#completely random ik but i was doing some research and this hit me like a truck | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

themilky-way · 4 years

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kinship {loki odinson}

gif credit: go-fandom-imagines

pairing: loki odinson x female! reader

summary: loki never thought that he’d defend, let alone protect, a midgardian. but after seeing you, in your most vulnerable states, he made it his mission to look after you. loosely based on this song.

warnings: some hints of violence (nothing too graphic), blood, and like one bad word. also when the characters say “kid” to you, it’s nothing age wise it’s just something i feel they’d call you yk.

notes: i’m in my loki feels ya’ll know the drill i just miss this man. also ik some of u ladies don’t have long hair i’m sorry! i’m having a little trouble making the words fit and stuff so please give me tips on how to improve!

the first time it happened was when you were sleeping. he never meant to walk in on your frail body, curled up in a ball in the over sized armchair tony had installed in the common room. your feet were tucked in neatly beneath you, with one hand splayed out across your stomach while the other held a book, your thumb keeping it partially open. your head had lolled down so it could rest on the arm rest, and while at first it had been rather uncomfortable, you let your eyes naturally droop so they could rest.

it had been the middle of the night, roughly around two in the morning, when loki decided to walk around the tower. he did this every so often, finding some sort of comfort from the peace and quiet the darkness held, but he had never encountered anybody else. he walked down the hall and past every avenger’s room, until he reached the living room. originally, his plan was to stand at the wide glass window the room displayed and simply watch the city lights glitter in all sorts of patterns. after that, he would go to the terrace for a bit, just enough for the sun to come up and the sky to change to warmer colors. but he didn’t do that tonight. why? well, he didn’t really know the answer to that himself.

when he entered the room, he came across your sleeping form. he noticed the way in which you nestled your body further down the fur of the cushion and curled yourself into your body just a little more to stop goosebumps from forming. you were cold, your body heat not enough to cover the sharp temperatures that reached you. loki, taking note of this, took off his cardigan, and walked over to where you were sleeping. he straightened the delicate fabric before he laid the emerald green sweater over your frame. he tucked it in where he felt it might fall over with a random movement, careful to not dig his fingers in too deeply so it would hurt or startle you. next, he took the liberty to carefully retract the open book from your hand to place it on the coffee table, and then grabbed more of his cardigan so it covered your relaxed hand and tummy. he drew back a few steps, to examine his work. he felt it was mediocre, not as good as it might’ve been if steve or wanda had done it, but it was enough for you to rest.

loki was not a man who grasped the concept of emotional connections very well. he was someone who didn’t have a feel for intimacy, who despised physical touch, who didn’t know anything about feelings other than hatred or malice. but here he was, peering down at your frail body, in one of its most fragile states that could possibly exist, and felt something. he didn’t know what it was, and he knew he didn’t want to find out, but it would reach him. the feeling, along with the desire, to get to know you in more intricate ways.

he walked over to the couch a couple of feet to the right of where you were and took a seat, folding his left leg onto the soft, plush seat while the other one remained planted on the marbled floor. he had a view of the window, like he originally planned to study, but he found his attention drifting to another sight. he observed how quietly you breathed, the soft exhales that your nose released every few seconds. after a while, he noticed how your lips parted slightly and began to exhale with it instead. the soft breaths turned louder, and your snores were now evident to him. they weren’t loud, barely even there, and only lasted a minute or two before they returned to regular breathing.

he also noticed how the hair on top of your head was beginning to disperse from its neat place. the soft, baby hairs that adorned the sides of your forehead lost their place and decided to scavenge for another, and the more you adjusted your head, the more they ruffled. he also saw the way your body slightly trembled from the sudden gusts of wind the air conditioner would send, and how you finally embraced his clothing. it sent a thrill through loki, the thought, the image of you breathing in his scent that lingered on his sweater, how you seemed to like it and do it so mindlessly. it empowered him. and so he stayed there until dawn.

