I am.
You don't have to remodel every frame. You do rely on more keyframes but it actually cuts done on the time you spend fixing graphs because the frames are stepped.
Hi there. Animator here. and ordinarily you'd be right. You wouldnt NORMALLY have to remodel or touch up every frame in 3d. You'd just let some timeline scrubbing between keyframes cover you on the motions between keyframe poses and then adjust curves to add snappiness.
HOWEVER THIS IS NOT NORMAL 3D THIS IS THE ASW GUILTY GEAR STYLE OF ANIMATION MEANING YOU ARE WRONG THEY NOT ONLY HAVE TO REDO POSES EVERY FRAME BUT ALSO REDO ALL SHADING WORK.
The GG style is unique. Ordinarily you unwrap a model and it looks like an unwrapped football or something. This is an ordinary UV unwrap.
how normal sane people unwrap a model said:
This is a GG model which is how the Dragonball game is doing its amazing graphics.
You see...normally when you unwrap a model and setup shaders you PAINT the areas on the map you want to receive more light or shadow as the model moves in front of or away from light sources and the engine generates the shadows and highlights for you.
ARC SYS SAYS FUCK THAT NOISE.
Arc Sys knows that if you zoom in close enough or that on certain frames the model's lighting will look off and not like an anime. Plus Arc Sys instead uses the NEGATIVE SPACE to generate their hard black lines. instead of actually using a cel shader setup. THEY LITERALLY CUT OUT AND UNWRAP EVERY MUSCLE OR EDGE ON THEIR MODELS AS A SEPERATE UV.
They then go and make those UV's flood fill with solid colors those areas in blocks. Normally if you stretch a UV too far a texture the textures look stretched. But ASW doesn't use textures that way. They try to emulate 2d art by doing color flats first, then shaders, then lines. To get the lines in 3d they tug the UV's to areas with no color and the engine cannot register a texture so it makes them appear Black but as a VECTOR. Not as a normal texture...thats the key. Vector based art never has seems or pixelation no matter how close you get to it so they found a means to take areas with no color to generate black in vector to perfectly recreate the 2d linework that goes into normal art. No matter how the model moves and turns the crease of every muscle will have perfect lines and seems because its generating void as black...or whatever other color they tell the engine per frame which can change.
By doin all that to get perfect lines though they have to chop up everything with a seam into its own UV. That means they have a hard time orgainzing a UV MAP unless they make those areas squares. That makes the UV Map insanely hard to work with at a glance and its time consuming as hell to tweak, but since the colors are all flat and not textures its doable!
However this style of stretched UVs comes at a major cost...ALL REFLECTION AND AND SHADOWS GENERATED BY NORMAL SHADER MAPS DONT WORK RIGHT! Thats right...the maps are stretched so when the light hits the model and it moves the shadows spaz out and look like the kind of stretched to shit textures they are.
THIS IS WHY YOU CAN"T JUST MAKE ANOTHER MODEL IN THIS STYLE. ASW STYLE ANIMATION STILL REQUIRES YOU TO HAND SHADE AND HIGHLIGHT EVERY FRAME OF ANIMATION TO CORRECT THE ISSUES BROUGHT ON WITH THERE UV SETUP THAT WAS CREATED TO GET THE CEL SHADE LINES PERFECT.
Not only that but the ASW team also showed that they did not care for the tween animations created by scrubbing timelines between keyframes. They LITERALLY still go through and repose every single frame of animation they do in 3d to emulate the squash and stretch that goes into 2d animations and since its a 3d model it takes longer to do this way than to simply draw it, because you have to puppeteer every limb per frame.
ASW STYLE CEL SHADE 3D MODELING IS DAMNED NEAR TRIPLE THE WORK. ITS EASILY SIMPLER TO 2D ANIMATE THAN DO WHAT THEY DO.
You learn today. Educate yourself. I've done this shit, I've followed their tutorials and it is a fucking timesink. ASW is not run of the mill cel shading work or 3d animation. They are simply using 3d models as a new way to generate 2d principles and in so doing have gone to insane lengths of work no one else is willing to take on.
HERE. WATCH THE VID THEY DID ON HOW THEY ANIMATE THEIR SHIT IF YOU DONT BELIEVE ME AND LEARN WHY THEY CANT JUST POOP OUT 3D ALT MODELS IN THEIR STYLE.