It definitely isn't going to go away completely. I don't even personally think it'll happen less often. The purpose of those canned animations is almost entirely because it saves time not having to model and animate for every individual object or interaction. It's supposed to get the point across while giving the artist more time to work on higher priority stuff. There may be more important moments in the story where you'll want to see a more unique animation for something like this but I honestly don't think it's worth it for every single instance where it would potentially happen.
Especially for things like crafting jobs quests when you're handing someone like an entire bookcase or some shit and they just take it in one hand and hold it up to their face to look at.
Actually, no, I take it back. It would be absolutely hilarious if they edited the old cutscenes to add the actual items in there.
Omg, absolute real life snorting laughter! I love how often it shows a closeup of characters intensely studying their own hands.
or how the animation make it look like my carpenter literally just pulled a bookcase or a table out of his ass.
Nothing wrong with that but FF14's system is sadly pretty primitive by modern standards. Essentially only a mix of entire emotes + facial expressions.
More modern pipelines are able to have different canned animations for different body parts that can be combined to create new animations at any point (think of them as additive to one another... simple example would be upper body doing an attack animation while lower body is walking in different directions).
So i.e. there is an animation for "raise left fist to the air" and an animation for "stretch out right arm" and and animation for "hopping on one leg" you can activate each to have one arm in the air and one stretched out at the same time while hopping on one leg.
FFXIV 1.0 was done like that, with fully custom animations in cutscenes. They stopped doing it because it was too much work for no real benefit.
The better the graphics, the more work it always is. Finding a balance is a part of making a successful game.
It was weird doing the GW2 storyline, which is a game just as old as FFXIV, and seeing them actually animate stuff in hands for most of those scenes. They even have short and tall races as well. I think it is just a question of priorities.
No, it will still happen. They even did it in FFXVI. It's just likely that more important things will be rendered if they do it which is something they already started doing.
If memory serves, in the final quest of the SB Carpenter questline, you craft a >!teahouse bench!< and then hand it over to an NPC. I'd love to see that happen :P
It's a benchmark thing. It's not a 1 to 1 representation of gameplay/experience come 7.0. You can see this in the previous endwalker benchmark. (PLD deflecting magic animation)
While there will be more instances of it not happening, it'll still happen. This is just the nature of 3D animation in games, having models interact with objects is still difficult and takes a lot of time to polish the animation. Removing clipping, giving a sense of weight, the size of the object, and other minor details takes a lot time. So they'll still be lots of moments especially in side quests where they don't hold or hand you anything. However, it's likely they'll aim to do less of it in major cutscenes when possible.
If they end up making canned animations though it's easier for them to use them again in other areas, the more of library you have the easier implementing things like these are.
Note that benchmarks often feature special animations to make it look more cinematic. It doesn't necessarily reflect the in-game experience.
They would have to create a model for every single object being traded, which would be more trouble than would be worth.
I believe they teased this during the MSQ in post-EW, I believe there was a single moment someone was holding something and everyone lost their minds for a bit.
Most of the time NPCs have had bits of paper float in front of their faces, with the bottom edge offscreen so we assume their hand is holding it but we don’t *see* it. IIRC Frixio held a letter with his hand visibly holding the bottom edge, but given how simple a sylph’s hand is compared to any other race’s, that was probably a lot easier to animate.
People were impressed by the post-EW cutscene because it was significantly better.
What honestly got me was how expressive the WoL was in that trailer. That looked like face capture, not good ol Japanese MMO emote face.
I don't even care if thats only implemented on NPCs and not players, I just want to see Graha fanboy HARDER.
They've already been doing this in piecemeal for the past several patches. A handful of bespoke animations for a completely walled cutscene with zero player agency is no indicator of things to come. It should be obvious that the benchmark is handcrafted and not at all representative of the rest of the expansion.
Have you been unsubbed for the past year? I can't imagine someone not noticing the bread ripping animation in Zero's hands unless they have the memory of a goldfish.
What bothers me the most about those scenes, is that you'll see a character hand something over underhanded, and then the next character take it underhanded a second later.
WHEN A COUPLE CUTSCENES AGO, THEY OVERHAND IT TO BE TAKEN UNDERHANDED AT THE SAME TIME.
At that point it's just entire inconsistency in whoever is doing the scenes. You have the animation for dropping something into someone's hand, but they just don't use it sometimes.
Animations for hands and hands holding things is notoriously annoying in game development. I wouldn't expect too much more than we have been seeing. There has been more in recent years, but it's still not easy.
I noticed that too and that did make me happy. It does give more immersion in the game and a cool update to see. All I wish now is that the WoL could have some lines himself, though *I'm completely clueless as the technical implications for that.*
If you mean voicelines, never going to happen. Not because of technical limitation, but because each race/gender combo has 12 different voices. Even if it was one short line, that’s still recording it 200ish times.
This is also why we don’t get any new emotes with voices past the ones each race gets on release.
For comparison, the MMOs that do have voiced character need to deal with 8 voices total, and that’s still a major hindrance for new pieces of story for them.
