Mimesis Online from Polish Developer Tannhauser Gate, is a role-playing game which transports you to a world where the borders between reality and illusion do not exist. An unimaginable catastrophe on a cosmic scale transformed this world, playing havoc with the natural order of things, twisting everything, even time itself, wiping out civilisation as we know it. For the Universe itself, everything changed and nothing changed - a new order was established, one where entropy rules, without intelligent beings working to hold it back. The beings who survived the catastrophe have tried to rebuild their world, each in their own way. They once again want to enforce on the natural chaos their order, their ways - authority, money, prejudice, cruelty and conviction of their own superiority. Once again, they are showing the unlimited ability of intelligent races to adapt and survive. The forgotten civilisation is waking up and slowly but surely emerging as the "new" civilisation - and how similar it is to the old one.

On a regular basis we will feature a developer's diary made by the Mimesis Online development team. In this diary Derek Handley introduces Waldemar Strzelczyk to us who will tell us something about 3D animation in Mimesis Online.

Part 5. "Move that big butt!!! (in other words: Animation in 3D)"
I take no responsibility for the title of today's diary entry, because someone else wrote today's diary entry. As I said last time, I wanted to get some of the other team members in on the process, so this time around I'm going to leave you in the capable hands of Waldemar Strzelczyk, one of the founders of Tannhauser Gate. I'm just here to get things started - I want to introduce you to Waldek, because I didn't do that last time, and I thought you might like to know who is writing at you.
(Marcin thinks that introducing Waldek before he writes is like putting a government health warning on the diary entry....)

The Introduction...
Waldemar (Waldek for short - that's VALdek, for those of you who care about pronunciation) Strzelczyk (STRELchick) is basically the head of the art team. In the early days he did a lot of modelling and texture work - he's more of an on-computer guy than a pen and paper designer. Now he co-ordinates work on the art and animation, and does the bulk of the cityscape modelling. Just like Artur and Marcin, Waldek studied architecture. He worked on Exodus the movie trailer, and stayed with the project when it moved online, so he's been around since almost the start. His RPG persona had a tendency to rescue a variety of small animals, tortured prisoners and strays, but Waldek himself just seems to collect nicknames. Which brings me to the most striking thing about his workstation - this huge list of nicknames, in a variety of handwriting styles. I think Marcin put it up. Waldek claims no responsibility for any of them, and pretends they aren't there, but they aren't going away.

If he stops paying the blackmail money, I'll be able to share them with you, but until then, my lips will remain sealed...
Anyway, without further ado, take it away Thunderboy...I mean Erotoman...Waldek, I said Waldek!

...and The Story
You can stop looking over my shoulder now, Derek. Go and create a monster or something....Okay, he's gone.
I wanted to have a word or ten with you about animation, specifically 3D animation. Games done in 3D are becoming more and more loaded with an enormous variety of animations. I think it goes without saying that the animation of the characters (PCs and NPCs) plays the most important role in any RPG. In the race to make their animation the best, the developers work on new technology, variety...the characters have a skeleton with an in-built IK (Inverse Kinematics) system reacting to gravity, a range of facial expressions, and collisions counted for each part of the body separately. Naturally, Motion Capture is used to do the animation, and the end result is that the characters you can meet in the game can dance, sing and recite, and when you shoot them in the left leg, they hop away to the right, and when you push them down the stairs, they bounce all the way to the very bottom, just like gravity wants them to.

Working on Mimesis Online, we had to cope with an enormous number of character animations. The socials alone for one player character race come to around a hundred, and on top of that there's the animations connected with combat, exploration, using skills - I think you get the picture. Then you have to remember that there's two genders in most of the races - it wouldn't look right if you had a woman moving the same way as a man moves; the same should apply to 'alien' races. And finally there's the animation of the creatures and non-player races - a few tens of moves per species.

The total number of character and creature movement animations in Mimesis Online comes to over 2000. Each of those characters and creatures has a skeleton covered by a mesh. At the beginning of the project, we intended to equip our skeletal system with inverse kinematics, but due to the broad object hierarchy, further extended by a fairly well-developed set of weapon animations, that idea proved impossible. The calculations connected with IK would have loaded down the processor, so we had to resign from it and go for sampled animation.

Continuing the subject of animations - did I mention that we don't actually have Motion Capture equipment yet? I think that any of you who have ever done any animation of character skeletons with a mouse alone knows what that means. Now, saying that we don't make use of motion capture doesn't mean that we don't use models. There was actually a time when I looked at what was going on in the studio and thought that it's just as well that the studio doesn't face out onto a main road, because someone might have called the police. Or even the drug squad! The studio is on the ground floor, and it has huge windows - about a twelve square metre surface - so any passers-by would have got quite an eyeful. We had this small group of martial artists and dancers putting on simulated fights with 'weapons' (broomsticks, golf clubs and the like), not to mention bowing, shaking hands, falling over, running around, waving, kissing, stabbing each other in the back...

We did have a couple of visits from the neighbours - the studio is in a quiet neighbourhood - I guess they just wanted to check what was going on.
'Making a film?'
'Us...no, a computer game.'
'Do you have a licence for that axe?'
'What axe...oh this, it's a golf club.'
'I've never seen golf played like that. Be a strange game, with people smacking the ball into the turf from above...'
'Oh, it's not a golf game...it's a...(realization that this could take a long time to explain)...an Australian baseball game, but we couldn't get the right clubs.'
'Ah.'

I wonder if George Lucas ever has that kind of conversation. But those are the breaks if you want to make a good game - you have to expect people to ask questions...
The animation came along fine. It's done and installed in such a way that we can correct things or change them at any time. So, if after a year of play, you get bored with the way your character scratches himself behind the ear (if he has ears), you can drop us a line and we'll see what we can do.
That's all about character and creature animation in Mimesis Online. We put in an unbelievable amount of work, but the final effect is worth it in the opinion of everyone here at Tannhauser Gate. I think that's an opinion you'll share when you see the finished game.

See you in the ether.
Waldek.