Sword of the Sea: How Giant Squid Achieved Smooth Animation
High-Speed Adventure
Sword of the Sea is a high-speed adventure inspired by skateboarding games in which players, as the Wraith, surf on a ‘hoversword’ over landscapes like sand dunes, lava, and ice to find a lost ocean. The trailer has been knocking people for six thanks to the incredibly smooth animation, which has many wondering how it was done.
Developer Insights
Well, the developer Giant Squid, the people behind Pathless, has shared some insights into just how they achieved such dynamic surfing over the moving terrain.
Overlapping Action
Giant Squid used the principle of overlapping action to create smooth, flowing movements, using Blendspaces to interpolate between animations. Lead animator Joel Finney wrote in a blog that made it a "personal goal to make the movement as smooth and buttery as possible".
Challenges
"You would think that since the character doesn’t have to walk or run along the ground, that might make the animation easier, but game animation always provides unique challenges," he says.
3D Blendspace
The developer found that its first tries using a 2D blendspace for leaning left and right lacked fluidity, so it created a 3D blendspace with "delta leans". This added overlapping motion when turning, making movement look more natural.
Orienting the Character
Given that the player has to surf over dunes, slopes are crucial. They oriented the character to the terrain and counteranimated for smooth transitions on dunes.
4th Dimension
To make the reaction to speed feel realistic, they added a 4th dimension to the blendspace, adjusting the Wraith’s stance based on velocity. For high-speed boosting, the developer created a unique pose inspired by downhill longboarders, and to add life to static poses it implemented "surf fidgets" – small, random animations that play on top of existing movements.
Release Date
Sword of the Sea’s release date is yet to be announced. You can wishlist it on Steam.
Conclusion
Giant Squid’s use of overlapping action, 3D blendspace, and 4th dimension has resulted in incredibly smooth animation, making Sword of the Sea a highly anticipated game.
FAQs
Q: What is Sword of the Sea?
A: Sword of the Sea is a high-speed adventure game inspired by skateboarding games where players surf on a ‘hoversword’ over various landscapes.
Q: Who is the developer behind Sword of the Sea?
A: The developer behind Sword of the Sea is Giant Squid, the same team that created Pathless.
Q: What is the release date of Sword of the Sea?
A: The release date of Sword of the Sea is yet to be announced.