the next time loki encountered you in a similar state was two weeks later. tony had sent him to fetch you for a mission that was risky, and he had felt bad to include you since you had put in some vacation hours. loki, although he would never openly admit to anyone nor himself, had conducted some research on you since he first saw you. he knew you were stressed, deeply longing some time off to unwind and focus on yourself, and he seemed almost hesitant to follow through with stark’s request. nevertheless, he started his way up to your room, following the route to the elevator, and cutting some sharp corners to finally reach your corridor. as he was strolling down it, however, he caught the hints of different patternized beats and melodies coming from the end of it. he kept his ears perked in case he heard someone else, brows furrowed in confusion, but as he kept his pace and finally reached the outside of your door, he discovered the music was comingfrom you. he felt weird, intruding into your personal space like this, but in his defense, stark had sent him. just before he could reach up and properly knock, he noticed the door was slightly ajar. not sufficient enough for you to see him but enough for him to see you. he watched your body, a little too intently for his liking, flow to the rythmn of the upbeat song. your hands reaching up to run them through your hair while your hips swayed from side to side. your right foot would step out and then you’d bring your left one in, and then did the opposite.

all in all, it was an innocent dance, you were releasing tension that you were holding in for a while, and you were happy. loki saw that, in your face to be more exact. his eyes first reached your own, which were closed and nowhere near recognizing his broad figure in your doorway. he scanned your nose, how your nostrils would flare harder than usual whenever you released a longer breath. he compared it to when he first saw you sleeping in the common room, and he couldn’t decide which event he liked better. he finally reached your lips, and he had to physically fight his newfound urges and stop himself from busting in and connecting them to his own. they were delicate, soft, and slightly chapped. it was evident that you picked at the skin on your bottom one because he noticed a small red patch on one side of your bottom lip. he couldn’t look away, and he felt awful, thinking of you in such intimate ways while you were unbeknownst of his presence. but what made him almost completely lose his mind was the moment in which you tucked that very same lip, the red, almost raw, portion of it between your teeth. he let his eyes run over the action, and felt an all too familiar emotion grow in the pit of his stomach, one that he never imagined you’d be the one to elicit.

he’d had enough. he’d seen enough. without thinking twice on it, loki barged into your bedroom, steel door hitting the wall with a strong bang, and spoke with authority.

“stark needs you for a mission. he wants you onboard in ten.” you spun around to face him, a sharp gasp escaping your throat and shocked expression washing over your features. he had to mask his worry and regret of scaring you like this with indifference. he needed to do it like this. he couldn’t risk you turning too far and opening your oh so beautiful eyes only to find him creepily concentrating on you.

“loki, what the hell,” you breathed. “you fucking scared me!”

he tried to not let the way you had voiced that get to him. you were startled, frightened, and that mixed with the energy you were dancing with was sure to leave you gasping. but loki had seen you, twice now, in some of your purest forms. so the way you softly huffed his name, even for different reasons, made his mind run wild and his heart jump hurdles. he managed to keep his face stilled, though, and rolled his eyes and told you not to be such a wuss and to shut your music off. you walked over and turned the knob of your stereo down, complying. it took almost every cell in his body to keep from muttering out incoherent apologies, pulling you in close and stroking your ruffled hair. but he didn’t do that.

“yeah yeah. whatever. can you tell tony that i can’t go? i’m taking some days off and i-”

“he made it clear to me that you’re presence is crucial to the outcome of this mission,” he interrupted, his voice low. you rolled your eyes and started to frantically assemble your go bag, thanking loki for the message. he wanted to stay and watch you do this too, but all he did was let out a hum of acceptance and walk out your door. as he walked through the corridors and seemingly endless turns to leave your dormitory, he replayed everything he saw, and a small smile curved its way onto his own lips. and for the entirety of the next week that you were gone, he kept doing it.

