WEBVTT 00:00:02.300 --> 00:00:03.020 Hello. 00:00:03.020 --> 00:00:06.640 My name is Dan, I’m an animator and this is New Frame Plus. 00:00:06.640 --> 00:00:09.660 I want to focus on another single animation today. 00:00:09.660 --> 00:00:12.020 This one was requested by Atle Hillmann, 00:00:12.020 --> 00:00:15.640 who recommended we have a look at the mining animation in Skyrim. 00:00:15.640 --> 00:00:17.220 So! Let's see it... 00:00:33.600 --> 00:00:36.100 Ok, so let’s walk through what’s happening here... 00:00:36.100 --> 00:00:40.420 If you walk up to an ore vein and press the interact button, the camera will instantly 00:00:40.420 --> 00:00:44.120 switch to a third person angle (or a slightly different third person angle 00:00:44.120 --> 00:00:46.280 if you were in third person already). 00:00:46.840 --> 00:00:51.280 The animation seems to prefer that your character be positioned in a specific spot, 00:00:51.280 --> 00:00:55.840 so your character may also warp to a new position over that camera cut. 00:00:58.160 --> 00:01:01.440 Now, if you approached that ore vein with your weapon still equipped, 00:01:01.440 --> 00:01:04.880 that warp won’t happen until after your character puts the weapon away, 00:01:04.880 --> 00:01:08.180 so you’ll actually see them unequip the weapon in third person 00:01:08.180 --> 00:01:10.640 and THEN see him warp to that new position. 00:01:10.640 --> 00:01:14.240 In either case, your character will go to a neutral idle position. 00:01:14.240 --> 00:01:16.860 Then your pickaxe will spawn in your character’s hand 00:01:16.860 --> 00:01:19.580 and they will begin to play the mining animation. 00:01:19.580 --> 00:01:25.240 This loop will play for 10-15 seconds until the ore vein is depleted, 00:01:25.241 --> 00:01:28.020 and then your character will transition back to their neutral idle position, 00:01:28.020 --> 00:01:31.740 the pickaxe will despawn and the camera will return to where it began, 00:01:31.740 --> 00:01:35.220 either your preferred third person or first person view. 00:01:35.400 --> 00:01:38.300 Now, this animation was requested with the assertion that: 00:01:39.760 --> 00:01:42.360 And... yeah, it’s not great. 00:01:42.360 --> 00:01:45.040 I have some guesses as to why it turned out this way, 00:01:45.040 --> 00:01:48.240 but first let’s just dig into what’s NOT working here... 00:01:48.640 --> 00:01:53.240 To start, the animation on the character - the pickaxe swinging action itself - 00:01:53.240 --> 00:01:55.060 feels kind of mechanical. 00:01:55.060 --> 00:01:57.980 The force of a pickaxe swing should start in the body, 00:01:57.980 --> 00:02:01.060 you should see the power happening in the hips and torso, 00:02:01.060 --> 00:02:05.360 carrying up through the arms and transferring to the axe’s swinging arc. 00:02:05.480 --> 00:02:11.260 But when you look at each of these swings, the torso bend and the axe-swinging motion both start 00:02:11.269 --> 00:02:14.340 and end at almost exactly the same time, 00:02:14.340 --> 00:02:17.500 all the parts of the body just mechanically moving at once 00:02:17.500 --> 00:02:19.540 like an animatronic or something. 00:02:19.540 --> 00:02:24.820 And on top of that, the entire motion just feels weirdly SOFT. 00:02:26.220 --> 00:02:29.980 Like, people hit Whack-a-Mole cabinets with more force than this. 00:02:32.120 --> 00:02:36.500 When the axe connects with the rock, it barely even feels like it’s hitting something. 00:02:36.820 --> 00:02:39.740 This doesn’t really feel like a miner we’re watching... 00:02:39.740 --> 00:02:42.740 it feels like we’re watching a film extra who was told: 00:02:42.740 --> 00:02:47.320 "Ok, act like you’re mining, but please PLEASE don’t actually hit any of the walls. 00:02:47.320 --> 00:02:49.580 this whole place is styrofoam, floor to ceiling.” 