This is an attempt to introduce a cohesive language when referring to different aspects of videogame animation. Currently, semantics vary from company to company, further promoting a lack of inter-developer communication.

Additionally, this section includes descriptions of videogame fan terms that, while seemingly obvious to the seasoned veteran, can prove alienating to the outsider.

# A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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2.5D: (2-And-A-Half-D) When the single biggest revolution in gaming came to pass, the advent of 3D, many developers played it safe with 2.5D, the creation of games that played exactly the same as 2D, only with flashy 3D backgrounds and characters.

A

Additive Animation Blending: An advanced function of blending, whereby rather than playing more than one similar animations together to collectively add up to a weight value of 1, two are added together to creat entirely new combinations. Most commonly done by having one base animation, such as an idle, with a second action merely performing offsets from the first, created by removing a reference pose (such as a single frame from the idle) from the second animation.Perhaps the single most powerful tool in the creative motion-designer’s set for creating truly organic movement without sacrificing the character’s ability to move around the environment.

AI: (NPC, Artificial Intelligence) The systems performed at runtime that allow NPCs to function convincingly. Previously only involving the simplest decisions on which pre-placed nodes to move to, but more lately can involve completely free-form movement and decision making that reacts to unscripted events, allowing for the holy-grail of true emergent gameplay.

Anticipation: (Antic, Buildup) 1. The initial section of an animated action used to sell the movement. 2. In purely videogame terms, this is the section of an animation before the purpose (or apex) is achieved. Most apparent and useful on NPC attacks to telegraph the move and allow enough time for the player to react in advance.

Apex: (Contact Point) 1. The section of an animation where the true purpose of that individual action is achieved, following the anticipation and preceeding the recoil. Can vary from the contact point of an attack, to the actual point in a pointing action – (necessary for timing to dialogue). 2. The highest height of a jumping arc, relevant for setting jump-heights in level-design.

Asset: Any single resource created for inclusion in a game. For example, an animated action, an art-created object, a sound or visual effect.

Attract Mode: Portion of the game that plays in a cyclic manner alternating with the front-end, used to draw gamer’s attention from a shop demo-booth before purchasing the game, originally popularised by arcade coin-ops.

B

Bindpose: (Basepose, Reference Pose, T-Pose, Y-Pose) The pose assumed by a character before any animation has been applied. Previously commonly created with arms outstretched horizontal, but more recently now with arms at a 45 degree angle, providing better skinning as the vast majority of actions rarely require that arms lift higher than shoulder-height.

Blending: The relatively new concept of combining animations together using basic quaternion math, allowing for a greater variety and creativity with realtime animation as the days of linearly sequencing actions are behind us.

Blend-Weights: The percentage of influence each animation within a blend has on the character in question. Displayed in values between 0 and 1.

BG: Short for background. The initally drawn layer in 2D games. Akin to the skydome in 3D games.
Build: The regular release of a solid version of the game during the development cycles on which further development can be made without fear of progress-prohibiting crashes or bugs.

C

Collision: (Personal Space, God-Node) The actual physical existence of the any 3D asset’s visual representation in-game, simplified to either a cylinder or box to reduce calculation. Character collison is used in conjunction with the environment collision to prevent characters from walking through walls and even falling through the floor. More complex collision is required for realtime physics such as ragdoll ponytails etc.

Character-Driving: The action of simply moving a character around the environment – usually the first set of animations created in any game as nothing can be done without them.

Cutscene: (Cinematic, FMV) The act of cutting from the player control of in-game action to traditional cinema pre-set cameras and linear animation.

Cycle: (Loop) 1. Opposite of fire-and-forget, an animation that begins over again upon completion – the most common examples are walks, runs and idles. Requiring an an invisible transition between the end and re-start, this methos is primarily used as a memory-saving device, though promotes repetition if too easily visible. 2. The name given to any individual action in a game.

D

Deadzone: Area of joypad thumstick input designated as offering an input value of zero. The deadzone can be scaled differently for each application, though too small a deadzone can cause unwanted values to occur due to thumbstick callibration variation.

Development Cycle: The length of time to create one full game, from original concept, design, pre-production, full production, alpha, beta, and bug fixing right up to submission and gold master.

Dev-Kit: The kit used by developers to test and debug a game during the development cycle. Often appearing like the console on which it is based, but containing extra memory and processing power to run debugging tools in the background of a play-through, hold multiple builds of the game at once, but most commonly to play software before optimisation for smoother frame-rates etc.

Driving Animations: The set of animations used to enable character-driving, the initial set of actions required to begin game testing.

DS: (NDS) Nintendo Dual Screen. Nintendo’s 64-bit hand-held console.

E

Emergent Gameplay: Gameplay situations not pre-planned by the developer that arise out of player creativity and unscripted, adaptive AI.

