This is impressive to me:
These kind of animations that have "physicality" applied to them and react to the world in a meaningful way will always be better and more impressive than ones that are just animations IMHO.
It's cool to look at, sure. Once you have to play with these kinds of animations in a videogame like LittleBigPlanet however, you realize why they only use these systems sparingly when players are in control (or design whole games around just that type of movement mechanics, as in Storror Parkour Pro.) Otherwise, they blend in a ton of hand-crafted or mocapped animation into the animation routines where physical animation systems are used, or just cheat the physics out for the animation they want, so that the game is responsive to play. A game like GTA4, for example, it's got the cool (old) Euphoria "ragdoll stuntman" system in it, but it still took a crew of ace animators to make most of the movement you see in the game, as well as transitional animations to blend from ragdoll to working avatar.
There's way more physical and computer-assisted animation systems in games than most people understand. Look at Ubisoft's breakthrough work in machine-learned motion-matching, or UE's modern IK systems, or some of the advances in face movement representation. But first rule of game design is, it's gotta be fun to play.
Why random guy on the web can do these kind of animations and quadruple A studio are stuck with PS2 ones? (Like the new Star Wars Outlaws trailer when she jumps)
Although I have a
lot of questions about that
jumping shot in the Star Wars Outlaws trailer, (primarily, why'd they include it, why'd they retain that angle of view, why pick such a barren and flatly-lit area to show an action moment in such a short trailer, etc.), but basically the answer appears to be that this is a gameplay jump, not a cutscene jump. If a jumping move is in the director's hands, they can make it realistic, they can make it exciting, they can make it
look fun from the angle they choose; if a jump is in the player's hands, those factors have to play backseat to whether it works in gameplay. You want a character to be able to jump twice their height and a full long jump pit from either foot in a sprint because when players press that A button, they expect the character to jump a chasm and survive. When viewed from a gameplay perspective, the cheats needed to make a gameplay jump seem authentic-enough in the moment work; when viewed from other angles as in this trailer, gameplay animations can look stupid.
(The Outlaws gameplay jump is still something I hope gets cleaned up further, I'm a little surprised what it is and is not doing given Ubi/Massive's general animation systems. However, I would imagine you won't notice this goofiness we're stuck on in the trailer for the most part.)
For comparison, from the same trailer, the jumping animation below is pretty clearly fully-animated, with proper momentum leading into the jump, arms swinging to balance and the takeoff foot planted then extended and the knees cycling to reach out and throw body weight forward, plus the overall height of the jump being barely waist-high despite her running and jumping with all her might.
...versus the iffy leap sequence from the trailer. She leaps 8 feet in the air, she makes the jump from what almost looks like a stutter-step of the push-off foot, she doesn't wheel much in the air to maintain balance, and she just looks like a video game character. Which, she is.
(An animator could add more of that physicality into the jump animation, but then that could either affect the timing of responsiveness or make it difficult to blend shooting or other actions into a jump. More realistic can mean less playable, and animators have to strike a balance.)
