Hi,

I'm starting a new project and would like to try 2d bone based animation. I have been using frame by frame animation but as you know this is a lot of work.

I have been checking some games using 2d bone animation and almost all fall sort in animation quality. I have seen great idle animations but almost all walk, different attacks, etc. animations are pretty rigid and without expresiveness/life.

Could anyone with experience explain if these problems with 2d bone animation are inherent to this type of animation? Can one get smooth animations with this technology? If it is not possible to get animations as good as with frame by frame animation could I get close?

Thanks in advance.

Probably what you're searching for (and probably the ideal solution in general I think) is some sort of an "hybrid" schema.

You can basically start with standard skeletal animation, and later on you can easilly add more "frames" to parts of the skeleton as you see fit.

For example, probably your characters will need some sort of facial expression: you can easilly start with a single default face, and later on add special frame to frame animations only to the face bone.

Pick don't starve as an example: Wilson's face has different animations for different situations, but the "base" of the animation is made of bones.

(And I'm sure that facial expressions have been added when the development of the game was almost at the end).

Another thing that can make the difference is how much time you have to complete the project, and yet another how good and quick you can produce frame by frame animations.

I don't really know about the topic, but I just thought that this could be related and of interest to you https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/313026/Art_Design_Deep_Dive_Using_a_3D_pipeline_for_2D_animation_in_Dead_Cells.php

28 minutes ago, erpeo93 said:

Probably what you're searching for (and probably the ideal solution in general I think) is some sort of an "hybrid" schema.

You can basically start with standard skeletal animation, and later on you can easilly add more "frames" to parts of the skeleton as you see fit.

For example, probably your characters will need some sort of facial expression: you can easilly start with a single default face, and later on add special frame to frame animations only to the face bone.

Pick don't starve as an example: Wilson's face has different animations for different situations, but the "base" of the animation is made of bones.

(And I'm sure that facial expressions have been added when the development of the game was almost at the end).

 

Another thing that can make the difference is how much time you have to complete the project, and yet another how good and quick you can produce frame by frame animations.

 

Yep, I have been thinking about this. But haven't seen a good example of this. For facial animations it is easy but don't know how good will be for example for a player that when throws a knife or tries to puch part of his back is revealed. I see here very differnt smoothness in the parts animated by bones and in the parts animated by frames. Don't really know if it will be good enough . Any example on this will be really appreciated.

27 minutes ago, Thiago Monteiro said:

I don't really know about the topic, but I just thought that this could be related and of interest to you https://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/313026/Art_Design_Deep_Dive_Using_a_3D_pipeline_for_2D_animation_in_Dead_Cells.php

 

 

Yup, I have been thinking about this after reading that for Ori and the Blind forest the player was created and animated in maya. This could be a very good solution, but it is not 2d bone based but 3D. I'm not good at 3D so I was looking for a 2D bone solution, anyway, if things must go that 3D work flow I will do my best to learn it.

Thanks to both for the answers.

1 hour ago, HexDump said:

This could be a very good solution, but it is not 2d bone based but 3D.

It's the same thing. As in exactly the same thing, as in 100% the same thing. 2D vector bone animation is 3D animation. Often the Z axis is used to "sort" what is rendered over what.

1 hour ago, HexDump said:

I see here very differnt smoothness in the parts animated by bones and in the parts animated by frames.

Vector animation is smoother by default because instead of pixels there is no limit to how small a animation can be. A lot of the best 2D games uses vector animation.

Rayman shows how smooth it can be. In truth more than 70% of the 2D games use vector animations, because it's smoother, easier to work with and cheaper to do. Even some "8-bit" games actually cheat using vector animations.

Some games like the old Abe Oddworld games use vector animations to render, then export to raster graphics. So even a large part of raster graphics games did use vectors to produce the art.

The thing is when a proper animator works with vector graphics it will no longer looks like vector art. There will be no overlapping parts, shaders are used for full body outlines. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1HEkCwuCK6SBzXmaY-UQE33HC8nkCUyhoglJC54BHiGQ/edit#slide=id.p

So it's hard to tell the difference between professional vector graphics and profesional raster graphics.

It's also very rare to find a game that only uses raster or vector animations. Even 3D games uses sprites for particles.