Good day everyone, today I'm suggesting a feature that will help the game feel visually more alive.
It's a small detail but can easily introduce enhanced visual on most characters very easily once implemented.
What I'm talking about is giving the possibility to the artists to assign certain bones the ability to be affected by the speed vector.
what do I mean by this? for example.
For a practical example, consider any Kart which character has big ears. if the artist decided to animate the ears, currently the only way to go about it is to choose what direction they should flop towards in a turn. if you expect the character to have the ears flop towards the left when turning right, as an artist what you will do is baking in the turning right animation the ears to flop or lean towards the left. However this approach breaks the moment the player drifts. if the player counter steers, the kart started the drift on the left but counter steer to the right, the turning right animation will playing, which is correct, but will set the ears to flop in the opposite direction of where they would naturally flop. this breaks the visuals a bit. the other solution is just not animating them at all which really makes the game feel visually a bit stale.
so what I'm asking for is to be able to use the velocity vector of the kart and use that to affect how selected bones behave. In the far future if this is expanded, it could also lay the base to make entire animations more dynamic, so like depending on the velocity vector the character might lean to one side, not binded to the turning left turning right. if the kart jumps onto bumps you will see the character jumping in the seat a little bit or if he hits another cart you'll see the sudden deceleration causing the character to bounce to one side. all of which wouldn't require separate animations to be baked but just selected bones to react to the kart speed vector.
minor details that have big visual impacts and make everything more fun to look at.
anyway back to what I was saying, all the rest can be kept for the far future. I'm just asking for selected bones to be affected by the speed vector to make simple things like ears or tails that flop following the "wind" or like even certain kart components, clothes pieces like capes or scarfs.
Sadly I don't know exactly how this should be implemented the best. in theory it should be relatively simple but I have no familiarity with the game engine. I might make a more detailed post in the future since this is a sketch outlining an idea.
Thank you for taking a look at this let me know if it is in any plans.
It's a small detail but can easily introduce enhanced visual on most characters very easily once implemented.
What I'm talking about is giving the possibility to the artists to assign certain bones the ability to be affected by the speed vector.
what do I mean by this? for example.
For a practical example, consider any Kart which character has big ears. if the artist decided to animate the ears, currently the only way to go about it is to choose what direction they should flop towards in a turn. if you expect the character to have the ears flop towards the left when turning right, as an artist what you will do is baking in the turning right animation the ears to flop or lean towards the left. However this approach breaks the moment the player drifts. if the player counter steers, the kart started the drift on the left but counter steer to the right, the turning right animation will playing, which is correct, but will set the ears to flop in the opposite direction of where they would naturally flop. this breaks the visuals a bit. the other solution is just not animating them at all which really makes the game feel visually a bit stale.
so what I'm asking for is to be able to use the velocity vector of the kart and use that to affect how selected bones behave. In the far future if this is expanded, it could also lay the base to make entire animations more dynamic, so like depending on the velocity vector the character might lean to one side, not binded to the turning left turning right. if the kart jumps onto bumps you will see the character jumping in the seat a little bit or if he hits another cart you'll see the sudden deceleration causing the character to bounce to one side. all of which wouldn't require separate animations to be baked but just selected bones to react to the kart speed vector.
minor details that have big visual impacts and make everything more fun to look at.
anyway back to what I was saying, all the rest can be kept for the far future. I'm just asking for selected bones to be affected by the speed vector to make simple things like ears or tails that flop following the "wind" or like even certain kart components, clothes pieces like capes or scarfs.
Sadly I don't know exactly how this should be implemented the best. in theory it should be relatively simple but I have no familiarity with the game engine. I might make a more detailed post in the future since this is a sketch outlining an idea.
Thank you for taking a look at this let me know if it is in any plans.