Animating Age-able Objects

One of the core features in Singularity is the ability to age and renew certain objects with the TMD. These objects are used frequently throughout the game for puzzle solving, combat, and traversing obstacles, so the process of aging and renewing had to be really impressive looking. We also did not want to force the player to sit through a long drawn out animation each time, as this would make the core mechanic annoying and discourage using these objects.

The first solution to this was to create three or four different meshes in-between the new and old states. When the player used the TMD on the object we would flip though the different meshes very fast. This created a very “poppy” animation that worked game-play wise but wasn’t very captivating. This technique is used for a few of the most common, simple age-ables like the red exploding barrel because the animation needed to be extremely fast so it could be picked up quickly and used as a weapon. 
This also made it possible to have many barrels in the same scene because swapping meshes was better for performance than using bone-deforming meshes.

For the rest of the less common featured age-ables we decided to have bone-driven meshes. This method allows the animator to have fine control over the look of the aging and renewing. This also allowed us to create two different animations for aging and renewing. Establishing the look of the motion of an aging or renewing object is generally up to the animator, though all objects also follow some basic principles in order to maintain a consistent look.

For aging animations we start by thinking of how would each object naturally or unnaturally deteriorates over time and then we crunch this process into about 1-2 seconds of animation.
For the light/heavy water tank age-able we envisioned this looking like a tin can; maybe something fell on it and crushed it? The end result looks very much like a tin can being stepped on.

For renewing animations we have a more supernatural energy pulling these objects back together. Having chunks of the objects levitate upwards and float in midair slightly before being pulled into place helps sell this. One example of this is the staircase age-able. The pieces of the staircase are elevated off the ground and into the air, much higher than their final resting places before being pulled into the correct position.

One other aspect that we play with once the animation is keyed is time warping sections of the animation. People really liked the look of the “poppy” mesh swapping technique described earlier so we wanted to try and get some of this feeling back into our animations. Using a time warp curve we are able to quickly speed up and slow down sections of our animations and create a much more non-linear progression between old and new states.

There are a few cases where key-framing age-ables was not possible or would look better with physics-driven aging and renewing. For these objects we use a combination of key-frame animation and physics-engine-driven pieces. One example of this is the barricade object. When aged, the concrete section breaks into many separate pieces and falls to the ground. The problem is that the ground is not always flat so pieces end up floating in the air when we keyframe the entire sequence. By using physics pieces for some of this debris we can make these objects settle naturally on the ground (or anywhere in the world), and we end up with a unique look each time the object is aged.

We are thrilled with how aging objects with the TMD turned out. All departments worked really hard to make this core mechanic fun and visually awesome. We hope you enjoy it!

Mark Champigny
Senior Animator
Raven Software