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Rigging (and Weaponry)


DeepOmega

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I'm setting up the city watch model, and was wondering how we've been rigging the weapon. Is it a separate object which is attached (or detached) from the hand bone, or is it part of the model? Also, are there any standards for bone setup? I'd hate to get a fancy rig all set and then find out there's a 10 bone limit.

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THere's no bone limit. It's handy to use the doom skeleton template, and then add bones to it as necessary. You can move the doom skeletons bones around of course to wherever you need them, but I think it will make setting AF, walk IK and the def files locational damage section up a lot easier if we use the doom naming conventions.

There are md5mesh and anim importers you can for max from doom3world.org

THE way weapons will work, it that the weapon will initially be part of the character mesh, this will make giving it precise drawing and replacing animations easy, when the end of the swrd_draw anim has finished a skin will be used to render it invisible, and in its place the world_sword will appear. That'll be the actual weapon.

I dn't know the exact deatils of how swords are attached yet, but they are attatched to attacher bones like in most game engines.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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We wqnt the AI to be able to drop their weapons though, so they will have to be separate.

edit: Though, I suppose the world_model could be exchanged just as the AI dropped the weapon.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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Yes, they use skins, but I thought a weapon had to be a separate object. I didn't know tou could flag specific polygons of the AI model as a weapon. That makes things a lot easier form an animaiton point of view.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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I know that, that's how the bow and arrows work. I mean I didn't know you could flag specific parts of the AI mesh as being capable of damaging the player. I suppose you just use its bone name.

I always assumed wepaons had to be separate world objects attatched to the AI model.

So, I need to start modeling the AIs with their weapons included from now on.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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If the weapon is attached to the AI, won't you still hear it when you drop the body, even if it's invisible? Also, how do they sheath the weapon if it is still in their hand?

 

There are ways to attach objects to an AI model (adding a potion to the best, frex), so would that work for weapons?

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Thy sheath it by putting is back in the frog. I don't see any problem with that. If sparhawk says you can flag the polygons belonging to any bone as a weapon, then the sword will always be part of the AI model and can be animated in any way desired..

THe sound has nothing to do with the weapon model then, it's specified in the def file for the AI models as to which frame on which animations the sounds should play.

Civillisation will not attain perfection until the last stone, from the last church, falls on the last priest.

- Emil Zola

 

character models site

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I know that, that's how the bow and arrows work.  I mean I didn't know you could flag specific parts of the AI  mesh as being capable of damaging the player.

 

The damage doesn't work like that, we have even more freedom than you think.

 

There is no "per poly" collision detection for things that damage. With the exception of projectiles (which are point collision or bounding box collision, not sure), each enemy has some cool simple programming to say when the player should be damaged. Eg. if you're in front of the enemy, within this certain distance, at this particular time during the attack animation, then you get hit.

 

The big soldier monster with the long tentacle - the tentacle polygons aren't what hit you - a cone is created with math in the programming, and if you are within range of this when the tentacle comes out, you get hit.

 

All this is done in the script of the monster.

 

This is much faster to process, and more reliable (than doing polygon collision).

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Except it doesn't really allow for parrying (weapon collision), which we probably want.

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Programming allows for anything Springheel :) What I described is the same stuff used for making polygon collision (using math to determine collision), except that polygon collision is unessecarily complex.

 

A parry is no different than the method for attackign I described - it's triggered at a certain time, has certain tolerance values for direction etc. and if the conditions are right, the parry succeeds.

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I was kind've hoping we could at least try to do collision tests for weapons/parries. You might be able to fake it with some kind of numbering system for attacks and parries and then see the parry number matches the attack numbers it can parry, and if you're facing the right way, etc. That system might have some drawbacks though. Also, we want to tell what part of the AI was hit by the sword to calculate damage, and different types of swings could hit different body parts.

 

I'm pretty sure they detected the collision of swords in T2, and positive that they did it in Thievery UT, so if they could do it then, we could probably do it. Wasn't there a thread on D3 World about doing this? Don't have time to look for it now.

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Ask Theivery UT people if they did it this way.

 

It's easy to get the same effect without expensive poly collision. And even for body parts, you only do the poly collision AFTER you've decided you hit them with the basic method.

 

It's the same way Doom 3 does bounding box collision for projectiles with entities and only does poly collision after the boudning boxes intersect. No point testing on every poly of every enemy in the level when they are nowhere nearby.

 

Same with combat - no sense testing the toe, the nose, the eye for collision on every character every time someone attacks when they are only hitting one person. We need the basic method for collision even if we want to hit body parts.

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