00:02:49.580 --> 00:02:51.580 [Director Voice]: "Alright, action!" 00:02:55.920 --> 00:02:57.440 [Director Voice]: "Perfect. Cut!" 00:02:57.440 --> 00:02:59.940 Now, one big caveat worth mentioning is: 00:02:59.940 --> 00:03:02.600 it is possible that this is modelled after some 00:03:02.600 --> 00:03:06.400 actual pickaxe mining technique that I just don’t know about. 00:03:06.400 --> 00:03:10.549 I mean, it doesn’t match any of the pickaxe mining reference I’ve been able to find, 00:03:10.549 --> 00:03:14.960 but I’ll be the first to admit: I am no expert on pickaxe use. 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:20.780 But even so, even if what we’re seeing here IS an authentic representation of legit ore-mining 00:03:20.780 --> 00:03:25.980 pickaxe technique, if that authentic detail LOOKS and FEELS incorrect 00:03:25.980 --> 00:03:29.940 to your average player, that is still arguably a problem... 00:03:29.940 --> 00:03:34.760 It very much depends on the type of experience your game is going for, of course, but 00:03:34.760 --> 00:03:40.780 if 90% of players are going to look at your animation and mistake that authentic detail for BAD animation... 00:03:40.780 --> 00:03:45.030 it’s at least worth considering what sorts of adjustments you can make so that 00:03:45.030 --> 00:03:48.660 the authentic detail feels more correct to your audience. 00:03:49.160 --> 00:03:52.520 Still, even if the animation on the character had been totally fine, 00:03:52.520 --> 00:03:55.820 we would still have some significant jank to deal with here. 00:03:55.820 --> 00:04:01.360 Because a lot of what makes this mining action in Skyrim feel so rough isn’t even the animation itself, 00:04:01.360 --> 00:04:04.180 but the way that animation has been implemented. 00:04:04.180 --> 00:04:07.340 Everything that happens from the moment you hit the interact button 00:04:07.340 --> 00:04:11.500 to the moment your character starts swinging the pickaxe just feels BAD. 00:04:11.500 --> 00:04:16.240 For one, having your camera suddenly cut to third person like this is really jarring. 00:04:16.340 --> 00:04:18.600 You go from BEING your character to- 00:04:18.600 --> 00:04:19.260 GAH 00:04:19.260 --> 00:04:21.360 ...suddenly WATCHING yourself doing something, 00:04:21.360 --> 00:04:24.820 like you were kicked out of your own body and are now a ghost having to 00:04:24.820 --> 00:04:28.480 spend fifteen seconds watching yourself not know how to use a pickaxe. 00:04:28.540 --> 00:04:32.380 And maybe the camera cut wouldn’t be SO bad if it weren’t for the fact that your 00:04:32.380 --> 00:04:34.880 CHARACTER changes position over that cut too 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:39.680 (I assume so that they can line up with the invisible task point in front of that ore). 00:04:39.780 --> 00:04:45.300 Having a simultaneous camera cut AND positional change just feels really disorienting. 00:04:45.300 --> 00:04:49.140 Worse still is your character’s transition into the mining animation. 00:04:49.140 --> 00:04:51.540 Not only do they pop to a new location 00:04:51.540 --> 00:04:54.160 (and then spend the next 20 frames unnaturally 00:04:54.160 --> 00:04:57.980 sliiiiding forward a little further to get completely into position), 00:04:58.020 --> 00:05:02.900 but they spend 15 of those first 20 frames frozen like a mannequin. 00:05:02.900 --> 00:05:06.240 They’re basically locked in this pose for a quarter of a second 00:05:06.240 --> 00:05:08.540 before they even START to play the animation. 00:05:08.540 --> 00:05:13.360 And when they DO start moving, they spend another 30-40 frames mechanically blending 00:05:13.370 --> 00:05:18.139 into this “pickaxe-holding” pose before they even start lining up their first swing. 