The Star Forge: Side Project - SSBU Sheik

[Revan]

Tested Chrom out for a few with the time that I had. Pretty much what everyone said is what needs fixing. I'll get down and gritty with the PSA stuff later. Right now, seeing as how ShinyMammoth isn't here right now, I want to talk animations

Wait2 needs to have Chrom's right arm weight down slightly when he catches his sword. Doesn't matter who you are or how skilled you are, if you toss a sword in the air and catch it, your arm isn't going to be that straight, ya' dig?

Personally, I wouldn't attempt making a throw-a-sword-and-make-it-spin-and-catch-it type of move because of how difficult it'd be to make it look passable. If you just can't get it to look polished and nice (which may or may not happen, who knows), I'd personally (it's an opinion, mate) scrap it and go for a different wait. Maybe something like Chrom holding up his blade and checking it out, or maybe lowering his sword and glancing around.

All the transitions you've made (LandingLight, LandingHeavy, etc) look a bit rough on the edges and need a slight bit of polishing.

I think the worst offender you have is the up smash.  All your animations look great, just need a bit of polish, but they all look great.

... Except for the up smash.

I've stood there in Training mode just spamming it over and over and trying to see if it looks nice. Then I went to Brawlbox and had it playing on loop.

The start and loop are fine, but you probably should add a few more frames from when Chrom starts swinging the sword to when he's holding it with both hands (before he swings it over to the other side).

And make the "Exit" to the animation (where he goes to wait) yourself. It'll look much cleaner that way (in my opinion) instead of using Ike's.

Otherwise, it all looks great. Just make sure to break out the polishing brush and it'll look great.

Thanks for the feedback, and I'll be sure to make a few changes you mentioned to Chrom. Although I have to say the wait2 is staying. I have already added a decent amount of recoil for him catching his sword. Regardless it's a completely unethical thing to do in the first place, similar to Hector spinning his axe with one hand and grabbing onto it with ease. I based the attack off of the Hero's Wait2 from FE Awakening in which the hero catches his sword with ease. The movement is supposed to be casual, and with how his arm is bent there is no where for it to go but straight. Elbows cant bend backwards.

Landings will get some polishing.

I'm just gonna re-animate his up smash. I have never really been happy with its animation. Originally I wanted it to be Ike's with a framespeed, then after a while I thought it tacky to keep such a signature move. So I tried to change it in such a way that it still retained a bunch of Ike's attack, with aesthetic changes. But I'm just gonna make a new one now.

I tested Chrom. Very nice job by the way guys. He's pretty damn good.

Okay down to business. The slight issues I found were for the most part already posted by Saber(Akeno) and FrozenFire98. My two cents in there would be to adjust the length that Chrom dashes forward for the second strike of his Side B on ground only. In the game he goes right through the enemy as if to cleave them in two. He ends quite far on the other side of them as a result. The move itself is fine just make him go farther past the opponent he's attacking.

For his Neutral B attack, You should change the angle of the hitbox to reflect the direction of the swing. It doesn't really make sense that the enemy goes flying upward when he swings so far left or right(depending on where you're facing). And yes change the self damage down from 10%.

Does his DAir have a spike or no? Because I think there should be a sweet spot spike on that move.

Also what Drogoth said. The animations still need a bit of cleaning up to make them smoother.

Everything else seems fine to me though. Oh and I made a Wait1 for Chrom myself. I can show you it if you want. Normally he doesnt bounce around that much. He's really just standing there.

This is what I did. Quick and simple to make.

I also made a Wait1 for Lucina. This one took quite a while to do.

Side B is definitely gonna lunge more, I'm not sure how I got that wrong lol

I'll fix the trajectory of his NB too. I liked the combo capabilities with how it is, but it doesn't make much sense.

I'll also give him a sweet spot spike for his D air. At first I didn't want it to be a spike because of how often people do spikes, but a sweetspot spoke would be cool.

As for the wait1 I like it, but i'm not a fan of the cape wind thing. It does look dynamic, but the thought of the wind always blowing on every stage whenever Chrom is standing still is unlikely. I see it looking especially odd when he is standing next to someone like Marth who's cape is mysteriously not being affected by the wind lol.
I also made the decision to make him hopping around more because the original animation I had for him got a complaint that he is standing too still, so I livened it up. But I do like yours, I'd use it if it lost the wind.

Hey guys, I came around to apologize. I've been dead busy, dead stressed, and just dead in general. A lot has been going on and I haven't been able to test Chrom. I hope you guys can forgive me.

I'll be back in 2 weeks to test out whatever you guys need me to. Same to you Drogoth.