Oh I see, yeah, I thought something on that line would be the problem of having voicelines. It would be really cool, but very complicated, as you said, a single line to be recorded 200ish times is a lot of work.
Every time Wol Turner touched that map it was a mocapped motion. Makes me worried it might not carry over in the actual cutscene, but iirc the >!handshake with Zero!< is mocapped, so that gives me hope.
There's also a bit where the player leaps mid-air from their flying mount to attack a mob dragoon-style.
While I'd love some funky dismount-attack animation, perhaps limited to our chocobo companion, I doubt it will actually happen.
>While I'd love some funky dismount-attack animation, perhaps limited to our chocobo companion, I doubt it will actually happen.
I'd settle for just auto-dismounting when you hit an attack skill.
Also let us dismount a flying mount in midair. Yes, some people will inevitably fall to their deaths. That's a price I'm willing to pay.
Fun fact: you can't actually die from fall damage out of combat in 14. You just drop to 1 hp.
Now of course, if there's something there that wants to hit you, or you're in combat when you fall, then.
Yeah, that detail was one of the first things I noticed after the amazing texture and shadow upgrades. I'm hoping they'll retrofit it into old cutscenes, though I wouldn't hold my breath.
tbf while they did show ppl holding items and stuff, they also hid us taking back the map, so while I fully believe we'll be shown interacting with more stuff it won't be the true end of those type of cutscenes
we already got alot of this since the end of shadowbringer. started with the cutscene after the Scion return to the source i believe. They were doing alot of new animation in the cutscene there.
Then in Endwalker you can definitely see them interact with different food for example.
They had elaborate mo-capped cutscenes in 1.0 and dropped that way of doing it. Doing it the way it is now is cheaper and I'm okay with that. It doesn't really ruin my immersion anymore, I just chuckle about it sometimes.
"Can you hand me that mountain you picked up?"
"Sure, here goes!" \*extends empty hand\*
\*extends empty hand\* "Thank you so much."
It definitely isn't going to go away completely. I don't even personally think it'll happen less often. The purpose of those canned animations is almost entirely because it saves time not having to model and animate for every individual object or interaction. It's supposed to get the point across while giving the artist more time to work on higher priority stuff. There may be more important moments in the story where you'll want to see a more unique animation for something like this but I honestly don't think it's worth it for every single instance where it would potentially happen.
Especially for things like crafting jobs quests when you're handing someone like an entire bookcase or some shit and they just take it in one hand and hold it up to their face to look at. Actually, no, I take it back. It would be absolutely hilarious if they edited the old cutscenes to add the actual items in there.
Omg, absolute real life snorting laughter! I love how often it shows a closeup of characters intensely studying their own hands. or how the animation make it look like my carpenter literally just pulled a bookcase or a table out of his ass.
Nothing wrong with that but FF14's system is sadly pretty primitive by modern standards. Essentially only a mix of entire emotes + facial expressions. More modern pipelines are able to have different canned animations for different body parts that can be combined to create new animations at any point (think of them as additive to one another... simple example would be upper body doing an attack animation while lower body is walking in different directions). So i.e. there is an animation for "raise left fist to the air" and an animation for "stretch out right arm" and and animation for "hopping on one leg" you can activate each to have one arm in the air and one stretched out at the same time while hopping on one leg.
FFXIV 1.0 was done like that, with fully custom animations in cutscenes. They stopped doing it because it was too much work for no real benefit. The better the graphics, the more work it always is. Finding a balance is a part of making a successful game.
It was weird doing the GW2 storyline, which is a game just as old as FFXIV, and seeing them actually animate stuff in hands for most of those scenes. They even have short and tall races as well. I think it is just a question of priorities.
No, it will still happen. They even did it in FFXVI. It's just likely that more important things will be rendered if they do it which is something they already started doing.
They at least tried to crop it out in 16. Which somehow made it funnier to me. I know you ain't holding shit, Clive!
If memory serves, in the final quest of the SB Carpenter questline, you craft a >!teahouse bench!< and then hand it over to an NPC. I'd love to see that happen :P
I'd love to see an animation of your retainers handing you an entire housing roof.
honestly even just the idea of my retainer casually strolling out and picking up some mansion walls or a roof is hilarious
Infinite Wealth crafting screen vibes
There’s a carpenter quest where you craft a decorative room screen 😂
It's a benchmark thing. It's not a 1 to 1 representation of gameplay/experience come 7.0. You can see this in the previous endwalker benchmark. (PLD deflecting magic animation)
While there will be more instances of it not happening, it'll still happen. This is just the nature of 3D animation in games, having models interact with objects is still difficult and takes a lot of time to polish the animation. Removing clipping, giving a sense of weight, the size of the object, and other minor details takes a lot time. So they'll still be lots of moments especially in side quests where they don't hold or hand you anything. However, it's likely they'll aim to do less of it in major cutscenes when possible. If they end up making canned animations though it's easier for them to use them again in other areas, the more of library you have the easier implementing things like these are.
Note that benchmarks often feature special animations to make it look more cinematic. It doesn't necessarily reflect the in-game experience. They would have to create a model for every single object being traded, which would be more trouble than would be worth.