00:05:18.140 --> 00:05:23.580 There’s nearly a full second of awkward, robotic transitioning into the mining animation here 00:05:23.580 --> 00:05:27.280 (and even MORE if your character has to finish putting their weapon away first) 00:05:27.280 --> 00:05:30.860 and it is just not doing the presentation of this any favors. 00:05:30.860 --> 00:05:35.220 Even if you don’t actively notice any of these individual problems in the moment, 00:05:35.220 --> 00:05:39.660 they all add up in that first second to make the whole thing subconsciously feel 00:05:39.660 --> 00:05:41.840 really awkward somehow. 00:05:41.840 --> 00:05:45.040 And the end of the mining animation does the same thing: 00:05:45.040 --> 00:05:49.780 The pickaxe despawns right out of your character’s hands before they spend MORE THAN A SECOND 00:05:49.780 --> 00:05:53.200 robotically blending back to that neutral idle pose. 00:05:53.200 --> 00:05:56.900 And THEN [shwoop] they finally put your ghost back in your body. 00:05:56.940 --> 00:06:00.740 Honestly, I’d say the jank in these transitions is an even bigger problem 00:06:00.740 --> 00:06:02.520 than the mining animation itself. 00:06:02.520 --> 00:06:07.560 Overall, it just leaves the Skyrim mining experience feeling extremely unpolished. 00:06:07.560 --> 00:06:11.880 So now that we know exactly WHAT isn’t working, the next question is: 00:06:11.880 --> 00:06:13.720 WHY would it be like this? 00:06:13.720 --> 00:06:15.920 What could have led to it turning out this way? 00:06:15.920 --> 00:06:19.740 Of course, the simplest answer (and the one most people probably jump to) 00:06:19.740 --> 00:06:23.000 is that maybe the people involved were just bad at their jobs. 00:06:23.000 --> 00:06:24.880 And that’s always possible! 00:06:24.880 --> 00:06:31.220 But just as often, I see lackluster or janky-looking work coming from incredibly-skilled people who 00:06:31.229 --> 00:06:33.300 ran into some sort of roadblock. 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:37.900 Maybe a time constraint, a technical constraint or some design limitation. 00:06:38.100 --> 00:06:42.160 Maybe the mining feature was just waaaaay far down the priority list 00:06:42.160 --> 00:06:44.940 on an already over-booked animation schedule. 00:06:44.940 --> 00:06:49.680 Maybe they originally WANTED to make first person versions of ALL of these task animations 00:06:49.689 --> 00:06:51.940 so you wouldn’t have to experience a camera change, 00:06:51.940 --> 00:06:54.460 but then there just wasn’t time in the schedule to make 00:06:54.460 --> 00:06:57.300 TWO versions of every task animation in the game. 00:06:57.310 --> 00:07:01.040 Who knows, maybe at one point mining wasn’t even planned to be a feature. 00:07:01.040 --> 00:07:03.480 But then it got added to the game late in development 00:07:03.480 --> 00:07:05.600 and didn’t get the polish time it needed. 00:07:05.600 --> 00:07:07.880 Or MAYBE (and this one is a reach), but... 00:07:07.880 --> 00:07:11.220 maybe at one point, mining or other task animations 00:07:11.220 --> 00:07:16.340 like cooking or wood chopping weren’t intended to be things the PLAYER could do! 00:07:16.340 --> 00:07:21.040 Maybe they were originally meant to be used exclusively by NPCs out in the game world, 00:07:21.050 --> 00:07:22.760 just to make the place feel more lived in. 00:07:22.760 --> 00:07:26.640 I can almost picture this being true just because of how many of these task animations 00:07:26.640 --> 00:07:29.740 look like they were designed to be unintrusive background noise. 00:07:29.800 --> 00:07:34.680 But then some developer had the idea to let players use that NPC task system 00:07:34.680 --> 00:07:37.500 to make stuff like alchemy and blacksmithing look cooler. 