Event: Any scripted action occuring in-game requires a triggering event, most commonly time-based, player position, or sequential from other events.

F

FK: (Forward Kinematics) Opposite of IK. The process of animating starting with a parent node or bone from the top of the hierarchy down to the lowest child. Best used when the exact location of the child in question is irrelevant, otherwise IK is preferred.

Fire-And-Forget: (FAF) As opposed to a cycling or looping animation, this animation is played only once and does not have to repeat, so the start and end poses should be close or identical to the relevant animations that preceed and follow the fire-and-forget animation.

Flocking: A side effect of non-scripted AI that are able to move without pre-determined paths – when NPCs appear to group together because of common decision-making processes that react to the same stimulus (ie a grenade exploding nearby).

Front-End: Portion of the game that usually involves any options the player can affect before entering the main game, as well as save/load menus and more often than not an attract mode.

G

Gameworld: The world that is created upon entering the main game, as opposed to the front-end.

Game Mechanics: The designed functionality behind the game, as well as the unseen rules that determine how all things work and (hopefully) are balanced.

Glitching: (Popping) When a noticeable jump in bone orientations can be observed between two animations. This can be overcome with blending or simple transitions, as well as ensuring loops cycle correctly and the start and end poses of fire-and-forget actions as close as possible match up to the animations preceeding and following them.

H

Hyper-Extension: An undesireable result of IK, whereby the limb in question reaches it’s full extent for more than one frame, causing an unnatural straightening of the limb where there should have been less animation. Can be overcome by moving the IK root closer to the end-effector or vice-versa.

I

Idle: (Stand, Pause, Breathe) Perhaps the most important animation in any game, as it’s the base pose from which the vast majority of fire-and-forget animations will move from and to. Typically involving an exaggerated breathing or combat stance. Games can have more than one idle, should the character move between non-combat, combat (and more) modes.

Inertia: The application of a virtual mass or weight to a character so that they move additionally to (and despite) the joypad inputs on player characters, as well as providing delays to NPCs or any moving object on top of regular driving AI.

IK: (Inverse Kinematics) Opposite of FK. The process of animating starting with a child node or bone from the bottom of the hierarchy up to the root or parent nodes. Best used when the exact location of the child in question is essential, such as a hand grasping an object or most commonly a foot on the ground, otherwise FK is preferred.

J

K

L

M

MMORPG: (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) Game Genre. (See RPG) A relatively new genre only available due to the widespread use of broadband, whereby people with no real lives of their own congregate in ficticious worlds and combat, dialogue and marry other similarly depressing folk.

Mocap: (Motion Capture) Often criticised as rotoscoping for CG animation, good quality mocap, (with help from experienced animators), provides undeniably the most realistic movement available, with mass quantities able to be created in a relatively short time. Disadvantages include less flexibilty with re-captures and cost-prohibition for smaller sessions.

Momentum: A measure of the motion of a body, promoting inertia.

N

N64: Nintendo 64. Nintendo’s 64-bit console.

NES: Nintendo Entertainment System. Nintendo’s 8-bit console.

Node: (Point, Locator) An asset placed in the gameworld to provide a reference point for an event to occur, such as an event trigger, path-finding location, or even the location of a bone in space.

Non-Linear Animation: The style of animation that comprises most of what is created for in-game use – Cycles etc, as well as the unpredictable nature resulting fromf player input. As opposed to the linear (pre-defined start and end) animation that is required for film and television. Cutscenes are not Non-Linear.

Normal: The angle from which a single-sided polygon is calculated to be facing. Defaulting to be at right angles to the polygon face.

Normal-Check: A check performed to calculate the angle at which a polygon is facing, used to calculate the angle of any incline relative to a character’s collision for incline-related tasks.

NPC: (AI, Enemy) Non Player Character. Any character in a game not under the direct control of a human player.

O

Optimisation: The process of speeding up processing time of code and assets as initial implementations are rarely as clean and as fast as they can be. Typically takes place towards the end of development or the end of the feature’s implementation.

P

Path-finding: (Walk Path) A device of artificial intelligence, whereby the NPC will move around the environment between designer-placed nodes, or moving objects such as the player character.

PC: 1. Personal Computer. 2. Player Character.

Pipeline: The process between initial animation creation and implementation into the game engine. Generally involving three main stages – Creation (which can involve a whole subset itself for example Mo-cap importing/cleanup etc) Exporting (Turning the animation into data readable by the game engine, this can also include an automated compression process), and finally Implementation (Adding the action into the game engine by a programmer). An efficient pipeline is very desireable for minimal wasted time during the development process, as well as the ability to expose and fix bugs easily, including making alterations and modifications to the animations for gameplay balancing purposes. From “Art Pipeline Philosophies For The Next Generation” by Rod Green, the goal of any art pipeline is defined thus: “the interconnecting software, utilities, processors, and techniques that artists use to design, develop, and submit assets – should always be to make sure the artists on the project work as quickly and efficiently as possible.”