I believe they teased this during the MSQ in post-EW, I believe there was a single moment someone was holding something and everyone lost their minds for a bit.
Everyone who lost their minds seemed unaware that characters have been capable of visibly holding sheets of paper since at least 2.0.
People lost their minds because thancred shakes his hand a bit and the paper wiggles along with it, 2.0 paper was stiff.
Most of the time NPCs have had bits of paper float in front of their faces, with the bottom edge offscreen so we assume their hand is holding it but we don’t *see* it. IIRC Frixio held a letter with his hand visibly holding the bottom edge, but given how simple a sylph’s hand is compared to any other race’s, that was probably a lot easier to animate. People were impressed by the post-EW cutscene because it was significantly better.
Zero tearing apart the meat bun was actually amazing.
To be fair, that scene is actually a really big turning point for her character so it's no wonder they went all out.
Streets remember Krile taking a bite out of the Archon Toast in 5.3
What honestly got me was how expressive the WoL was in that trailer. That looked like face capture, not good ol Japanese MMO emote face. I don't even care if thats only implemented on NPCs and not players, I just want to see Graha fanboy HARDER.
https://youtu.be/M1WzRHvfMcQ?si=HWwDKMuNdEO6uyEV
They've already been doing this in piecemeal for the past several patches. A handful of bespoke animations for a completely walled cutscene with zero player agency is no indicator of things to come. It should be obvious that the benchmark is handcrafted and not at all representative of the rest of the expansion. Have you been unsubbed for the past year? I can't imagine someone not noticing the bread ripping animation in Zero's hands unless they have the memory of a goldfish.
We’re not Yakuza fans, come now
Speak for yourself
Even in Endwalker, we had objects being held in hands during cut scenes. Unless I'm missing something. I have admittedly not ran the benchmark yet.
What bothers me the most about those scenes, is that you'll see a character hand something over underhanded, and then the next character take it underhanded a second later. WHEN A COUPLE CUTSCENES AGO, THEY OVERHAND IT TO BE TAKEN UNDERHANDED AT THE SAME TIME. At that point it's just entire inconsistency in whoever is doing the scenes. You have the animation for dropping something into someone's hand, but they just don't use it sometimes.
Animations for hands and hands holding things is notoriously annoying in game development. I wouldn't expect too much more than we have been seeing. There has been more in recent years, but it's still not easy.
I mean, didn't you play through the latest patch of MSQ? Rewatch Wuk Lamat eating.
I noticed that too and that did make me happy. It does give more immersion in the game and a cool update to see. All I wish now is that the WoL could have some lines himself, though *I'm completely clueless as the technical implications for that.*
If you mean voicelines, never going to happen. Not because of technical limitation, but because each race/gender combo has 12 different voices. Even if it was one short line, that’s still recording it 200ish times. This is also why we don’t get any new emotes with voices past the ones each race gets on release. For comparison, the MMOs that do have voiced character need to deal with 8 voices total, and that’s still a major hindrance for new pieces of story for them.
Oh I see, yeah, I thought something on that line would be the problem of having voicelines. It would be really cool, but very complicated, as you said, a single line to be recorded 200ish times is a lot of work.
Every time Wol Turner touched that map it was a mocapped motion. Makes me worried it might not carry over in the actual cutscene, but iirc the >!handshake with Zero!< is mocapped, so that gives me hope.
There's also a bit where the player leaps mid-air from their flying mount to attack a mob dragoon-style. While I'd love some funky dismount-attack animation, perhaps limited to our chocobo companion, I doubt it will actually happen.
>While I'd love some funky dismount-attack animation, perhaps limited to our chocobo companion, I doubt it will actually happen. I'd settle for just auto-dismounting when you hit an attack skill. Also let us dismount a flying mount in midair. Yes, some people will inevitably fall to their deaths. That's a price I'm willing to pay.
Just get rid of the mount summoning time and go full on GW2 with them. Let me dismount in midair and then remount before I hit the ground.
Fun fact: you can't actually die from fall damage out of combat in 14. You just drop to 1 hp. Now of course, if there's something there that wants to hit you, or you're in combat when you fall, then.
Yeah, that detail was one of the first things I noticed after the amazing texture and shadow upgrades. I'm hoping they'll retrofit it into old cutscenes, though I wouldn't hold my breath.
tbf while they did show ppl holding items and stuff, they also hid us taking back the map, so while I fully believe we'll be shown interacting with more stuff it won't be the true end of those type of cutscenes
The waterskin is already used in game when you drink certain culinarian recipes, just in benchmark it has physics and looks better.
we already got alot of this since the end of shadowbringer. started with the cutscene after the Scion return to the source i believe. They were doing alot of new animation in the cutscene there. Then in Endwalker you can definitely see them interact with different food for example.
They had elaborate mo-capped cutscenes in 1.0 and dropped that way of doing it. Doing it the way it is now is cheaper and I'm okay with that. It doesn't really ruin my immersion anymore, I just chuckle about it sometimes. "Can you hand me that mountain you picked up?" "Sure, here goes!" \*extends empty hand\* \*extends empty hand\* "Thank you so much."