I Tried Fighting a Hammer with a Mouse
Added 2025-06-02 08:00:08 +0000 UTCI’ve been sculpting new hammer animations for Morihaus Might the old-fashioned way—
keyframe by keyframe—and it felt like banging my head on an anvil.
↑My handmade animation. Not great.
So I took a wild swing at something new: Quick Magic, an AI that turns any video into motion-capture data.
I’d tested a similar AI at my old studio called Wonder Studio. Its results looked fine from one camera angle, but walk around to the side and the character’s feet slid like they were on ice. Games need animation that looks right from every direction, so that was a deal-breaker.
Quick Magic surprised me. Foot contact was much more stable—just a slight slide, easy to fix if needed.
One catch: if the source video is shot from a slanted angle, the whole motion ends up tilted too—picture a dancer leaning downhill. That means a bit of hand-polish, but it’s easier than sculpting the whole move from scratch.
↑Original video (left) and Quick Magic output (right)
The Plot Twist: Who’s Behind the Curtain?
While digging for pricing, I noticed something fishy—no company name on the website. After some detective work (and a little help from AI), I found the answer:
Quick Magic is the AI arm of Chengdu Lemanduo Technology, based in Sichuan, China, with investment from Tencent.
Why does that matter?
I’ve got no proof that Quick Magic was trained on ripped assets, but China’s tech scene has form: DeepSeek openly distilled ChatGPT; Square Enix recently sued Hong Kong’s BlackJack Studio for lifting Front Mission models in Metal Storm (or Mecharashi) ; and smash hits like Genshin Impact or Identity V borrow so heavily from Zelda, NieR, and Dead by Daylight that calling them “homages” feels generous—so I stay cautious.
Maybe that appetite for “creative borrowing” is exactly why their results are so sharp. On the flip side, handing over my credit-card details feels like trusting my gold to a stranger in the Ragged Flagon.
Risk vs. Reward
One article bragged that Quick Magic can turn 36 days of animation work into just 10 minutes.
After testing, I believe it.
The free tier is too limited for real progress, so I’m eyeing a paid plan—most likely through PayPal for an extra layer of safety.
Your patron pledges make this experiment possible. If it works, I can spend less time wrestling keyframes and more time crafting the epic combos you’re here for. If it flops… well, at least we tried the sharpest tool in the shed.
Thank you for backing this adventure. Your support lets me chase bold ideas—even when they come wrapped in mystery.
Next on the Workbench
Grab your popcorn (and ear-plugs): in the coming update I’ll put Quick Magic through a real trial by fire.
I’ll record a live swing session with a stunt hammer—or borrow a legendary smash from a favorite action game.
Quick Magic will chew that footage and spit out mocap data in minutes.
I’ll drop the raw clip straight into Morihaus Might, tweak the feet, and hit Play.
You’ll see three GIFs side-by-side: original video → AI mocap → in-game swing. If the results feel weighty and dangerous, we score a critical hit; if they wobble like rubber, we head back to the anvil. Either way, you’ll get the unfiltered verdict and the project file to poke around.
Stay tuned—Kynareth’s wind is about to meet a whole lot of metal.
Comments
Thanks for the comment, your point is absolutely valid. Yeah, unfortunately in Oblivion Remastered, all two-handed weapons still share the same idle animation. So I had to go with a "safe" idle that wouldn’t look too wrong on any of them… which of course means it doesn’t look quite right for any of them either. That said, it’s not that unique idles per weapon are impossible, just that I don’t have the Unreal Engine knowledge yet to make it happen. If someone eventually creates a framework mod that allows per-weapon idles through Blueprints or other means, I’d absolutely love to give warhammers their own animations and I’d base the idle exactly on your advice;D
KEI
2025-06-02 09:50:44 +0000 UTCI just wanted to leave a tip for hammer attack animations. The way the character holds the weapon is ok for a sword but not for a hammer. When holding a weapon you want to place your main hand as near as possible to the balance point of the weapon (for a hammer it's just below its head), otherwise the weapon will feel MUCH heavier than it really is. So the character should be holding the hammer with the right hand below the head of the weapon and the left hand near the end of the handle. Then, when attacking, the right hand would slide near the left one while landing the blow. If you want references for dynamic animations for a hammer you can look to monster hunter world/wilds. All of this if you can set a different idle for different weapons, which I don't know if you can in Oblivion, if not then ignore my comment. xD In any case, know that your animations have a very high quality level, you're improving the game so much, keep up the great work!
Paolo Traisci
2025-06-02 09:12:46 +0000 UTC