you, with much reluctance, had hopped on the plane with steve, bucky, tony, and natasha. it was a hard mission, but you had been trained by one of the fiercest assassins that the world ever saw. so, alongside natasha, you fought almost effortlessly. but regardless of how effective you and your team performed, the enemy was also calculated. he managed to trick you into believing he was alone, that he was finishing this fight by himself. but when bucky was holding the sinister man down, he got hit with a strong blow to his shoulder. the metal of the bullet would have clashed against the metal of his own arm, but this bullet, according to the dying words of the man, was made especially for bucky. he was wounded, and tony flew to get him off the field as quickly as he could. natasha took hold of the man and held him down one last time, and as more of his soldiers appeared all around you, you and steve attacked them. you gave your everything, landing nasty blows in every direction. steve threw his shield to pin an adversary to the side of a car as he pinned you down on the ground, and you reached over to take it out of the man and shifted so you were able to see behind you. as soon as you did, you connected the blue and red colored metal to the face of another enemy. the last one. the team, from wherever they were standing, relaxed a little and looked around at all the casualties. tony and natasha had managed to take care of the leader, and steve looked over at you from his protective stance and grinned proudly. but his smile abruptly disappeared when he saw you fall back down. he noticed a small pool of blood collecting around your torso and rushed to your aid.

“tony, (y/n)’s wounded too! get the jet and get her inside. i’ll get bucky,” steve said hurriedly. tony landed shortly after and told friday to bring the jet down to your coordinates. steve looked down at you and let his hand caress the top of your head lightly before speaking again. “hang in there, kid, we’ll take care of you.”

you tried to make out his figure leave, and eventually run, to where bucky was lying to bring him aboard. you couldn’t really see him, though, because your vision was beginning to blur and your ears had started to ring. you attempted to keep your eyes open to see tony press a tech device to your wound and you winced, eyes squeezing shut tightly. all at once, you stopped hearing tony’s scrambled words, muscles around your face and body going completely numb. then, you succumbed into full darkness and so did everyone and everything around you.

the next time you opened your eyes, it was to a dimly lit operating room. your visual acuity quickly adjusted as your eyes kept bouncing around the different light bulbs, and then you turned your head to the right. you saw bucky peacefully sleeping, a patch adorning the top of his shoulder and an iv scaling up to the actual bag containing the medicine. you then raised your head a little to see that your clothes had been changed to some medical shorts and an oversized t-shirt. you knew then that it had been wanda who had helped, seeing as the band displayed on the shirt was her favorite. next, you turned to the left, and this time, you saw the back of a male figure. after careful study and concentration, you realized it was bruce.

“bruce?” you voice came out in a hoarse and cracked whisper. but it was loud enough for bruce to turn around and gleam at you.

“(y/n)! i see you’re awake, can i get you anything?” he took off his glasses and set them down next to some documents and walked over to you. you nodded weakly and shakily asked for some water, making an effort to get up from the bed but stopped after you felt a sharp pain take over the left side of your abdomen. you winced and let out a painful groan, and bruce instantly took a hold of your arm as his other hand reached around your back to steady you.

“careful, you’re hurt.”

“what happened, exactly?” you wondered, voice starting to come back to normal. by now, you were properly seated along the edge of the bed with your feet unsteadily planted on the ground. once bruce saw that you were stable enough to not fall, he allowed himself to pour water from a pitcher into a glass that had both been on your side table. you took the glass into your shaky hands and brought the rim up to your lips, relishing the hydration it brought to your dry mouth. you swigged it rather quickly, and bruce took it back and set it down before answering your question.

“well, you were on a mission, from what steve tells me. they brought you and bucky to me as soon as they could. you were stabbed, kiddo. i patched you up and took out your iv about an hour ago.”

your lips parted and let your jaw open a little in a surprised motion. you had a knife, at one point in your fight, plunged into you? you didn’t even feel anything. your head started to throb now that you were fully awake, and you could feel the pain more clearly.

