Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Focused Feedback: Halflings

You aren't wrong, but I'm trying to remain positive ^.^ Sorry if my response was harsh.

I've heard reports that they have the groundwork in already for different body types, and that leads into the hope that that ground work will come to fruition, and give us a few options as players - types that, with luck, will work well with the final animations with only minor tweaking post-hoc. The changes to halfling models need only be subtle, and none of the most necessary ones will (or should) affect the animation rigging.

To Mad, yes, what they've done with the goblins so far generally does look good, for the most part. They have all and only the animations that were designed for them, more or less, so they're pretty decent as far as I can see. They do (I think) suffer the same difficulty with ladders as other small races, but aside from that, the poses and animations we see them in generally work. It's harder to assess them because we only really have what we can see of them second hand, rather than being able to test directly. They don't, for example, *have* any of the poses and animations for weapons that no goblin in the game as been given... they've got only what they need to be enemies in the game, at the moment... but there is a strong possibility that they could become a playable later down the track, since much of the work has already been done.

Okay, this one will be the last one for combat poses and animations for now. Until I get to the underdark and pick up a couple of hand crossbows, I won't be able to test those ones. They were VERY problematic last patch, enough that dual-wielding hand crossbows tended to cause the game to crash... it was so bad that there's a very good possibility it's been fixed, but I won't know until I get there. Between then and now, I'll do some shots of some of the cutscenes and other issues, though most of those I already know are known issues - there's some important points that bear repeating even so, as well as illustrating with more evidence. First however, the last set of weapon poses.

One-handed animations:

Small-sized characters have their own animations and poses for one-handed weapons with an empty off-hand. The poses themselves are mostly good, with some oddities that are worth mentioning. We have two main poses; one for daggers and short swords, and one for 'the rest'. This is in addition to the unique javelin poses that I happened upon last time. First, here are the human-sized models for comparison; top line are the ready animations, while the bottom line are the subsequent recovery poses:




Male human-sized figures are all pretty sharp here, and the male human-sized model is unique in its dagger and short sword poses; I had to flip him around from my usual style, because he presents the weapon in the leading hand, rather than the back hand. the dagger and short sword poses are both placed here; they use the same base pose data, but are actually animated slightly differently. Female human-sized models have a different dagger and short sword pose. They have both listed here to show that they use the same pose data, however, the dagger ready pose, specifically, is completely Static for human-sized females. The short sword poses, and recovery, are identical, but they (as well as the dagger recovery pose) animate correctly. human-sized females use the same ready pose and animation as males for the heavier one-handed weapons, but they have a slightly different recovery pose. Even so, it looks polished and is pretty good.

For small sized characters, there are more issues:




Unlike human-sized models, the halflings are currently using the exact same pose and animation data for both males and females all the way through, at every step (though this causes a slight variation anomaly between females and males in the recovery poses). Similar to human-sized females, the dagger ready pose, specifically, is completely Static on both male and female halflings. Special note: without having checked dwarves (sorry dwarves), this seems as though human-sized males are the only race who have a functional one-handed dagger ready pose right now; everyone else has a Static instead.

Beyond that, there are only a few nit-picks I want to bring up here. The ready pose for heavier weapons has some bad clipping around where the leading leg meets the torso; this is especially visible on the male model. The male model also ends up looking like he has a weaker overall stance, because of this, plus his foot placement, while on the female model it generally looks more solid. In general (and this has been a trend across the poses for male and female halflings), the male model looks a little bit off balance in the recovery poses, while the female model end sup leaning forward slightly more, and this makes the visible centre of gravity more stable as a result. There is a slight weapon misalignment for the heavier pose for female halflings.

These poses were obviously designed for the smaller races, and it shows, becaue they're well appointed, without stretching or over-extension. The only other comment I would make is that the off-hand on recovery poses for female halflings seems to have gotten a bit lost; on the males, the off-hand stretches out and is in a ready position to respond to sudden threats as the character recovers from the attack. On females, however, the elbow has gotten stiffly bent and the hand floats in and down instead, looking out of place and without any real purpose. If it were corrected to match the males, the poses would look better, unless the intent from Larian is to give separate ready and recovery poses to males and females among the small-sized races as well.

Other than that, these poses are pretty solid.

Next up will be some shots of cutscenes and other unique events; many of these I have been informed are already known about, but a few bear cataloguing with visuals anyway.