Cheers.

No problem man, take your time.


     Alright so far with everyone's help with the feedback, I have made this list of changes that will be made to Chrom before his release.
(Some testers have also not reviewed Chrom, so this list may be updated.)

-----Updates-----

Misc: Add Exalted Falchion activator

Landings: Clean up

A Combo: Make it work a little better

Wait2: Reduce Sword Trail length, Remove Sword Glow

Up Tilt: Fix weird arm movement at the end
Up Smash: New animation, Give slightly more range, Do more damage
Down Smash: Clean up transition to Wait1

Down Air: Make precise hitbox a spike

Neutral B: Reduce recoil damage, Fix trajectory
Side B: Make the second hit jump further
Side B Air: Stuff, and things

Final Smash: Import a new stage, Import Aether's Symbol as a graphic, Add some misc graphics

Win2: Fix Cape

SFX: I just need a little more for it to be done, Like the sound that happens when Aether activates

CSS: I was hoping that the new Chrom model would magically be finished before the PSAs release, so this will affect the CSS and recolors. I'm not sure if I'm gonna use a pic of his model, or a pic of Chrom I cut from his game.

[Nao-chan]

As for the wait1 I like it, but i'm not a fan of the cape wind thing. It does look dynamic, but the thought of the wind always blowing on every stage whenever Chrom is standing still is unlikely. I see it looking especially odd when he is standing next to someone like Marth who's cape is mysteriously not being affected by the wind lol.
I also made the decision to make him hopping around more because the original animation I had for him got a complaint that he is standing too still, so I livened it up. But I do like yours, I'd use it if it lost the wind.

I can redo it for you so that it doesn't move. It shouldn't take me too long. I'll work on it right now.

EDIT: Okay, here's the one without the cape moving.

I was literally using the in-game model as a reference to make this as authentic as I could. It seriously drained my 3DS's battery when I was making this. Hopefully you find it useful. If you want me to send it to you just say the word.

[Revan]

Very nice, that's what I like. That's what I've tried to do with Aether too. (Ignore that he doesn't jump past you yet lol) Does it have the same frame 1 rotations as my original one?

EDIT: I like your animation, but I see now looking at mine that they dont have the same frame one. Could be kind of annoying to insert these new rotations to every animation that ends with the wait1 :/

[Nao-chan]

Very nice, that's what I like. That's what I've tried to do with Aether too. (Ignore that he doesn't jump past you yet lol) Does it have the same frame 1 rotations as my original one?

EDIT: I like your animation, but I see now looking at mine that they dont have the same frame one. Could be kind of annoying to insert these new rotations to every animation that ends with the wait1 :/

Let me test it with yours and see how it looks transitioning with the existing animations.

[Revan]

It should look okay with most animations, like the basic tilts, and smashes, the landings, and a few others because brawl will automatically transition the animation to the wait. But there will be clipping on several animations where brawl doesn't do that, like the dodges, certain specials, cliff attacks, and rolls, among several others, which will lead to a messy looking hack. Sadly if i'm gonna switch my wait1 it at least hast to start with the same frame as my old one.
Not to mention if the feet aren't in the same spot, even more of a mess.

The slope in his wait plays a part too, so keep in mind his knees will be more bent in game than in BB as well. Idk if it would be a problem with yours, but I had to animate around it with his.

[Nao-chan]

It should look okay with most animations, like the basic tilts, and smashes, the landings, and a few others because brawl will automatically transition the animation to the wait. But there will be clipping on several animations where brawl doesn't do that, like the dodges, certain specials, cliff attacks, and rolls, among several others, which will lead to a messy looking hack. Sadly if i'm gonna switch my wait1 it at least hast to start with the same frame as my old one.
Not to mention if the feet aren't in the same spot, even more of a mess.

The slope in his wait plays a part too, so keep in mind his knees will be more bent in game than in BB as well. Idk if it would be a problem with yours, but I had to animate around it with his.

Mine didn't have that slope issue. Also I just tested it with your PSA. It actually doesn't look that bad. I tested every move I could. It seemed fine. the only noticeable change you'll really see is his left arm and leg changing positions. If you don't want to re animate the transitions I can try it for you. Dunno how long it'll take me though.

