《骑马与砍杀2：霸主》开发日志（85）——采访动画师Abdullah Nakipoglu

贤狼赫萝 · 发表于 2018-11-16 04:22:20

本帖最后由贤狼赫萝于 2018-11-16 18:08 编辑

Greetings warriors of Calradia!

Animations are a big part of video games, apart from the obvious reason (a totally still game wouldn’t be much fun, would it?), because they actually have a deep impact on gameplay. If animating a movie is hard work, just imagine animating something that will change and evolve depending on players’ input! Animations give you the visual cues you need to react to what’s happening on screen, especially in combat, so they need to feel natural and realistic. But at the same time, as a player you want to retain control over what’s going on, so animations need to be short and always keep the ability to change on the fly. Then you’ve got all the technical challenges related to motion capture – and that’s not counting animating animals such as dogs or birds, where MoCap is out of the question. This week we talk with one of our character animators, Abdullah Nakipoglu, who will give us a sneak peek at the complex process of animating characters in Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.

卡拉迪亚的战士们，大家好！

动画是游戏的一大环节，除了这明显的原因(一个静止的游戏就没那么好玩了吧？)，还有这对游戏娱乐有非常大的影响。如果让一个电影动起来就是一件很难的事，那就想象一下让演员的动作去变活一个东西吧！游戏动画能让你从视觉上感知到屏幕上发生了什么并做出反应，尤其是战斗中，这就需要让人感觉自然而且真实。但同时，玩家还需要有足够的控制，所以动画就需要保持简短流畅。然后，你还有各种动作捕捉技术上的挑战——包括但不限于动物动画，比如狗和鸟之类的，这就超出MoCap的极限了。本期日志我们要和角色动画师 Abdullah Nakipoglu给我们泄露一点点骑马与砍杀2：霸主的复杂角色动作制作流程吧。

姓名
Abdullah Nakipoglu

城市
Ankara, Turkey

于2011年加入TALEWORLDS

教育背景
Animschool - 角色动画

职业介绍
动画师/ 动作捕捉师

WHAT DO YOU NORMALLY DO DURING YOUR DAY?
“ Generally, my day-to-day routine consists of resolving issues with reported bugs, discussing new ideas or requested developments and preparing the prototyping of these ideas when necessary.

你每天都会做什么？
一般来讲，我的日常工作包括解决BUG，讨论新想法或者提出要求，还有就是在必要时刻准备原型。

我作为动画师的职责是准备把所有动画做出来并将放到游戏中。有时它可以是动物的动画，攻击或者受伤，城里各种角色的移动，或者大地图上的图标动画。如果需要角色动作，我首先在我们手工清理动画之前先到MoCap工作室录制。在我们不使用MoCap的情况下（向鹅/牛/狗），我首先准备骨骼系统，然后使用我收集的参考视频处理动画。

在骑砍2里，我们使用的是我们自己开发的引擎，随着时间的推移，引擎也不断地发展和改进。遗憾的事，这也让我必须不断地去重做我以前做过的东西。通常我经常会修改动作，但有时候我会在必要情况下从0开始。

当我有空闲的时间，我会花很多时间去玩游戏，专注去完成动画效果，然后看看它们是否有做出我想要的效果，或者是否有任何改进的空间。如果我注意到了一些事情，我会做些笔记然后进行一些必要的修改。

WHAT DO YOU LIKE THE MOST ABOUT BANNERLORD?
“I have an interest in history and I like to read about and research ancient wars. Fighting on horseback, laying siege to a castle with your own army, fighting under the command of a general, being captured... With its rich and detailed world, Bannerlord offers all of these experiences and more! Furthermore, the game features a unique combat system that has been improved upon from Warband.”

WHAT'S THE MOST DIFFICULT THING THAT YOU SOLVED SO FAR, DURING THE PRODUCTION OF BANNERLORD?
“I have faced many different problems and issues during the production process, that’s for sure!

I have found it challenging, but also compelling, preparing animations that retain a somewhat natural feel to them, but still, work within the boundaries of the game mechanics. Sometimes, we come across comments like, “can the movements be more natural?”, and it is true that we could create more detailed and animated animations to make them look and feel more natural. However, this would ultimately limit the control of the character for the player. For example, players can interrupt an attack at any time by issuing a block command, or they can move their character in any direction without waiting for an attack to end. If we were to create totally realistic animations then we would have to restrict or reduce the control of the player in these instances. It is also important in some instances that we over-exaggerate an animation so that it can be clearly seen and recognised by the player, such as with our fast-paced directional combat system. Ultimately, we try to keep any animations that would limit the control of the player to a minimum, allowing players to use and develop their skills within a control system that responds instantly.

Another example of a challenging project is the injury/stun animations. These animations needed to be prepared separately for each part of the body, in three different levels... for four different directions! These animations needed to be short enough not to limit the control of the player, while working in accordance with the inverse kinematics (IK) system. As the animation we prepared with MoCap recording is playing on the base layer, the reaction coming from the IK system is attached according to the area and direction of the attack in the upper layer. Preparing the MoCap recordings for all of these and cleaning the body movements that are inappropriate for the IK system was a difficult process.”

WHAT DO YOU CURRENTLY WORK ON?
“I am working on the preparation of the newly added dog animations. In addition to this, I am making new MoCap recordings to make the falling animations from horseback more impressive.”