“you’re strong, you know,” his voice brought you back to him. it was reassuring, gentle, just like you knew bruce was. “all of you guys are.”

you smiled at him and reached out to touch his hand, and squeezing it lightly. he pulled you into a hug, and you accepted it kindly, acknowledging the help and most importantly the presence of one of your best friends. when you pulled back, he saw you grimace as another shot of pain spread across your abdomen. he asked you if you desired to go to your room, and after you said yes, he was quick in his efforts to completely stand you up and off the bed. his hand was holding one of yours, and the other was on your back like before, but just as you were beginning to walk, another voice spoke.

“i can take you. if you allow me.”

your eyes diverted in the direction of the voice it came from, and you landed on a pair of sharp blue orbs. stopping dead in your tracks, you found your mouth becoming dry again. his eyes pierced into your own, and you couldn’t find any word combination that would possibly make sense. you looked at bruce, as did he, and you found yourself nodding. you turned back to see loki all stood up and heading over to where you were standing. since bruce was holding you from the right, loki let his hand slip around your waist on the other side, a few goosebumps forming around your body at the contact. the other hand, reached to take yours in his and held it strongly. you started walking again, at first slowly, but once you got the hang of your own legs again, it became much easier for the both of you.

the walk to your room was silent, but not awkward. he grip on your waist was sturdy, but gentle and whenever you let out huffs of pain, he would stop and allow you to rest for a while. eventually, you reached your door, and he let go of your hand to open it.

“may i?” loki inquired. you simply nodded again, and he led you in. when you saw the arrangement of pillows and blankets that awaited your arrival, it took you aback. you looked at him before asking, “did you do this?”

he stared at you for a few seconds, enough time for you to feel butterflies crawling around, and nodded.

during your entire stay at the tower, you couldn’t really deny the way you saw loki. it wasn’t anything deep, just a simple, growing attraction towards him. when you first arrived, loki was being detained after literally destroying the entire city, so his attitude towards you was hostile. but you found him handsome, despite his rude behavior, and his snappy comments and witty banter made the emotion within you much stronger. over time, you tried your best to be nice to him, to really get to know him unlike the majority of your team. no matter how many times loki shut you out of his life, you didn’t take it personal and continued to be your happy and cheery self when you saw him.

over time, loki stopped fighting to keep you out, and he switched from being rude to acting annoyed. you viewed this as a win and didn’t delve too much into far more personal problems to keep him from shutting you out again. despite you promptly sticking to this ideology, you couldn’t help but notice that he didn’t speak to you as often as he did these past few weeks. it was strange, but then again, it’s loki, you thought.

god, but now, he does this? watches you for who knows how long while you’re in the middle of a drug-induced trance? offers to take you to your room, which apparently he’s arranged to fit your commodity, and holds you so perfectly? it’s all too much for you, the way he makes you feel, but even though you try to push the thought away, it bombards once more.

one of your legs gives out, and you almost, almost fall to the ground. his free hand reached over to grab the other side of your hip to hold you, tightly squeezing the soft muscle that was there. he stilled, watching you intently to see if you were alright and looking for any signs of severe pain. you felt his gaze on you, but you didn’t look up, fully knowing that if you did, you’d give out again. instead, you looked down at your oversized clothes and focused on the design.

“let me get you to bed, so you can rest. can i do that?” his tone was caring, nursing even. his voice was silky, intoxicating your senses more than you liked. you wanted him to talk forever and listen to him rant about endless topics that were running through his mind. but right now your well being prevented you from doing that so you simply muttered, “please.”

he moved so he was behind you, his hands moving along the fabric of your clothes so they didn’t separate from your waist. he pushed you gently and guided you to your side of the bed, eventually letting his hands slide off gradually from your sides as you sat. you missed his touch as soon as it left. and he missed touching you.

as you scooted up so your head could lay on the soft, cushioned pillow, loki removed some other ones that he deemed unnecessary to your comfort. then, he grabbed the folded blanket he placed at the foot of the bed and unfolded it over you. immediately you nuzzled into it and took in the scent that it gave off, and you could’ve sworn that you recognized it. loki noticed it, and he let his mind wander to the night he took care of you sleeping, how you’d done the same exact thing to the smell of his cardigan. it sent him into a frenzy, stomach erupting into fluttering butterflies, hands turning clammy, and pinkish heat coloring his cheeks. how was it possible, he thought, that you made him feel like this. he didn’t notice how long he had observed you for, his eyes raking up your body and wishing nothing more than to embrace it once and for all. to feel the warmth of your hugs, and to ease your pain, even if it would be for a brief moment. his eyes continued traveling up towards you face, and when he finally reached your eyes, he found yours already looking at him.