[Revan]

Hmm don't you think it would be easier to just redo the wait with a matching first frame?
The only real difference between ours is the feet placement, some slight differences in the RShoulderN, and the LShoulderN, and mine is looking more forward. (Talking the first frame of course)
I could even see fixing every animation that ends with the Wait1 if just the ShoulderN bones were changed, but its mostly the hip and the feet that makes it a pain. Most of Chrom's animations cant be fixed by just doing a simple paste the new Wait1 and clear out a few frames, because of his odd hip rotation.
For example:
Sometimes the hip ends up at 0,0,0 at the Wait1, vs sometimes its at 180,-180,180
Those aren't actually the numbers but you get what I mean. I've noticed that kept happening to several other bones on individual animations as well. One being the Up Tilt, where he does that weird arm flip thing at the end. I fixed it already, but that would happen really really often.

Also on a side note, Chrom is nipping at his filesize limit for his motion, and it seems that every time I copy and paste a frame he likes to jump up 20kb lol

[Nao-chan]

Hmm don't you think it would be easier to just redo the wait with a matching first frame?
The only real difference between ours is the feet placement, some slight differences in the RShoulderN, and the LShoulderN, and mine is looking more forward. (Talking the first frame of course)
I could even see fixing every animation that ends with the Wait1 if just the ShoulderN bones were changed, but its mostly the hip and the feet that makes it a pain. Most of Chrom's animations cant be fixed by just doing a simple paste the new Wait1 and clear out a few frames, because of his odd hip rotation.
For example:
Sometimes the hip ends up at 0,0,0 at the Wait1, vs sometimes its at 180,-180,180
Those aren't actually the numbers but you get what I mean. I've noticed that kept happening to several other bones on individual animations as well. One being the Up Tilt, where he does that weird arm flip thing at the end. I fixed it already, but that would happen really really often.

Also on a side note, Chrom is nipping at his filesize limit for his motion, and it seems that every time I copy and paste a frame he likes to jump up 20kb lol

Oh okay I see what you mean. I'll see what I can do.

Yeah Fit Motions can be real finicky like that. It's pretty damn annoying to deal with. I've come across that situation many times myself.

I'll work on the change later today. Just to be sure, do you want me to change the whole animation to match more closely to yours or just the first frame? Either is fine, I'm just trying to clarify what I'd have to do.

[Revan]

Yeah Chrom only has two waits and two wins because of it lol
But ideally if you just took the first frame of mine, then made whatever animation you want from there with no changes to the first or last frame everything will fit in perfectly.
Though, looking at Chrom's Wait in Awakening, it seems that what would be his ShoulderN bones for his in game model are set back a little further, like how you have them in your gif.

So if you want to do the animation, with my frame one, with just edited ShoulderNs, I'd be willing to edit his each of his animations to fix the ShoulderN bones to make it look more like his in game wait. Changing just two arm bones on every animation shouldn't be too much of a problem, and I feel like that would make the overall stance look better. I like a more solitary Wait1 for him anyway, so a similar animation to what you have would be great.

I'm finding it hard to explain this properly lol If you aren't clear on of anything don't feel afraid to ask.

I also noticed that he indeed does look kind of downward in his in game wait, but I feel that him looking more straight would look a little better because of the angles Brawl's cameras take as opposed to the the dynamic angles in awakening.

[Nao-chan]

Don't worry I understand you just fine. I can totally do that for you. It shouldn't take me too long to finish it. I'll let you know when I'm done with it.

About his pose in Awakening. Like I said I used an in-game reference to make it look just right. It wasn't easy though, that's for sure. Them same went into the work I did with Lucina's Wait1 animation.

[Revan]

Okay awesome I appreciate it. Obviously you will get collab for doing this.
But thats what I did for Hector's final smash too. Have you seen it?
I combined Hector and Lyn's Crit attacks for it. Were gonna use a special throw in the FS to make everything work right.

Also i've edited this animation since I made the .gif (Made Lyn strike one more time) and It doesn't play properly so you wont see everything in one playthrough because of how fast the animation is moving. lol

Edit: Looks like the .gif playing okay with this new website.

[Nao-chan]

Also i've edited this animation since I made the .gif (Made Lyn strike one more time) and It doesn't play properly so you wont see everything in one playthrough because of how fast the animation is moving. lol

Edit: Looks like the .gif playing okay with this new website.

Words cannot describe how F-ING AWESOME that looks man. HOOOOLLLLYYYY SHIZZ MAN! I wish I could do amazing stuff like that. How'd you even get that to work!?

[Revan]

Lol thank you, i'm pretty excited for this FS. It took a bit to animate.
But what do you mean get it to work?

[Nao-chan]

How'd you get both characters to be in the same move? Unless that's a .gif of two different ones?

[Revan]

Like in-game or just in the .gif?
In-game were gonna import Lyn's model onto Hector, then call her as a graphic.

For the .gif I simply exported both animations from the same camera angle, then put them together with photoshop.