你最喜欢骑砍2的哪一点？
我对历史很感兴趣，我喜欢阅读和研究古代战争。在马背上战斗，带领大军围攻城堡，听从指挥官的命令战斗，被俘虏……就凭这丰富而又精细的世界，骑砍2能让我们感受到这些体验甚至更多！另外，这游戏还有独特的战斗系统，在战团的基础上有了不少改进。

在制作骑砍2的时候，你解决的最大困难是什么？

我在制作过程中肯定事遇到了许多不同的问题！

我发现准备动画的时候有挑战性，但也引人注目，需要保持一些自然感，但又要保持在游戏机制的范围内。有时候我们经常会听到“这些动作能不能更自然点？”的评论，我们是可能做一些更细致更灵活的动画让它看起来更自然。然而，这最终会限制玩家对游戏的控制。比如说，玩家可以通过格挡来随时中断攻击，或者可以在被攻击的时候依然能四处走动/如果我们要创建一些完全逼真的动画，那我们就不得不限制和减少对玩家的控制。有些时候我们还要夸大一些动画，这样能让玩家清楚看见并识别动画，例如我们快节奏的定向战斗系统。最终，我们会试图将任何限制玩家控制的动画保持在最低限度，允许玩家在即时响应的控制系统中使用和发展他们的技巧。

另一个有挑战性的项目就是受伤/硬直动画。这些动画需要为身体的每个部分单独准备，通常为4个方向分3个等级。这些动画需要足够段，以便在反向动作系统的基础上不去限制玩家。作为动画师，我们用MoCap来作为基础的动作记录，反向动作系统的反应是取决于受力方向和面积更高级一点。准备动作捕捉记录，然后清理一些反向动作系统不合理的动作是一件很艰难的过程。

你现在在做什么？
我正准备给狗新加一些动画。除此之外，我正在录制新动作，就是从马背上摔下来的动画效果，那个是真的令人影响深刻。

WHAT FACTION DO YOU LIKE THE MOST IN BANNERLORD?
“I don’t really have a favourite faction, but I think it would be fun to try to unite the continent of Calradia with the Khuzait Khanate.”

COULD YOU EXPLAIN THE PROCESS OF ANIMATING HORSE ARCHERS IN THE GAME? DID YOU USE REAL HORSES?
“A MoCap recording process for horses would be a quite demanding job. The data coming from the markers located on the muscles of a horse can get quite messy and that data would need to be deep cleaned before being used for the bone motions. If we were using a muscle simulation, this data could be extremely helpful, but alas, we are not, and so we make the horse animations (as well as all other animal animations) by hand instead.”

WILL THERE BE SPECIAL CINEMATIC ANIMATIONS? (LIKE THE WEDDING IN WARBAND, WILL WE SEE OUR FUNERAL ETC.?)
“Yes, there will be in-game “cutscenes” that are similar to those in Warband.”

你喜欢骑砍2的哪个阵营？
我没有最喜欢的阵营，但我觉得把整个卡拉迪亚大陆和库宰特汗国统一起来肯定很有趣。

你可以解释一下游戏里骑射手的过程吗？你骑过真马么？
给马做MoCap是很艰巨的任务。马的肌肉捕捉数据可能会变得非常混乱，而且需要在绑骨之前做好深度的数据清理。如果我们使用的是肌肉模拟，那数据肯定就非常有帮助了，可惜我们没有，所以我们全程手工给马（以及其他动物）制作动画。

会有什么特别的电影动画么？（像是战团的婚礼，还有葬礼之类的？）
有，游戏中的过场动画会和战团相似。

THE MODDING BLOG LISTED A NUMBER OF TOOLS THAT YOU WILL MAKE AVAILABLE TO THE MODDING COMMUNITY. COULD YOU TELL US WHAT SOFTWARE YOU USE WITH THE MODEL/ANIMATION VIEWER AND ANY OTHER THIRD PARTY SOFTWARE THAT YOU USE TO CREATE ANIMATIONS?
“There are some innovations in our game engine that definitely makes our workflow easier and will surely be liked by modders. The engine allows us to add multiple models and skeletons to the scene at the same time and check the animations in a new model viewer window. When we make changes to the source file of the animation, these changes are also updated in the engine simultaneously. It is also possible to observe the speed of the animation, the skeleton that the animation is connected to, or to create our own scene by adding static objects in this window if we want.

In the process of preparing an animation, we use Motion Builder to prepare motion captures. In addition to that, we use 3ds Max and Maya. We use the common .FBX extension to add animations to the game, so I think that modders will not run into any problems.”

在以前的日志立就列举出不少工具能让MOD制作更方便。你能告诉我们你用的是什么软件做模型/动画，还有你用的是哪些第三方软件做这些动画？

我们的游戏引擎有一些创新，这些创新确实能让我们工作流程更容易，也会让MOD制作者更喜爱。引擎能让我们在一个场景里同时添加多个模型和骨架，并在新的界面查看这些动画。当我们更改动画源文件的时候，这些更改也同时会在引擎里更新。还可以观察观察动画的速度，动画捆绑的骨骼，或者在需要的时候用这个窗口添加静态对象来做自己的场景。

在准备动画过程的时候，我们用Motion Builder来准备动作捕捉。除此之外，我们还用3ds Max和Maya。我们使用常见的FBX后缀来为游戏添加动画，所以我觉得MOD制作者不会遇到什么问题。