“you can take a seat over there if you’d like?” you questioned him. you nudged with your head at a sofa that was behind him, and he furrowed his eyebrows as he looked back to look at it. he turned back around and asked, “you want me to stay?”

“yeah, i kinda do. you don’t have to obviously,” you stopped mid sentence as a new wave of pain rushed through, grimacing. as it passed, you continued, “but it’d be nice.”

of course he was going to stay. he knew he didn’t have to, but he wanted to. he wanted to take care of you, nurse you in every possible way he could so you could dance animatedly again. so you could fall asleep in the common room, reading your favorite novel and cuddle his sweater. and he wanted you. so without much hesitation this time, he offered you a warm, kind smile and made his way to the sofa and settled in. you, on the other hand, adjusted so your legs were folded but your back was still on the bed to avoid hurting yourself. it was an uncomfortable position, but you weren’t one to complain. you stayed there looking at the ceiling and counted the little glow in the dark stars that tony had glued for you. all the while you could feel a strong gaze look at you, but you were too afraid to say something or even look over. about ten minutes passed with utter silence, the sounds of breaths being exhaled exempt.

“you could’ve died.”

“we all could’ve.”

“yes, but you could’ve died.” he regretted enhancing the word as soon as he spoke it. had he said too much? gone too far? he saw you shift your focus from the stars to his face, confusion written all over it. he didn’t look away, though, as embarrassing as it was for him.

“i thought you didn’t like me,” you remarked. loki scoffed and rolled his eyes before returning them toward you. “this has nothing to do with liking you, human.”

you chuckled at this, the rumbling of your chest sending another low shot of pain. “then what does it have to do with?”

he turned away and focused on your tiny bookshelf in the corner of your dorm instead. “taking care of you,” he answered faintly. at this, you’re features relaxed. the smallest smile began to tug at your lips, eyes beginning to sparkle with some sort of affection towards the god.

“ah, so you like me.”

loki laughed lightly at your reply, but mostly to hide the nervousness his voice might convey if he spoke. he found it stunning; how you effortlessly made him feel worthy of kinship. another, shorter, ripple of silence took over, but you were the one to break it this time.

“can you take care of me?” the words hit him like a punch in the stomach, and almost instantly his mind started running wild once more. every phrase that appeared to be coherent was not anymore. he looked at you, thinking about how innocently you had voiced your words, how genuine you felt them.

“loki?”

“hm?” he pretended not to have heard you, pretended to be lost in some other thought that wasn’t you.

“can you stay here tonight?”

never in his life did loki imagine he’d be watching over an injured midgardian. he also never imagined for them to be you. “of course, i don’t mind,” he swiftly responded. he mentally scolded himself for answering so fast and at how needy he probably sounded. nevertheless, any thought of embarrassment disappeared from his mind when you wholeheartedly smiled at him. you thanked him, and let your eyes close naturally. your head had relaxed completely against the pillow and your arms were entangled in the fuzzy blanket. you spoke, for one last time that night, and groggily whimpered, “g’night, loki.”

for the third time, loki was studying yet another one of your most vulnerable forms. it left him at ease knowing that nothing could ever harm you as long as he was there. and he was starting to realize in much greater depth, that there was nothing in this broken world that he wouldn’t do for you. to make you happy; to keep you safe. when he finally replied, it was mainly for him to hear it only.

“g’night, (y/n).”

