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You don't even want to know the amount of meetings and work that went into trying to solve the one-handed problem. We legitimately tried and retried stuff on this constantly for like 8 months lol! Our poor animator... Fundamentally, our game assumes one handed behavior is always possible with a gun, and that the gun is always held with the right hand while doing so. This just doesn't work with a bow, and there's no good way around it that isn't bizarre when you stop to think about it. We planted the flag from the start that it was of critical importance that players could still use the weapon fluidly in all of the expected cases (on ziplines, using certain abilities, LITERALLY ANY TIME GIBRALTAR GOES ADS, etc.). I think it was worth having a little jank to make sure the weapon was as fun as possible, and it was still worth shipping the bow with this goofiness! Hopefully this isn't too visually distracting in actual gameplay hahaha!
I'm no genius. But what if he doesn't hold his stim syringe while using the bow? He injects, then holds the bow and simply have an animation of removing the syringe when the stim ends instead of having him hold it the whole time.
Doesn't really solve cases like bangalore holding her smoke out, or ziplines, or gibby arm shield, so we still needed to come up with a more general solution. At that point, not really worth fixing that one specific case with a whole new solution I think!
This is one thing I don't hear enough people praise; while Respawn is a flawed company, (as is literally every other company) their animation work is amazing. They have no obligation to put so much effort into things like Revenant's secret ultimate animations or unique idle/run animations for each legend, but they still do.
As a fan of both Apex and Titanfall, thank you so much for your hard work!
The Animation team at Respawn is truly incredible! I have the distinct joy to work closely with Shawn, our viewmodel animator, and man he's just unbelievable. He does all of the legends, did almost all of the heirlooms (octane knife inspect and bangalore knife being the exception s), and does all of the weapons. He is an absolute powerhouse of productivity that I just cannot fathom, and he still finds time to add all the flourish and polish and charm of rare special animations and all that. I work most closely with him and our engineer Ravi (who is also an incredible powerhouse handling the entirety of weapons code AND AUDIO CODE WHAT EDIT: Not the only person working on audio and fixing audio bugs! Others derfinitely jump in and out to support when needed, he just did the lion's share of the initial feature work by himself, not to mention his technical skill and strong design sensibility), and it's really humbling to work with such incredible people.
People give a lot of credit to design for guns feeling good and movement feeling good and all that, and design is certainly a big part of it, but it cannot be overstated how absolutely crucial and fundamental engineering, animation, 3d, fx, audio, etc. all that are. If you go play FPS games from even 5 years ago, one of the first things you will notice is how clunky the animation feels compared to now -- the animators and engineers of the industry have really been pushing the boundaries of polish in that realm. Shawn thinks about and understands game feel on a deep level that easily matches the best gameplay designers I've seen (or surpasses in my case, I learn a ton from him!)
I don't want to ramble, but I don't have a limit to the amount of good things I can say about folks here. I only started in 2018, but I am constantly humbled and count how incredibly fortunate I am to work with absolute masters of their craft in so many ways. I have similar things to say about the folks I got to work with at Bungie too!I have had incredible fortune to work with amazing people in my career :).
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That's the canon explanation in game! There's a mechanism on the grip that allows for usage powered by the weapon itself. There are still problems if you think about it too much, but yea lol
Do you by chance know where this Shawn guy learned the animation program (I'm assuming Blender)? 3D animation is kinda what I want to do for a living... But I have no experience and need to learn a shit ton lol
As you will find with most creative mediums, the tool itself is really not the important part. I believe most animators in the industry currently use Maya due to ingrained tech, but Blender is free and would be fine too! I am not an animator, but I bet you can find online intro courses on animation on various sites like udemy and such (not sponsored, just the one I personally use lol).
I am going to give the advice I would always give to people who want to get into game design, and hope that it's relevant. The answer is that you just gotta get your hands dirty and do it! Truly, if you want to be an animator, you just have to start animating! You will learn so so so much just by actually creating things start to finish. It helps you identify what pieces you like and gravitate towards, and helps you ask meaningful questions. It's impossible to start from the "I am gonna go and learn everything first then I'll do it", because it just doesn't make sense or stick if you don't have the context of experience to really begin to tie it all together. Best of luck!