ACU Walk Animations – Adjustments as a Test Mod

[Saver]

Hello everyone,
As I mentioned some time ago in my mod pack, I noticed a few inconsistencies in the walk animations of our ACUs that I would like to improve.

Originally, I planned to discuss the topic through a Pull Request. However, since changes to the ACU animations can be a rather sensitive topic, @magge gave me the good advice to first make the adjustments available as a mod to a larger group of testers.

That is exactly what this mod is intended for.

Besides testing my own work, I also want to give other modders an easy way to experiment with their own ideas and improvements.

I am only a hobby creator and not a professional animator. These animations are therefore my attempt to create the most convincing movement possible with the tools and skills I currently have. Maybe we can improve them together.

The Mod

For now, the mod simply uses the name TEST S. This allows me to reuse it for future projects without having to create a new test mod for every project.

What has been changed?

Cybran ACU

The original walk animation has mostly been kept intact.
• Head position: The head no longer sinks as deeply into the shoulder area while walking.
• Hip and upper body: Both have been raised slightly to reduce the noticeable height difference between standing and walking.

UEF ACU

The walk animation has been completely recreated.
In the original animation, the very rigid upper body combined with the strong bending of the legs felt somewhat unnatural to me.
With the new animation, I tried to give the UEF ACU a stronger sense of weight and mass, as you would expect from a large and heavy combat robot. I also tried to involve the other limbs more in the movement to create a more natural and dynamic animation.

Aeon ACU

There are two versions of the Aeon ACU.
One is based on the original animation and is currently also my personal favorite. The second version was completely recreated.
With the original animation, I noticed a particularly strong sideways movement. This made the ACU appear somewhat unstable, with the head moving noticeably along with the body.
The new versions are intended to create a more stable and natural walking motion.

Note for Testers

Alongside the mod, I have also included a small test map that allows you to quickly compare the different animations. A test should take around 2–5 minutes.

At the beginning, you have access to all four ACUs, as well as the required factories, mass and energy.

The different animations can be built directly from the respective faction factories and compared with each other.

My current favorites are marked with a blue V icon.

The other variants are numbered and marked with a black icon.

Note for Other Modders

The respective unit files also contain the corresponding Blender source file.
If you are interested, feel free to experiment with them and try creating your own versions or further improving the animations.
I would be very happy to see other approaches, ideas and improvements.

Final Note

I want to make it clear that this is only a proposal from my side.
The corresponding Pull Request is currently on hold. I do not want these changes to simply be added to the game unless we have first found an approach that as many people as possible are happy with.

Whether and in what form such changes are ultimately implemented in FAF is entirely up to the FAF core team.

For now, this mod is simply intended to make it easier to test and compare different approaches.

Have fun testing!

[Saver]

Hello everyone,

After a longer break, I've managed to make two or three more improvements to the animations.

You can find them in S-Test mod version 6.

In the hope of getting some feedback, I've now reduced the test units to just one variant per faction.

Unfortunately, the forum doesn't support uploading comparison videos, so I'm still figuring out the easiest way to make a side-by-side comparison possible.

That said, this is only a small project compared to the fantastic projects currently being worked on across the forum and Discord.

(Especially the SupCom/Moho engine rewrite — I really hope it succeeds! )

[Tokyto_]

I have tested a few days ago. You've done a great job, especially the Cybran ACU with its head animation. I will test further on a better PC later this week.

[Saver]

Good evening everyone,

I'd like to try a new approach to gathering feedback on my projects. To do so, I contacted the YouTube caster The Commissar and asked him to create a video about this project.

My goal is not only to gather feedback on the updated walking animations, but also to find out what you think of this approach and whether you could imagine us using it for other projects in the future.

So, feel free to share your thoughts, either here on the forum or directly under the video! I'm looking forward to your feedback and suggestions.

And as always, have fun!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoaYoHiaRuU

@ The Commisar - big Thanks again!

[Saver]

Hello everyone,

Since I would now like to consider this small project finished, I wanted to share a few final thoughts.

First of all, thank you very much for all the interesting comments under The Commissar's video!

The feedback and impressions were very diverse and highlighted many different perspectives. Some of them even brought up aspects I hadn't considered myself. This is exactly what makes community feedback so valuable.

Conclusion of the original project

I consider the original project – the improvements to the ACU walk animations – officially complete. I will keep the changes exclusively as a mod addition within my mod pack. I do not plan any further development or integration into the base game.

However, what I would particularly like to highlight is the way this project was presented.

I deliberately wanted to try different approaches to reach as many members of the community as possible and gather a wider range of opinions and feedback.