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outerloop · 6 years

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Anatomy of a Falcon

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We recently announced Falcon Age, a game about nurturing a falcon from a baby, bonding with them, and together resisting the forces that colonise your planet. Falcon Age will be out in 2019 for PS4 and PS VR.

We showed off the game at PAX last week, got a great response, especially on the falcon. Let’s do a deep dive of the design of the falcon, animation and rig setup, AI and navigation, feather tech, and raptor sounds.

Falcon Design

Chandana Ekanayake and Darran Hurlbut

Our falcon design combines multiple raptor types. She is big as a golden eagle, fights like a hawk, has some eagle-hawk resemblance, some owl-like tufts, and falcon tendancies. She’s one of the last of her kind left in our world and we wanted to make her unique visually for the story and also visually stand out during gameplay against the sky and desert like environments.

One of the early inspirations for Falcon Age came from videos of golden eagles hunting large mountain goats. That led to some research on falconry and the idea of having a falcon as a pet and designing mechanics and gameplay around that core idea. We made a rough prototype early on to test out the ideas. The first time we successfully whistled for the bird in VR and saw the scale change from it approaching from a distance to landing on our hand, we knew we were on to something that could serve as the core of a unique game.

Animation and Rig

Aung Zaw Oo

FALCON FEET TRACKING

There are lots of animation options out there, but none of them would easily solve our specific falcon feet tracking needs. Inverse kinematic setups, root motion and other complex plugins could do the job if we had a bigger team and more time to dedicate to it. We wanted a more predictable outcome so we went with a multiple pose based solution made in 3dsmax.

However, the biggest reason for not using IK, is that this is the best way I could come up within a couple of days. We were building the prototype so fast back at the beginning of the project that we didn’t have time to look at what other solutions are available. This is the most reliable and least ugly way I found and we’ve stuck with it since. If it's not broken, don’t fix it.

Here is how I imagined the bird claws blending IRL. The ball is the fist that is attached to the VR motion controls.There are limits to this method. The claws needs to be able to wrap around a fair chunk of the fist and the fist pose needs to be as spherical as possible.

Note that head and legs are siblings of the pelvis. This makes the bone masking and making separate blend trees easier. Ignore the word ‘eagle’ in the naming. That was just a temp asset name before we figured out the bird design.

Short version of how its done; the fist is a ball and the bird’s feet rotate around the ball using 30 blend poses and shuffle animation to get the feet back to center when the ball(motion hand) has rotated too far.

30 Blend Poses on a ball

A shuffle animation let feet recenter

And the the blends start again after that quick shuffle animation from the new rotation of the hand. According to our programmer Justin, he is doing some regular old quaternion and linear algebra math. And I’m using 3 float values that he’s giving me and feeding them into those anim blend states.

For baby bird, the 2nd knuckle on the index finger is treated like a ball.

The one edge case where the ball concept doesn’t work is when the glove is pointed directly down. Pictured below.

We had several ways we could’ve dealt with that case. One solution was to have a collider on the forearm part of the glove and have the bird fly away if bird’s collision intersects with it. Ultimately we decided to let it be as is. It’s more player friendly that way since it lets you scratch your left hip while in VR without having the bird leave you. Also most people would never have their hands positioned that way in normal play.

Unless they’re playing in a headstand for some reason. All kinds of animation features would look wrong or broken in a headstand.

FALCON HEAD TRACKING

Short version of how its done; the head (bone_Head) is a direct child of the highest object in the bird skeletal hierarchy ( bone_Root ).

Bone_Root’s position(not rotation) follows the position of the motion controller and bone_Head counters that motion. Basically a 2-object hierarchy where a positional blend is used to counter motion of the parent object to keep the child object in same global position. The rest of the bird body uses a blend of 27 poses to try its best to keep the bird looking natural.