00:07:37.500 --> 00:07:43.060 And yeah, brute forcing the player camera and animation system into an NPC task system 00:07:43.060 --> 00:07:47.080 that was never meant to accommodate this did result in a bunch of weird hitches, 00:07:47.080 --> 00:07:49.920 but everybody agreed that the jank was worth it. 00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:53.000 I could throw darts at this board all day, but you get the idea. 00:07:53.080 --> 00:07:58.240 And I wasn’t there, so I have got no idea what constraints these folks were working under, BUT... 00:07:58.240 --> 00:08:03.120 none of that really changes the fact that this mining animation turned out rough. 00:08:03.940 --> 00:08:07.660 But let’s assume for a moment that it was our job to FIX this. 00:08:07.660 --> 00:08:10.460 How might we go about making this animation look better? 00:08:10.460 --> 00:08:14.040 Well, I would start by polishing up that pickaxe-swinging animation. 00:08:14.040 --> 00:08:18.300 Really get in there, loosen it up and try to make things feel less robotic. 00:08:18.300 --> 00:08:20.420 And put some more power into that swing! 00:08:20.420 --> 00:08:23.280 Have them raise the axe higher before bringing it down, 00:08:23.280 --> 00:08:26.380 bring that right hand further down the grip as they raise it 00:08:26.380 --> 00:08:29.020 play with the spacing on the axe swing itself 00:08:29.020 --> 00:08:31.580 so you really feel some acceleration as it drops. 00:08:31.580 --> 00:08:35.560 Of course, if we’d rather stay true to the more contained style of swinging that 00:08:35.560 --> 00:08:40.000 Skyrim already has and not replace it with a full blown wood-chopping axe swing, 00:08:40.000 --> 00:08:41.140 I can work with that. 00:08:41.140 --> 00:08:43.680 The character doesn’t have to put their whole body into it, 00:08:43.680 --> 00:08:46.060 but I’ve still gotta see some more OOMPH. 00:08:46.060 --> 00:08:48.880 This character’s trying to break through solid rock here. 00:08:48.880 --> 00:08:51.860 Let’s see that pickaxe bounce off the stone when it hits. 00:08:51.860 --> 00:08:55.640 Maybe sometimes it get wedged into the rock so solidly that the character 00:08:55.640 --> 00:08:57.660 has to stop and pry it loose. 00:08:57.660 --> 00:09:02.380 I mean, if we’re going to make the player sit and watch this happen for 10-15 seconds, 00:09:02.380 --> 00:09:05.540 we might as well throw in some interesting variations to the swing 00:09:05.540 --> 00:09:10.140 rather than having the character do what feels like the exact same swing on loop. 00:09:10.140 --> 00:09:15.120 Or, even better, let’s add a proper first person version of this pickaxe animation! 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:18.560 Now, I didn’t mention it before, but it turns out you actually CAN 00:09:18.560 --> 00:09:20.640 mine in first person in Skyrim. 00:09:20.640 --> 00:09:24.800 All you have to do is - instead of approaching the ore and pressing the Interact button - 00:09:24.800 --> 00:09:29.440 equip your pickaxe in your hand and attack the ore with it like you would swing a sword. 00:09:29.440 --> 00:09:33.320 I mean, this is definitely not how you properly swing a pickaxe either, 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:37.060 but it does at least look and feel a lot better as an experience. 00:09:37.060 --> 00:09:39.780 And hey, as long as we’re dreaming up waysto improve things, 00:09:39.780 --> 00:09:41.440 why not make THIS look better! 00:09:41.440 --> 00:09:44.180 What if there was a custom first person pickaxe swing 00:09:44.180 --> 00:09:47.440 instead of just this default one-handed attack animation? 00:09:47.440 --> 00:09:51.720 And we could change it so that all you have to do is Interact with the ore in first person 00:09:51.720 --> 00:09:55.460 and your character automatically equips the pickaxe and starts swinging! 