One of the reasons for this was my experience with the previous factory model project, where my approach and the opportunities for community participation apparently weren't equally clear to everyone.

Therefore, I decided to try several different communication channels for this smaller project (excluding a direct presentation on Discord).

Here is a brief summary of the results:

GitHub – 8 weeks of testing

I initially presented the project as a Pull Request on GitHub. Although I received some feedback, it was limited to two testers. There were also a few short clips included directly in the project.

Results:
Views: 2 / Responses: 2

FAF Forum – 6 weeks of testing

To encourage greater participation and gather more opinions, I subsequently presented the project here on the forum.

Results:
Views: 157 / Responses: 5

YouTube video – 1 week of testing

As a third approach, I asked The Commissar to create a video about the project.

In my opinion, the advantage of a video is that changes and their effects can be demonstrated quickly and clearly. This may also make it easier for people who aren't directly involved in the project to form their own opinions.

Results:
Views: 530 / Responses: 16

Final thoughts

I hope this small experiment has demonstrated some of the possibilities for improving communication with the community in the future.

Especially when it comes to changes and new ideas, it's important to gather as many different opinions as possible. Not only to identify potential improvements, but also to collect new suggestions and perspectives.

My personal conclusion is that it can definitely be worthwhile to explore alternatives to the traditional forum approach when presenting projects. Of course, this was only a small experiment and not a universal solution. Nevertheless, I hope that my experience might be useful for future projects or other proposed changes.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to look at the project and share their thoughts!

I wish you all the best and hope you have a great time!

[HotCheeseInRear]

This post is deleted!

[HotCheeseInRear]

@Saver Loved the animations and your factory work. Shame its wrapped up.

As an aside. Has there been any consideration to expand the white list of "sim safe" .bp values to change? It seems like plenty of fields (LOD cut off, HP bar size, selection size, selection priority) are all desync/sim safe. And could be exposed to UI mods similar to the way strategic icons are.

If animations are sim safe, users could have whichever animation or mix animations they like. Its just a shame that someone like Saver has to climb a mountain to get his work integrated. When users would 100% pick and choose which of Saver's animations they like if it were enabled as a UI mod.

[Nomander]

Animations are not safe because they modify bone positions and thus things like transport attachment position or projectile creation position.

[Saver]

@nomander
I only partially agree with you. Of course, the bones of a model move differently during an animation. However, these changes are limited strictly to the movement itself. The overall arrangement of the bones within the model remains unchanged.

To give you a concrete example from my own work: I use the game's original standard models and have only adjusted the poses within the animations.

Here is an image that I hope illustrates what I mean:

However, a mod like this could potentially be used or perceived as a kind of cheat, even unintentionally.

The reason is that this change does not only affect a unit's animation file. It also requires modifying the playback speed in the unit's Blueprint file. This means that a merge is necessary. During this process, other values in the unit's Blueprint could also be changed, either intentionally or unintentionally, which is not desirable.

As a consequence, mods of this kind would always need to be reviewed before they could be used in the regular game.

[Saver]

@HotCheeseInRear First of all, thank you very much! I'm really glad to hear that.

I also gave some more thought to your idea of creating a kind of Skin Mod. However, the restrictions involved, as described above, could open the door to unwanted changes to the game.

In this case, we're only talking about an animation that doesn't significantly affect a unit's visual appearance. Nevertheless, under FAF's current and entirely understandable rules, this kind of modification is not permitted in regular matches.

If the FAF team were to explicitly approve this approach, I could subsequently create individual mods for each ACU, which could then essentially be classified as UI mods. However, under the current rules, this isn't an option.

I think the FAF team already has much more important things to focus on at the moment, such as further engine development and the upcoming patches. And that's great to see!

Thanks again for the great suggestion!

[Nomander]

What I meant is that since it modifies the bone positions even slightly, it probably eventually causes desyncs if two players have different animations. It's not a big gameplay difference in your animation example, but it's a potential desync so it can't be allowed. To relate back to cheese's post, you can't have "users could have whichever animation or mix animations they like," it would be limited to what FAF implements and officially distributes.

[HotCheeseInRear]

Okay animations aren't safe. But things like LOD cut off and HP bar size are almost certainly replay/desync safe. And could potentially be exposed for UI modding

[Saver]

@nomander Thank you for your feedback and for explaining your point. I just want to avoid any misunderstandings

@all
If anyone likes these animations or wants to create their own variations based on them, they are welcome to use the files freely. Everyone is free to use these as a starting point for their own work.