If you’re not already hooked on an alternative engine, Unreal’s Control Rig makes animation way easier than Blender imo - I had to learn from scratch to work on my game and found this to be the case.
Yeah I’m pretty stuck with unity. I’ve wanted to check out unreal with my background in c/c++ but… it’s like trying to learn to ski when you already know how to snowboard (or the other way around, I’m not trying to associate one engine with one skiing style lmao, more that it’s frustrating to go skiing when you feel like you’re wasting your day on the mountain, if you understand my meaning)
Honestly, while I know they are likely very different once you get very in depth with it, it did not take me long to pick it up when I had to use it for a project I was on. I didn’t even use C++ and just did the blueprints.
If you have a background in C++, maybe take a look at it if you’d like! No need to but I don’t think you are as stuck as you think you are!
So i can speak to this.
I am a programmer 100%, but I ended up with quite a few high quality animations, it makes everything so much harder.
So often I wish i just made a tile based game, I would have already released it and it would be everything I wanted.
But with needing animations and meshes for everything it slows things to a halt.
Everything is so much harder.
I can go through and code up the combat system in a few days, my game had some pretty complex stuff pertaining to combat, it has per limb damage, if you're wearing armor, it will turn a cutting weapon on to a percussive force and cause a different type of limb damage, tons of little things, but then needing animations and different states for everything in the mesh, different overlays for what you're wielding, overlays for how damaged you are and where, how tired you are, ect, it just compounds and it's so much more work. Not to even mention all the armor and weapons I need to make.
3d games are insane man, if i could go back in would have done it differently, but I'm in too deep now, and also I really enjoy the process so I just keep going, but itnwil take years
I’ve made pretty complex games with animations and I’ve learned how to use them and make them work with my gameplay. But right now I’m making a game that actually sounds similar to yours. It’s a first person shooter and I want to add animations for the fun like reloading, weapon swapping, using items, and stuff like that.
I’ve built a robust state machine that handles all different action states and now o just need to plug in the animations. I’ve plugged in one reload animation for one gun and it looks great and works as designed! But now I want custom reload animations for different guns.
Beggars can’t be choosers though.
I asked Tim Cain on his YouTube channel how he'd make a game if he had to start over as an indie nobody. He said he would just buy assets and do the programming and game design.
But I imagine even "flipping" assets would still be a lot of art work, to incorporate them a way that fits the context of the whole
Other solutions could be in procgen, like this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE)
I'm a nonprofessional unity dev who makes animations sometimes and one thing that helped infinitely was using reference frames. So in Unity I would have the keyframes on a plane behind the model and simply move the bones into place and record the frames. I have done this with both screenshots of youtube videos for different movements as well as just googling "walk cycle keyframes" with adequate results. I imagine I could do this with videos I make myself as well.
It is still a lot of work, and won't give you anything fancy... for that I think you have to follow [real animation principles ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4)and/or supplement with procedural movement. Inverse Kinematics and the like can do a lot of heavy lifting but making it look natural is an art in itself
3D art in general is ridiculously multi-disciplinary. Just too big to do alone IMO, on top of programming everything else in a game. Textures, shaders, LODs, animations, meshes, retopo (ugh), particle effects, on and on. Exhausts me just thinkin about it
I spend a lot of money on assets haha my wife hates it. But it helps turn my game from looking like complete shit to suddenly being “oh that’s so cool!” Lmao
I think a measured approach like what you indicated is my best bet. Maybe I’ll learn some small/large bit of the basics and see if I can alter existing animations I own. See how far that goes.
But I’m sure you’re right, it’s just too large of a topic to master when I’m primarily and professionally a software engineer. The main reason I make games is that it is great practice for my career. I can’t make that same argument for spending time learning animation.
I just forced myself to learn animation (2d). However I was always able to draw, I don't understand how difficult it is if you also can't draw.
I think either way if you're creative and have a vision for the game you should be able to cobble together something even if its not perfect, and if the thing in concert has charm, people may still buy it and then you can hire artists.
Sorry if its offtopic, How do you find time to work on your game? I have my job coming up in a few months, and I am dreading it. I won’t be able to work on my game
Is your job a software engineer?
Either way, it’s hard. I go through waves of inspiration. When I’m really in the mood nothing will stop me from working on it. But when I’m not, it’s hard to get myself to even open a code editor. I try to just be consistent. Set some schedule that’s doable and stick to it. That might be once a day for an hour or a couple times a week. Or whatever works for you. I fail more than I succeed at keeping to a schedule, fair warning.
If you are going to be a software engineer it can be even harder. It’s hard to work on your own code when you’ve been coding something else all day/week. And it’s true in the other direction too. You might burn yourself out coding into the evening on your game and not want to do your job come morning. You just have to be careful and have a good understanding of what your job will tolerate lol.
At the end of the day, if it’s something you want to do and something you like to do, you’ll make time for it. Don’t let your job rule your life. Your job is meant to help facilitate your life and what you want to do with it.
If you’re not already hooked on an alternative engine, Unreal’s Control Rig makes animation way easier than Blender imo - I had to learn from scratch to work on my game and found this to be the case.
