seems to follow the blank slate sort of game protagonist like Gordon Freeman in the Half Life series, you have few options to say anything to characters and when you do the answers are brief and to the point giving away very little or nothing at all about Corvo himself.

Based on my opinions i'll choose a few NPCs and write about what i can tell of their personalities, their relation to the main character and their opinion of the main character and then suggest through short animations how i think they would react to a specific action. Then i'll try it within the game and compare the results.

Proposal and Lit Review

I will hold my hands up now and say i have absolutely nothing drafted for my proposal and lit review at this point in time. I'm finding it difficult to collect the right information together and every time i try i find a large gap in my research so i end up going and looking into that for example the latest is that i haven't dedicated any time (yet) to looking into technological restrictions on animation for games which i think is necessary to know when i make suggestions.

I want more time to research.

Here's my rough aim and objectives, i ran them quickly by Robin and he seemed to think they were fine.

Aim
To Identify and suggest possible solutions for making a more complete library of animations for NPCs within story driven games.

Objective
Research what an NPCs place within a story driven game is.

Research what technical limitations exist in game animation.

Develop my understanding of human interactions

Analyse existing games and identify gaps in NPC's animation libraries

20/10/12 - Posing and Dishonoured

Today i spent some time on the second recommendation from the 11 second club. I went out and bought a magazine and then tried to mimic some of the poses as accurately as i could with a 3D character rig, because i wanted a slightly more lifelike shape for the model i used the eleven rig (http://elevenrig.blogspot.co.uk/) it's listed as one of the references on the 11 second club as a rig that's nice to animate with and that's why i chose it. I only managed 3 poses because it's a lot harder to do than you think and even the three that i did I'm not entirely happy with. I plan on doing more of these involving male poses as well, i might look at creating some poses with a rig that has more lifelike proportions as well even though I'm enjoying the challenge of mimicking the stance with this rig.

The other thing i bought today was Dishonoured...

 I have a habit of trying to avoid all coverage of games and films I'm interested in because i find it's more fun not knowing anything and learning as i play/watch. This is a bit of an advantage when it comes to the test I'm planning to do. I'm going to play dishonoured and write down what i think my characters personality is like and as i learn I'll act as close to that personality as i can within in the game. Hopefully this will throw up animations they haven't included which i think would help reflect the main protagonist's personality. However I'm aware that this will be purely from my own opinion so as an extra test I'm going to get James to do the same thing when he's playing the game. He won't be there when i play and i won't watch him play parts i haven't seen yet so I'm not influenced by his choices and vice versa. It will be interesting to see if we both come back with the same sort of character profile as i know that the game does give you the option to choose some of your characters choices to a degree. If we both think of the character the same way then  either we both are quite similar or the game may be subtly pushing us towards certain choices, possibly although not exclusively through the way NPCs react around us.

19/10/12 - Importance of Character In Games

I started the day with a little plan of attack.
I wanted to:

• Re- read Robin Sloan's journal with my new project, NPC reactions to player interactions, in mind. Fishing for things that could be relevant in backing up my own ideas in my lit review and possible criteria to look into to use as a framework.
• Devise a mini project focusing on an aspect of character animation i feel weaker on.

What I've actually done ( I'll try and justify my notes and why i think they're important as i go.):

Re-read the first part of Robin Sloan's journal on User Agency and Character Performance within games. I've taken a quote which backs up my own argument that NPC's are needed to create a compelling story within certain types of games.

"Pivotal (NPCS) - those constituting the supporting cast of a video game - are essential to the telling of a game story. Particularly in genres that focus on story and characters" (Sloan, 2011)
Later on he identifies that the development of reactive characters performance has been largely overlooked in games thus far. Which further justifies my project as a valid topic to look into. I also found a quote which i thought about possibly turning into a test.

" Variation, Posing, Sequence and Timing of character movements rendered on the fly can manipulate audience interpretation and the perceived content"
I could possibly create a couple animations exploring each of the four criteria mentioned and then let other people view them and give their own opinions on how the difference affects what they think the characters personality could be.
 For example, for pose I could show short idle animations of the same character standing with slightly different posture and see if that has any affect on the audience interpretation of their personality.

I then looked for journals that studied the importance of character in video games, i think this search stemmed from a thought that's been resonating with me for the last few days and looking at character personality brought it to the surface again. Recently i attended a talk laid on by the university with Sean Laverty who works at Blizzard and Fraser Maclean who works within the animation industry on such projects as Tarzan and Who framed Roger Rabbit. During the talk Fraser Maclean made a comment about the importance of character animation within games and how he didn't feel it was as important as the environment the player was in. I could be misinterpreting his comment but from the way it sounded and if that view is commonly shared it could be one reason why NPC personality hasn't been explored fully in games so far.
My search produced a journal called:



"Characters in Computer Games:  Toward Understanding Interpretation and Design"
- Petri Lankoski, Satu Heliö, Inger Ekman
which can be found at this link: http://www.digra.org/dl/db/05087.10012.pdf

Although it looks more at the character of the protagonist in games some of the methods they use are interesting and could easily be applied to NPCs instead. For example they look at the use of Dramatic writing and Literary Theory when designing a character for games.