With the size of the adult bird we have, a 12 cm translation in all axis(24x24x24 cube) seemed ideal for getting the stabilizer effect without stretching the neck too much. The head will also move at the edge of that range and when the motion hand stops moving, that new position is now the new center and another 24cm cube is formed there. Math wise, headlock is mostly just a vector transform with a lot of extra 'fluff' for limiting speed, transitioning in and out, and moving the lock point when it gets too far from the body but the bird is still in the area.

Bird Navigation and AI

Justin LaLone

BIRD BOREDOM

For the most part, the falcon obeys Ara’s commands and follows her around. If you stand around long enough in one area while the bird is just circling or if you launch her with no orders, she will start looking for something else in the area to do - usually hunting or landing on a point of interest. She will also take some initiative when perched on Ara if anything else tries to grab her (she’s possessive like that), and likes to help lead Ara to the next hole in lightning golf.

SUN BLINDING PREY

Some of the prey, such as the rabbits, are very skittish and as soon as they notice a falcon diving towards them they will take off for the nearest bolthole. They have a more difficult time seeing Ara’s bird if she approaches with the sun behind her, so paying attention to where the light is coming from and sending the bird from that direction can make catching prey easier and more reliable. On the other hand, simply diving from higher up can be good too, as the bird can pick up more speed before being noticed, giving her prey less time to dodge out of the way.

Coming in fast and and from the sun, for a guaranteed hit.

FALCON 3D NAVIGATION

Getting a flying animal to reliably traverse a 3D space in a somewhat natural looking way isn’t something you typically find out of the box in a game engine. We have roughly three levels of bird-navigation logic going on to get the bird from point A to point B without running into too many things or getting stuck in a corner.

For high-level navigation to find its way through the world, we build a 3D navigation graph and use A* to find a path. What’s probably somewhat unique in our implementation is that we are using the fairly new Unity job system to do all our A* pathfinding, giving us fast searches that stay off the main thread, allowing more time for other AI, physics, and more stuff in general. Most of the graph is generated automatically, with manually placed connections for flying through narrow gaps like windows that are small or require an approach from a good angle.

The purple line is a rough path for it to follow to get around the big rocks in between where the falcon started and where Ara is standing. The bird doesn’t try to follow this line very closely; it would be trying to make some pretty strange and sharp turns if it tried, so as soon as it has a clear shot to the next part of the path it heads there instead.

Sometimes smaller objects or moving objects can get in the way. The falcon looks ahead and goes over or around these objects. This rock is actually just big enough that it would normally navigate around it with A*, but I forced it to “forget” about that for now. Here, it’s turning left to go around the rock - the red lines show where it has been looking for the past few frames. It usually won’t try to go under things in this way, but the A* navigation can direct it to go under arches or walkways.

The last level of bird flight logic is the actual maneuvering logic, or how the bird decides how fast it wants to go, how much to ascend or descend, how quickly to turn, and how it applies physics accelerations, limited by what it is allowed to do, to get there. This feeds into the animation system telling it how hard the bird is working, what sort of pose it should be in, if it should be banking, etc. The object avoidance is tied in somewhat strongly with this, but all the A* navigation is completely separate. It is also a big pile of math and logic.

Feathers and Rendering

Ben Golus

The small body feathers, or contour feathers, on our birds flutter in the wind, and react to the player’s hands brushing against them to give a greater sense of tactile interactivity. The way this was done for the PAX demo is a bit of a hack which I hope to replace before we ship. (This of course means it’s the solution that will ship with the game.) The short description is each small feather on the bird is a treated like many grass or vegetation shaders. Several overlapping sine waves are used to calculate some simple noise used to flutter the feathers and give them some life. Their timing is offset by a random value per feather stored in the vertex color, and the flutter movement is scaled also using the vertex color. This means the base of the feathers don’t move, but the tips do. It also means longer feathers move more than shorter ones.

Unlike most grass shaders, we need the feathers to not move in random directions, so we can’t use world or local space directions. Plus this is on a skinned mesh which makes the direction even more dynamic. Instead I use a combination of the feather’s vertex normal and tangent so the feathers flutter in and out and side to side relative to their orientation. This isn’t strictly accurate, but for small movements like this it won’t be obviously wrong.