Pixel: A single dot in the matrix of a screen’s resolution. Relevant to sprites in the 16-bit era and before, but now mostly used to measure screen resolutions.

Popping: See Glitching.

Pre-canned: Any sequence of events or actions that are pre-determined and unalterable by player interaction, such as a non-interactive cutscene or combination of motionss that look like individual actions, but are in fact a single sequence.

Procedural: Any asset or system internally generated by the computer code as opposed to being done by the hand of a developer.

Q

R

Root-Bone: (Root-Node, Root) The bone at the top of the skeleton hierarchy, most often positioned between the pelvis and first spine bone, allowing independant motion for both. This bone will have position and rotation keys on it whereas most others only require rotation, as it is essentially the bone that controlls the character’s body movement. There may be other bones above it in the hierarchy that control the character’s collision etc, but these should not require a position dependancy with this bone, allowing the character to animate outside of its collision.

Ragdoll: (Physics) This is a character state where all bone rotations are no longer controlled by animation but by a combination of physics momentum and rotation limitations against collision volumes elsewhere on the character and in the environment. Used mostly to replace death animations but can also be combined with animator-created poses so provide realistic movement in motorbike driving games etc.

Recoil: (Follow-through, Reaction, Settle) The portion of an action that takes the character from the contact or active portion of an animation back into the relevant idle pose. Longer settle times allow for a smoother look to the animation and often leave a character vulnerable if un-interruptible, whilst shorter settle times can give a speed advantage gameplay-wise, but make the animation look more jerky and lacking in weight.

Reference Pose: Relevant for additive animation blending. This is the pose thats bone position and rotation values will be removed from a selected animation in order to only have offsets from this pose remain, in order to apply the new animation comprising offset to another animation to create an entirely new action in realtime.

Resource: See Asset.

RPG: Role Playing Game. Game Genre. While the genre has become diluted recently, there are mainstays such as combat, character stat development, deep storylines and generally long (20-300 hours) game length.

RTS: Real-time Strategy: Game Genre. Mostly centering around war, these strategy games centre around resource building and management rather than the action resulting from amassing your troops.

S

Scripting: The process of pre-defining events to occur in the game, such as an NPC movement routine, or an explosion occuring when a certain amount of triggering criteria are met.

Secondary Animation: The animation on smaller, less essential parts of a character or object that help to sell the main action.

Settle: The final stage of a fire-and-forget animation that provided overshoot past the idle pose, further lessening the possibility of glitching between actions.

Skating: (Foot Skating, Sliding) When the character moves across the level at a speed that does not match the feet movement of the animations they will slide, which can be undesirable. Most noticeable on NPCs that can be observed with a static camera, and less so on a PC that remains relatively stationary on-screen with a moving background.

Skydome: (Skybox) The cube, sphere or dome upon which a sky/horizon texture is mapped to create a false sense of distance in level art.

Sprites: Flat 2D image. The primary method of animation in the 2D era, now most commonly used in particle effects and faux-3D objects that always orient to face the viewer.

Suspension Of Disbelief: Previously only relevant to non-interactive media such as film. The difficult-to-attain and even more difficult to maintain goal of persuading the player to forget they are playing a videogame.

Swag: (Loot) Game-related merchandise, often freely available at conventions and expositions.

Sync Animation: Type of animation requiring two or more subjects, animated together then exported independantly of one another only to have their position, orientation and playback re-synced in the game, to make them appear to be interacting with each other.

T

Tile: 1. A repeated sprite, used to create backgrounds in the 2D era. 2. A single instance of a repeating texture, that when repeated forms a larger repeating texture.

Transition: A blending movement between animations, usually procedural to cover multiple combinations of animations, that smoothes the movement between animations that end then start in different poses. This is required more in games that have more than one character sharing an animation set, that may have differing idle poses, Similarly, animations such as damages that can be triggered at any point during almost any animation require transitions for smooth movement without glitching.

Trans-Time: The amount of time, usually set by the animator, required to procedurally transition between animations. Used to minimise popping in animation systems without blending.

Travel: The descriptive moving of a character during a driving animation.

Trigger: See Event.

Twitch: A gametype, relying on player reactions rather than tactical selection. Fighting games like Tekken and DOA would be twitch, while turn-based RPGs such as Final Fantasy X are not. This differentiation in game types is important to animators as it will greatly influence timing and balancing decisions regarding anticipation and settle/recoil lengths.

U

V

Vertex: (Vertice, Vert) The point at which the sides of a polygon intersect.

W

X

Y

Z