Have you guys seen any scabbards in RPGs / Action RPGs etc. recently?
Games like Assassin’s Creed or obviously For Honor (pointing at you Orochi), Mount & Blade, Chivalry, seem to have no representation of a scabbard model which usually holds a sharp weapon like a sword or a dagger.
Throughout the history of the Legend of Zelda series Link used to have a scabbard for his master sword which he was wearing on his back and the only game that does that as well seems to be The Witcher.
Now, I’m not talking about leather straps which hold the weapon in place, I’m talking about full wooden / leather scabbards which were almost a must have for any combatant using sharp weapons in the past, for obvious reasons. (Carrying it safely, not hurting yourself or others, show that you’re not ready to fight …)
So recently I created a character model & a sword and scabbard to see if the problem could lie in the way it’s animated. And I discovered why it could be a problem for modern developers mainly because it can be time consuming to portray a sword drawn out of a scabbard accurately and without clipping.
It MAY not be a big problem to draw an european sword out of it’s scabbard, as we can see in the Witcher or Zelda, since the straight blade just have to go right into a straight line to get drawn out or put back into the scabbard. The animation, it itself, can be linear and static and it would still look good.
But it is a real problem with asian blades, or blades that are curved and therefore have a curved scabbard, as they are not drawn in a straight line, but rather in a curved arch. That ultimately forces an simultaneous, dynamic interaction between the scabbard, the left hand, and the blade, the right hand, to work properly.
One of the famous representations in a japenese sword drawing style that, I will use for my question, can be seen in the game League of Legends (LoL). I’m talking about Yasuo.
Now, LoL is an Moba Real Time Strategy game and I’m aware that the game is fast paced and that the main focus is on the movement, not on the detail. But it has always bothered me, that Riot - even though they done a great job in animating the character - did not even bother to take care of that problem. They just accepted it. I’m talking about the clipping issue, and why it’s almost impossible to draw a curved object out of a curved shell, without clipping.
Since this is my first post here, I would also like to introduce myself to the community.
I’m a 22 year old hobby artist from germany and a somewhat intermediate Blender user. Around 2 years ago I began to sketch, paint, animate and model assets by myself and for my own game project that I had in mind for a long time. When it comes to animation, I usually draw sketches, frame by frame, to get an idea of what kind of movement I want to display for the 3d model and use it as a reference.
One hobby that I really enjoy is martial arts and I fell in love with the beautiful, geometrical motions in Iaido and Aikido which all made sense and never work against the human body. There I met my inner critique, face to face - and learned more about my perfectionist, complicated mindset. So I am aware that most people wouldn’t care less about a small detail like a scabbard, but as I studied the eastern martial arts through practice and theory, I began to see more and more errors in certain movements one would not normally notice when they are watching an animated sequence - and I certainly do not want to make those same mistakes, as I have the tools to do it differently. I’m not talking about the principles of animation, but rather about the logic of the movement itself.
So to get to the point why a curved sword, like a katana, should not be drawn like an european sword and therefore needs also the movement of the left hand (Saya Biki), I want to show you an explanation video. Since new users can only post 2 links, I can not show you an example.
When I reconstruct the movement, I always end up having the sword clip through the scabbard as soon as it leaves the opening. When I add the rotation of the blade and the saya/scabbard, it becomes a total mess. Not even does the blade clip through the scabbard, it also makes it look like the blade does not just break the scabbard but also let’s the wearer look like he cuts his own wrist.
For me, it’s nearly impossible to move the blade out of the scabbard, without having to edit every frame one-by-one. Even then, the process is not just time consuming and exhausting, it seems like it is technically not possible to finish the animation without clipping.
So I came up with 2 ideas to solve the issue, yet it still persists.
One: I tried to change the size of the two objects (sword / scabbard) - the issue here is, that the scabbard ends up being too large and the sword too small to the point where it just looks ridiculous. The clipping is minimized to the blade’s tip. That’s good, but the aesthetic is lost as I’m not aiming for a cartoonish style.
Two: Changing the size of the blade as it is drawn. This seems to work out a bit, but it ends up clipping on either side of the scabbard anyway.
The next thing I’m going to try is to add more bones to the blade, so that I can move it inside the scabbard, to adjust it as good as possible and then returning the values back to origin.
Yet my questions remain:
How would you animate a curved sword being pulled out of a curved scabbard? How do you reduce clipping between two objects? How would you express a dynamic motion between two objects while reducing clipping to a minimum? When is clipping acceptable?
Excuse me for the long post, thank you for your time. I hope we can learn from each other in the future. Until then, I wish you a good future.
bit with the sword when it is away from the scabbard:
I’m really happy that you like it!