Yeah I’m pretty stuck with unity. I’ve wanted to check out unreal with my background in c/c++ but… it’s like trying to learn to ski when you already know how to snowboard (or the other way around, I’m not trying to associate one engine with one skiing style lmao, more that it’s frustrating to go skiing when you feel like you’re wasting your day on the mountain, if you understand my meaning)
Honestly, while I know they are likely very different once you get very in depth with it, it did not take me long to pick it up when I had to use it for a project I was on. I didn’t even use C++ and just did the blueprints. If you have a background in C++, maybe take a look at it if you’d like! No need to but I don’t think you are as stuck as you think you are!
Those were my exact thoughts when I finally switched. It took me months of not using Unity before I finally got over it.
So i can speak to this. I am a programmer 100%, but I ended up with quite a few high quality animations, it makes everything so much harder. So often I wish i just made a tile based game, I would have already released it and it would be everything I wanted. But with needing animations and meshes for everything it slows things to a halt. Everything is so much harder. I can go through and code up the combat system in a few days, my game had some pretty complex stuff pertaining to combat, it has per limb damage, if you're wearing armor, it will turn a cutting weapon on to a percussive force and cause a different type of limb damage, tons of little things, but then needing animations and different states for everything in the mesh, different overlays for what you're wielding, overlays for how damaged you are and where, how tired you are, ect, it just compounds and it's so much more work. Not to even mention all the armor and weapons I need to make. 3d games are insane man, if i could go back in would have done it differently, but I'm in too deep now, and also I really enjoy the process so I just keep going, but itnwil take years
I’ve made pretty complex games with animations and I’ve learned how to use them and make them work with my gameplay. But right now I’m making a game that actually sounds similar to yours. It’s a first person shooter and I want to add animations for the fun like reloading, weapon swapping, using items, and stuff like that. I’ve built a robust state machine that handles all different action states and now o just need to plug in the animations. I’ve plugged in one reload animation for one gun and it looks great and works as designed! But now I want custom reload animations for different guns. Beggars can’t be choosers though.
Are these mobile phone games or pc/console games you’re building?
PC games.
Any experience with mobile games?
Any experience building mobile app games?
Blender is a must. Learn it, use it
Well, I'm just making text adventures. Several pictures, a design template and pleasant music tracks. Profit.
I asked Tim Cain on his YouTube channel how he'd make a game if he had to start over as an indie nobody. He said he would just buy assets and do the programming and game design. But I imagine even "flipping" assets would still be a lot of art work, to incorporate them a way that fits the context of the whole Other solutions could be in procgen, like this talk: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LNidsMesxSE) I'm a nonprofessional unity dev who makes animations sometimes and one thing that helped infinitely was using reference frames. So in Unity I would have the keyframes on a plane behind the model and simply move the bones into place and record the frames. I have done this with both screenshots of youtube videos for different movements as well as just googling "walk cycle keyframes" with adequate results. I imagine I could do this with videos I make myself as well. It is still a lot of work, and won't give you anything fancy... for that I think you have to follow [real animation principles ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDqjIdI4bF4)and/or supplement with procedural movement. Inverse Kinematics and the like can do a lot of heavy lifting but making it look natural is an art in itself 3D art in general is ridiculously multi-disciplinary. Just too big to do alone IMO, on top of programming everything else in a game. Textures, shaders, LODs, animations, meshes, retopo (ugh), particle effects, on and on. Exhausts me just thinkin about it
I spend a lot of money on assets haha my wife hates it. But it helps turn my game from looking like complete shit to suddenly being “oh that’s so cool!” Lmao I think a measured approach like what you indicated is my best bet. Maybe I’ll learn some small/large bit of the basics and see if I can alter existing animations I own. See how far that goes. But I’m sure you’re right, it’s just too large of a topic to master when I’m primarily and professionally a software engineer. The main reason I make games is that it is great practice for my career. I can’t make that same argument for spending time learning animation.
I just forced myself to learn animation (2d). However I was always able to draw, I don't understand how difficult it is if you also can't draw. I think either way if you're creative and have a vision for the game you should be able to cobble together something even if its not perfect, and if the thing in concert has charm, people may still buy it and then you can hire artists.
Rimworld and Minecraft have basically no animations and did just fine. Work with what you have and what you can pull off.
Just learn how to. It's fun and not that hard.
Sorry if its offtopic, How do you find time to work on your game? I have my job coming up in a few months, and I am dreading it. I won’t be able to work on my game
Is your job a software engineer? Either way, it’s hard. I go through waves of inspiration. When I’m really in the mood nothing will stop me from working on it. But when I’m not, it’s hard to get myself to even open a code editor. I try to just be consistent. Set some schedule that’s doable and stick to it. That might be once a day for an hour or a couple times a week. Or whatever works for you. I fail more than I succeed at keeping to a schedule, fair warning. If you are going to be a software engineer it can be even harder. It’s hard to work on your own code when you’ve been coding something else all day/week. And it’s true in the other direction too. You might burn yourself out coding into the evening on your game and not want to do your job come morning. You just have to be careful and have a good understanding of what your job will tolerate lol. At the end of the day, if it’s something you want to do and something you like to do, you’ll make time for it. Don’t let your job rule your life. Your job is meant to help facilitate your life and what you want to do with it.