The first note i took was a reference to G.Forster who wrote a view on designing literary characters. He put characters into two categories, flat and round. Flat characters are predictable in their responses and have little or no defining characteristics which could be a way of thinking about background NPC's. Round characters need to be "believable even when they surprise the reader"which could be a way of thinking when designing a more prominent NPC such as a companion character.

The next note was in regards to how possible it is to design a game character with personality as both Frasca and Menetzky agreed that more freedom for the player to interact = less character which would justify why a lot of games use cut scenes to get the characters personality across instead of attempting to do it within the game.

Then the article speaks about methods of portraying personality of the main character within the game and one in particular i thought applied to NPC personality. They speak about predefined action as a method of retaining consistency of personality and the example they give was the way characters (NPCs) react towards the protagonist. An NPCs reactions to the protagonists actions or presence will give the player some idea of the protagonist's personality. They use ICO as an example of this, Yorda's reactions to ICO within the game are trusting and obedient which will help to establish ICO's nature as friendly and caring.

   I think this view of the role of the NPC gives a greater cause for more performance based reactions within games to help the player know their place in the world and the sort of person they play as.

This research seems to have uncovered a link between the personality of the protagonist and the reactions the NPC's would be required to give which may explain why some animations were missing when the player acts out of character. So while looking at games from now i might want to take that into account.

I had some more notes on this journal but they seem to be drifting into the visual design of a character and it's affect on personality which isn't really something i want to look into at this time.


Animation PractiseAs I mentioned at the beginning of this post i want to prepare little exercises for me to do when i don't have any tests planned so i can continue to improve my skills as an animator. The first I've come up with is doing a study on hand movements. I plan on recording my hand moving and then mimicking the reference footage with an animated rig. Hopefully it will give me a better insight into how hands move so that when i animate in future i have a deeper understanding of how to approach it.

Update: I got a bit stuck with what to do with my hand so after some hunting for a good clip of film with no success i ended up on the 11 second club website. I was tempted to enter the competition for this month or at least use it for practise but when i was reading the tips it gives you i came across this quote:

"It's like a guy saying, "You know what I'm going to do? I'm going to start off as a four-star chef." Well, can you cook a cup of rice? "No." Can you cook an omelet? "No." Well, why don't you start off learning how to cook rice, and by the way, that takes about a year. Four star chefs take a full year learning how to cook rice and how to cook omelettes  "Well, I'm not going to do that." Well, then you're never going to be a four-star chef." 

I think i want to start a bit smaller with my practices, go back to basics a bit more so i can get a better grasp on the principles of animation. It gave a few suggestions of ways to practice which i'm going to take on board. They are...

Give it some thought. Here are some exercise ideas you can try if you really want to improve those basic skills:

Bounce a ball up and down. Don't worry about moving it across the screen, or rotating it naturally, or interacting with obstacles. Just try a simple up-and-down bounce. It's more complicated than you might think. 

Buy a magazine. Any magazine. On almost every page you'll find a photograph of a person in a pose, whether it's an advertisement or related to the magazine's featured articles. Pick one and pose your character to match that photograph as closely as possible. Really look at all of the nuances--from the spine to the hips, to the tips of the fingers--that create that pose.

Stand your character naturally in one place, resting its weight on its left leg. Then animate the character shifting its weight to the right leg while standing in the same spot.

Do the same exercise as above, only this time have the character's feet shift a little as well.

Here's the animations of a ball, one heavy one light. I've also been trying to use my sketchbook more.. the better i understand how anatomy works the better my poses will appear in my animations.


Update 2: I explained the theory of NPCs animations reflecting the main characters personality to James and because i had to explain it to someone out loud it came out making a lot more sense and had a lot more detail to it so i'm going to try and remember what i said. Using the above information i explained that i would need to look for animations that were missing but still would be expected to happen from the protagonist of a game. As according to the theory i had made based on the information from the Journal mentioned earlier in this post the animations of an NPC need to be not only a reflection of their own individual personality but that of the protagonists personality too. I then picked out a reason why i thought skyrim had done better than a lot of previous games because when playing as a Kajit some of the NPCs in the world had almost a racist attitude towards me, and comments and reactions fitted with that, but what they didn't do is react to my character as an individual which is where it fell down a little. From this i thought perhaps a mix of skyrims reactions to the stereotype of my character and fables reaction to me as an individual would be the best way to approach a new system. So if you spoke to a character in skyrim often enough they grew either fonder or more aggressive towards you based on your previous actions. James then told me about a game that came out about a month ago which apparently didn't do as well as it should have called Spec Ops : The line. It's a first person shooter but apparently it plays much more on story and the choices you make come back to haunt you and your character. I haven't played this but based on the opinion of Yahtzee's review of it on zero punctuation it looks worth it just to observe the changes in the characters animations (if there are any) plus any game that he doesn't tear a new one, if you pardon the expression, seems to be worth playing. Here's his review, expect his usually crassness...

The Escapist : Zero Punctuation : Spec Ops: The Line