To handle hand interactions, the player’s hand has a script which tracks the bones and creates a list of capsules that follow the shape of each finger, and a sphere for the palm. If the hand is in range, the vertex shader iterates over the list of capsules to find closest distance to one and softly scales down the flutter if a capsule one is overlapping it. The feathers are also squished down towards the body. The capsules are oversized as the overlapping tests are soft, so this isn’t an instant on-off, but a gradual change. It’s roughly tuned so that once the visible finger is touching the feather it has stopped moving entirely and will push down.

Here’s an early test of this system in action. You can see how the feathers react to the sphere before it actually touches it, but the interaction is still convincing.

For the final release of the game I’d like to move to a geometry shader or compute shader approach which would solve some of the issues the effect currently has when only one vertex of a feather is being overlapped, and the fact the feathers light normals don’t change when being touched.

FALCON DAMAGE FEEDBACK

We needed some way to show when the bird is hurt, and we wanted to avoid using a health bar or similar mechanic as much as possible. Animation is used to make the bird look tired, and in pain, but we still didn’t find that it was clear enough to users that she had taken damage. We decided we wanted her to look physically damaged with blood and frayed feathers to really strongly communicate her state. The obvious answer was to do a material swap. However we also wanted to show a gradual increase in damage rather than a hard on / off, and did not want to have to have a lot of different maps. There was also the issue that most feathers shared the same UVs, which meant blood spots would be repeated all over the bird.

The solution we ended up with was done in two parts. First was feather damage and fraying. The alpha channel of each feather is setup in a special way so that both an undamaged and damaged version exist in the alpha at different opacities. The feathers are using alpha test cutout (actually alpha to coverage) at 50% opacity when at normal health, and 25% opacity when damaged to switch between the two states.

For blood splatter the bird has a second UV for the blood texture so we don’t have to reuse the original feather texture UVs, and then we blend in the blood on top of the base texture. The result is we only need one base texture set, and one blood splatter texture set for the bird and we can get variable damage effects on the bird.

Raptor Sounds

Rob Pearsall

The bird wasn’t designed to be different - futuristic or magical - from any bird in our world, just an amalgam of several flying raptors (except for wearing hats); so, it didn’t make any sense to create a voice for it that might sound ‘cinematically awesome’ - it just had to work and be believable.

That said, I did have the choice of “borrowing” the calls of any raptor I thought would communicate to the player the various moods, feelings, and responses of the bird. So, I listened to the sounds that raptors make; and to my surprise, the biggest, most impressive bird - the eagle - was absolutely the worst sounding predator of them all. First place for “don’t use this”.

The hawk is always a great choice. Everybody loves the screech of a hawk. I used to think that there was only one good recording of a hawk screech and every sound designer owned it and that’s why all hawks in all shows and movies sound the same. Not true. It turns out, all hawks sound the same. Not much variation at all. Now, don’t get me wrong, it sounds awesome, so yea… we’ve got that sound on our bird too. But that’s not all.

The best thing I had going for me was that I didn’t have to limit our falcon voice to one specific kind of falcon; and there are many kinds. Because of this, I could liberally choose any sound any falcon produces that makes sense as a kind of emotional statement from the bird.

Conveniently, the emotions were limited; I name them as statements from the bird:

All is calm, all is well

I hear you call me

I’m attacking

I’m hurt, but I’m still flying

That hurts

Getting a recording of a raptor that’s annoyed is really easy; show up with a bunch of recording gear, get into it’s space, and it’s already annoyed. So, there’s a lot of material of raptors sounding negative and mad. This works for ‘pain’. The hawk’s sounds work for flying responses and attack calls. The “all is calm” sounds were the difficult ones. There were several chirps that worked, but then I had to edit a lot of different kind of calls to get partial, short squawks that fit with the chirps, and it worked.

Keeping track of the bird sonically while in game… well, that’s another story for later.

Thank you!

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