Arcturus
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Everything posted by Arcturus
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That particular video is just pretty good visual effects. But not that far from reality any more.
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There's a run animation called run_jog that lays unused. I think it could be used in nobles or the old man. Made some small fixes: I did both run animations before I had a proper rig in Blender. They are based on mocap files from Carnegie Mellon University. It was pure forward kinematics and pure nightmare. So they are a bit messy.
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I don't think we need to use spine. Rotation on the origin bone plus slight arms and head rotation is enough. Added a clamp on arms rotation. Attenuation is slightly faster. They return to straight pose a bit quicker. Should I make it stronger during walking? I guess because of the speed multiplier, they no longer sway while rotating in place, which I guess is ok. tdm_ai_base.script -
Here's another special animation, this time from Thief: Deadly Shadows. NPC being startled by an arrow:
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@Taffingtaffer Thanks. There's still room for tweaking. I have some ideas for other uses of this method. I wonder how far can we push scripting.
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If there was a body in first person perhaps you could see that your arm is sticking out. Right now it's a little confusing, even if not game-breaking. Are you sure that that's what's happening here? There's this weird thing about NPC eye bones. In the skeleton and in animations they are were you would expect them: But in game they are hovering two meters in front of the character. I don't know where this comes from, maybe it's hard-coded. It means that even if we had proper eyeballs we wouldn't be able to use eye animations right now. Why was this done? Is this just cosmetic? Some kind of makeshift vision cone? Or does it serve a purpose? Yes, they should be saying something like 'who are you?' or 'what are you doing here?'
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Here's more subtle version. Added slight arm movement outwards. Also added speed modifier, so the faster the NPC moves forward the stronger the tilt: Example of the speed modifier's effect: They will never be fully realistic, but at least we can make them less stiff.
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@wesp5 Does this look realistic?
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Darkmod underutilizes, in my opinion, capabilities for procedural animation. We already do some, like the random head and torso turns that are added on top of existing animations. There's also possibility for separate animation for top and bottom of the character as well as head. There's a missing opportunity for varied facial expressions. I talked about animation blending in this thread. Here's something that for example Thief: Deadly Shadows did. It's swaying side to side while turning. I used Gemini to add code to the tdm_ai_base.script. I don't know if this is the most efficient way of doing it, probably not. Here are the parts added: Gemini came up with the term "banking" which is used in car racing. I don't know if that's what it's called in animation or games. There's a lot of variables that can be tweaked. You can rotate this way any bone you wish. I use 'Origin', 'Spine_Dummy' and 'Neck' bones: You can tweak amount of rotation for each bone. setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle, 1, jointRotation * 1); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle1, 1, jointRotation * 0.6); setJointAngle(m_bankingJointHandle2, 1, jointRotation * -1.5); There's also global intensity: (targetBanking = deltaYaw * 1.4;) and attenuation: m_bankingCurrentValue = (m_bankingCurrentValue * 0.95) + (targetBanking * 0.05); modifiers. Gemini also proposed to add an LOD system, which I thought was a great idea. So currently at a distance of 1500 from player the swaying will be disabled. Here are examples, each with slightly different values: And here's comically exaggerated one:
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I mentioned that Thief 1 & 2 have a special animation that plays when player surprises the NPC. There was some work done in preparation for that mechanic in Darkmod. In tdm_ai_base.script file, there are lines referring to it: void Torso_Surprise(); void Legs_Surprise(); void ai_darkmod_base::Torso_Surprise() { PlayAnimationOnce(ANIMCHANNEL_TORSO, "surprise", 4, "Torso_Idle"); } void ai_darkmod_base::Legs_Surprise() { PlayAnimationOnce(ANIMCHANNEL_LEGS, "surprise", 4, "Legs_Idle"); When NPC spots the player they reset their animations for a split second before they start to search. I am under impression that they can see through walls. Do they see player's arm sticking out or something? AI vision set to "nearly blind": They can spot you when their had is turned around, even with AI vision set to "forgiving". I don't think NPCs communicate their state through barks well enough. They often don't say anything until they attack.
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I am impressed with what Disney is doing: Their animatronics are super smooth. I like this robot from Korea: Terminators are coming.
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They had some big hits at the turn of the century, but they were less successful after the old frontman left.
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I updated three animations: sit_2_sleep_on_chair sit_sleep_idle sleep_2_sit_on_chair There was some elbow twisting, but mostly I wanted to fix the neck: Files are now 413 KB in stead of 1.02 MB (unpacked), thanks to the new export script. I made changes to Blender rig so had redo a big chunk of the animations. By the way, it's funny how the guy immediately screams "raise the alarm" when getting hit with a water arrow to the face, before he even opens eyes. Only then he slowly wakes up. It should be "what was that" state first. Or there should be entirely new animation for that.
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Ok, one last time improved turn 90 animations. New export script makes testing easier. turn_90_anims.zip
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Do you see them in wireframe mode in game? r_showtris 1
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md5 .md5 format importer / exporter for Blender 3.6
Arcturus replied to Arcturus's topic in Art Assets
I actually haven't tested, but probably not. There were some changes to the armature system in 4.0 series: https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/4.0/upgrading/bone_collections/ Those chatbots are pretty capable now, it would probably be possible to make scripts for newer versions. Latest Blender version is already 5.1, by the way. They increase numbers a lot more frequently than they used to. -
md5 .md5 format importer / exporter for Blender 3.6
Arcturus replied to Arcturus's topic in Art Assets
My quick test on animated mesh (no AI) didn't show any differences in performance. -
md5 .md5 format importer / exporter for Blender 3.6
Arcturus replied to Arcturus's topic in Art Assets
It has always bothered me that Blender md5anim exporters write a lot of unnecessary data by storing every value for every bone. Here's an example of a typical frame exported from Blender: And here's a frame exported from some other software: Since skeletons are hierarchical, rotations can be inherited instead, making the files 3x smaller. I asked Google's Gemini to rewrite the script. Simply select the armature and export. No need for baking any more. The code will automatically take into account all visible meshes assigned to the armature to write the "bounds". At least that's what I asked for - seems to work. Bounds is just a box for each frame. Supposedly used for optimisation. Made for Blender 3.6, since that's the latest version that newest md5 addons work with. I'm not sure what effect does this have on performance, it would be interesting to test it. Older animations could be reexported. md5anim_optimised_export_blender36.py -
House Flipper, also on Steam. Never played it. https://store.steampowered.com/app/613100/House_Flipper/
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I made some further tweaks to the 'turn 90' animations.