00:09:55.460 --> 00:09:58.980 I mean, why make the player do the busy work of digging into their inventory 00:09:58.980 --> 00:10:00.860 and equipping the pickaxe first? 00:10:00.860 --> 00:10:04.160 Or say we WANT to keep the third person view for mining... 00:10:04.160 --> 00:10:08.620 maybe we want to keep it consistent with the other random tasks you can do in this game. 00:10:08.620 --> 00:10:12.160 Well in that case, we could at the very least try to polish up 00:10:12.160 --> 00:10:14.420 the transition into the mining animation. 00:10:14.420 --> 00:10:16.820 Maybe instead of a jarring camera cut, 00:10:16.820 --> 00:10:18.920 we could have the camera pull back, 00:10:18.920 --> 00:10:21.400 do more of a zoom to that new angle? 00:10:21.400 --> 00:10:26.880 Or we could keep the cut and just trim out that sluggish, second-long robotic start and 00:10:26.880 --> 00:10:28.780 stop animation on either end. 00:10:28.780 --> 00:10:32.920 Maybe when you hit the Interact button, your character could start raising the pickaxe 00:10:32.920 --> 00:10:37.460 in first person, and then we’d cut to them winding up for a swing in third person? 00:10:37.460 --> 00:10:41.080 That way it could at least feel like there’s a single consistent action 00:10:41.080 --> 00:10:43.400 happening on either side of the camera cut. 00:10:43.400 --> 00:10:46.200 There are all kinds of potential ways you could go about 00:10:46.200 --> 00:10:48.060 trying to make this animation look better. 00:10:48.060 --> 00:10:52.880 Of course, all of the ideas I just pitched assume we’re looking at a development environment 00:10:52.880 --> 00:10:56.380 free of technical or scheduling constraints, which… 00:10:56.380 --> 00:10:58.320 ...yeah, that rarely happens. 00:10:58.320 --> 00:11:03.060 There are almost certainly a PLETHORA of reasons why these fixes I just rattled off 00:11:03.060 --> 00:11:04.980 wouldn’t have been feasible solutions. 00:11:04.980 --> 00:11:08.380 Maybe tampering with the camera behavior to fix THIS feature 00:11:08.380 --> 00:11:12.180 would break the camera for a dozen other features that rely on the same system. 00:11:12.180 --> 00:11:15.620 Maybe engineering it so that your character can auto-equip a pickaxe 00:11:15.620 --> 00:11:18.900 for easier first-person mining would require a week of coding time 00:11:18.900 --> 00:11:21.260 that the programming team just could not spare. 00:11:21.260 --> 00:11:25.900 Or maybe you just don’t have any room in the schedule for additional animation work. 00:11:25.900 --> 00:11:27.260 So it goes. 00:11:27.260 --> 00:11:31.560 Again: actually doing the work to make this stuff function and look good 00:11:31.560 --> 00:11:36.260 in a real video game is infinitely harder than picking it apart for other people’s amusement 00:11:36.260 --> 00:11:37.280 (which is what I just did) 00:11:37.280 --> 00:11:40.380 So no disrespect whatsoever intended toward the people who 00:11:40.380 --> 00:11:42.180 worked on this mining feature originally. 00:11:42.180 --> 00:11:46.200 They certainly wouldn’t be the first developers to experience the frustration of having a 00:11:46.200 --> 00:11:49.640 feature or animation not turn out exactly how they’d hoped. 00:11:49.640 --> 00:11:51.480 I've been there too. Trust me. 00:11:51.480 --> 00:11:54.180 I do hope this has been at least a little educational, though! 00:11:54.180 --> 00:11:56.020 Thanks again to Atle for the request! 00:11:56.020 --> 00:11:59.840 If you’ve got a particular animation from a game that you’d like me to talk about, 00:11:59.840 --> 00:12:01.700 free to request it in the comments. 00:12:01.700 --> 00:12:05.160 And subscribe if you want to see more game animation videos like this one. 00:12:05.340 --> 00:12:06.280 I’ll see ya next time!