Anymore it isn't even the limits of the computer systems limiting character animation in games. it is the amount of time it takes to actually create the animations for the characters. most 3d animation programs can draw through opengl or directx the characters preforming the actions of the animation in real time especially if you have a newer computer. the biggest limitation is the scope of the virtual world that the game characters interact with.

even with rag-doll physics you still have to animate for each and every interaction that the character can do non of it scripted ahead of time and that is a lot of work.

a lot of games have a similar production time to movies and they don't have to deal with the players unfathomable ability to break things. it would also be my guess that in a modern game there is close to the same number of minutes of animation as there is with an animated film

Quote: Original post by LockePick
You don't seem to be catching on to the very basic, fundamental difference between animation for an animation, and animation for a game which has a million totally unrelated requirements that need to be taken care of.

Of course I have a grasp on this concept. It does get me that high-end games, which have such humongously strong emphasis on graphics, have such lackluster animation, but I understand that it's not the top priority. The main thing that I was confused about is why games have such universally icky animations, and in many cases transition straight from beautiful cutscenes to horribly robotic in-game scenes. One particular example I played recently was Arkham Asylum, which featured some very excellent cinematics rendered in the game engine, but as soon as you got into the game everybody stopped being even vaguely interesting. I can get how this is largely due to time constraints but even the quality of the motion degraded and that's what I was mainly concerned about, and I think a couple of you have done a good job explaining why.

Quote: Original post by Portugal Stew

Quote: Original post by LockePick
You don't seem to be catching on to the very basic, fundamental difference between animation for an animation, and animation for a game which has a million totally unrelated requirements that need to be taken care of.

Of course I have a grasp on this concept. It does get me that high-end games, which have such humongously strong emphasis on graphics, have such lackluster animation, but I understand that it's not the top priority. The main thing that I was confused about is why games have such universally icky animations, and in many cases transition straight from beautiful cutscenes to horribly robotic in-game scenes. One particular example I played recently was Arkham Asylum, which featured some very excellent cinematics rendered in the game engine, but as soon as you got into the game everybody stopped being even vaguely interesting. I can get how this is largely due to time constraints but even the quality of the motion degraded and that's what I was mainly concerned about, and I think a couple of you have done a good job explaining why.

You said you've done some animation work, so I'm sure you'd have an absolute blast creating a perfect blend between wherever the player happened to be standing before the transition from gameplay to cutscene and their initial position in the cinematic. Nope, don't even think about cheating and interpolating. Let me know when you're done.

You see, there isn't a magical 'good animation' button that somehow allows a studio to create really stellar movement. Movie animations and in-game cinematics surrender total control to the artists, and as a result, you get (in your own words, mind you) "very excellent cinematics rendered in the game engine."

We're hitting something of a singularity with this problem, actually; there's a greater and greater pressure for games to offer an obscene amount of player->environment interaction and almost no additional time allotted for the development team to actually generate this. To go back to the initial cutscene transition analogy, the animation team is *required* go generate a greater and greater fraction of all said poses within a disturbingly static time deadline. Average development time for a game is two years, and hasn't changed since maybe early 2000, likely even before. Tools get better, sure, but that can only do so much to alleviate the underlying problem.

There are solutions, however-- do a Google search for parametric motion if you're interested. These are complex beasts, however, and (for the moment) they still can't really match the quality of a good human animation team. It's better than nothing, though, and I'd gander we're going to be seeing it a lot more in the immediate future. On a side note, I'd venture to say that game animators are probably even better (on average) than a lot of offline ones-- content they generate has to look good from all angles as opposed to a predetermined one. You, as a player, may stretch/break their work, but such is the price of interactivity.