Creating video game characters that look and feel great to play requires close collaboration between design and animation. In this talk Bioware speakers will have a look at the process they used to create some of the more exotic traversal abilities players have at their disposal in 'Anthem'. Starting with the character physics, they will look at what methods that were employed to get that movement looking and feeling great. They will then look at how Bioware authored animations to mesh with the character physics in the best way possible. The speakers will discuss what type of dialogue between animation and design enabled Bioware to achieve a successful end result and they will provide plenty of examples in the form of videos from development to help illustrate their workflow.

Takeaway

Attendees will learn about the process of bringing character movement to life in ‘Anthem’ from both an animator’s and designer’s perspective. As the two disciplines are inherently linked and heavily influence one another, this talk hopes to give a fuller picture of the whole process behind getting the movement feeling right. Attendees will understand successful implementation details and constraint management for player flight, such as ways that camera style can influence animations, and how animations can influence the character physics in the forms of additional movement tuning curves to allow for better expression of certain actions or transitions. The speakers will also go over methods for efficient animator-designer collaboration in general.

Intended Audience

This presentation is targeted to animators and designers who work on core gameplay and iterate closely together. Developers focused on kinetic moment-to-moment gameplay, developers of vehicles, flying traversal, and character physics developers will find beneficial content. No prerequisite knowledge.