squill

there are more ways to do this. On the wiki is a small part i had written about the use of poses. I see it doesn't cover creating poses so i added a short paragraph at the top about creating poses. Wiki Poses The pose creating/saving thing is usefull for full body poses. If i just need the arm position on another animation i usually just open 2 maya windows and copy and paste the values between the 2 which to me goes a lot faster then creating a separate pose. Although if you need to apply this to a lot of animations it's easier to create a pose.

citywatch_body is the set all characters use. If you open this set in the outliner you'll see the information stored of the animation controls (translation, rotation etc.) The difference between turning the character set on and off is like i said before. In off mode it only sets keyframes on the current animation control you have selected. When it's on it sets keyframes on all the animation controls, no matter which control you have selected. Also after setting a key with character set on check the script output beneath the timeline, it should say result 143, meaning 143 attributes are keyed. When i'm animating i'll turn the set off because i don't want keys on every control. But it's usefull if you start a new animation, first creating the poses (pose 2 pose) and then turning the set off to edit and key individual body parts. I usually did the following: -Export the new animation -Add it to the def file -Start DM -Open test/walk_ik02 (made a custom local map with no characters) -Open console -> testmodel tdm_ai_proguard -either you could use testanim [name animation] or scroll thru the list with nextanim and prevanim

Hi Springheel, to copy an entire pose, the easiest way is to turn on the character set. http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Image:Time_line.jpg Go to the first frame and set a key (press S on your keyboard) and copy that key(RMB on timeline -> copy). Then go to the last frame of the timeline and paste (RMB -> paste). This pose copying will only work properly if you have the character set turned on because once you key that first frame it will set a key on all animation controls. also i haven't been around for a while and the last rig i was working on was the heavy or forger character. I'm thinking about how to properly finish this and what else is needed.

if she's walking in place it's probably because the origin joint (move ctrl in animation rig) is not animated. You'll have to make the physical transition for the walk and run to make her go forward. @Noisycricket: See the proguard walk/run for reference in the src folder.

Other then some missing textures(some shader export settings) the export for Maya 2009 works fine. So it seems it's related to Maya 2008. I'll do some more test in maya 7 to be sure but if this works i'll stay with 2009.

ok thanks, that's good to know. I have a copy of 2009 which i'll try over or after the weekend. Otherwise i'll have to install 7.0 again. But at least we know we have a working version.

the md5mesh that you import with this importer comes binded with the same skeleton as the one in our animation rig. The difference here is that you can't rig (rigging i mean connecting animation controls) to the skeleton the importer creates because the orientation of those joint are not same as we have in our animation rig. Another thing i could test: - Save the skin weight of the imported meshes - unbind meshes and rebind those meshes to the animation rig skeleton. - see if you can apply those exported weights back. However i think you can use the meshes which i'm using now for the forger to bind. I think we did the same thing when I and Domarius worked on the proguard. Although for new characters, and i mentioned the reason above, i think it's better to create the mesh in a certain package and deliver the final object in obj format if not created in Maya.

i tested some more things: - replacement meshes(simple boxes) gives the same results. Binding 1 mesh will still work. - proguard exports fine, until you detach the meshes from the skeleton and rebind again, then you'll get the same results. Could it be the 2008 export plugin? unfortunately i couldn't install maya 7 next to 2008. - Exporting animation with this 2008 plugin works fine though. i did more then listed above but in short i haven't yet found a working solution. If i want to install maya 7 properly i'll have to remove 2008 first and then install maya 7 but i can't do that at the moment.

actually for the forger i used the md5mesh importer for maya to work with the latest md5mesh that you created. Also because the uv's in the obj files are flipped. Only difference once you import is you lose any smoothing groups but that's simple to adjust. I understand the thing with the separated head, but what if you want to animate a conversation with nice facial animation? If i for instance have to animate a character talking i like to do the facial animation on the face in the same scene that has the body movements. Have there been thoughts about having character setup with full facial(joints in the face) controls?

yes exact the same things. With multiple meshes it explodes and with one it works ok. The proguard still works like you said. I'm testing now a few more settings.

don't worry, i see the same thing this time with the forger, it looks like he's been thru the hands of a bad experimental artist. I haven't seen this happen with the proguard but i should indeed work with multiple meshes. The only thing with meshes that go thru different applications are program specific things like nodes and other model related things that could still be attached to the meshes and cause problems in other applications. I've seen this happen at work so it's always nice to start with a clean mesh. today i've got some free time so i can deeper investigate this thing and hopefully upload the forger mesh.

I looked at your scene and it seems the ik handles are broken. I couldn't find the reason and it only happened in that particular scene even if i create a new joint leg with an ik handle i couldn't move the joints with the ik handle. but once i imported the rig in a new scene the ik handles worked again. I uploaded the cleaned up rig in the revenant folder. I noticed the mesh is on some places(lower legs for instance) placed besides the joints.

@Greebo i installed the 2010 fbx plugin for maya 2008 and it shows up fine in the exports menu. @Baddcog I uploaded proguard_rig.fbx to the files folder on the ftp. It's exported in a newer fbx format so i don't know if you can open this with Max 7. btw i have the mod installed and setup again.

i'm not sure the 18 frames runcycle is the current run being used. I remember i created a much slower run (24 frames), which is also called something with "runcycle_slower" in the model_src/proguard folder. With 18 frames the animation looked more like a sprint.

i can take the head of the md5mesh head. That's what the maya importer outputs. In which material file do these shaders exist? i meant you already had cut up the mesh for some reason and this welding thing explains why. @Baddcog: exporting obj files with joints won't work very well and i haven't installed any fbx exporter. Your best bet would be to try some animation in maya using the animation rig.

ok i looked at the obj, it imports with separated meshes which is better then importing the md5 mesh + it keeps the smoothing groups intact. I only have to import the head separately. Only thing that's missing are the texture paths, the texture paths in the md5mesh point to non-existing TGA textures. TGA files are probably the DDS files because i can find the right ones in the DDS folder? Although they look right on the imported md5mesh file, UV's are flipped on the obj meshes :\ Also the vertices on the front of the arms need to be cut, because it doesn't look nice if can't be smoothed?

if they are separated and exported as a whole to an obj file i can split it up again in maya.

that would be swell

i can work from a md5mesh, but if you can export the original mesh from LW that would be even better or are you also working from a md5mesh?

This forger model is a modified version of the old forger model which is currently in the model_src dir? weighting is actually quite easy and once you use mirror weights it reduces a lot of work. There's already a (pretty elaborated) tutorial on the wiki here. Although i think it can be explained much more briefly.

yes the assigning of shaders went fine. I had some problems with the proguard hands which had some flipped uv coordinates which i couldn't seem to fix in maya 7.0 but i'm using maya 2008/2009 for some time now so i'll have to see what happens during exports. I believe the body parts still have to be separated for the different textures.

well by just weighting the mesh to the skeleton. I'm willing to do that. The weighting of the model itself is not a problem for me, but the exporting of the separated body meshes i always found a bit troublesome. That's why i believe Springheel did much of the character weighting in LW. Even if i only have a roughly weighted heavy character on the animation rig will help the animation process for any animator using it. i'm still downloading the mod and it might be finished later today so i can take a look at it.

it might be best to weight the mesh of this character on the animation rig. Because i think it's going to be hard to switch back and forth between maya/ingame and animating on model is just much more faster.

Thx Greebo, i'm working with 2008 so i'll try that.

Noisycricket, i don't get the fuzz about releasing your walkcycle. You keep pushingthe team about releasing your work while you also admit it's still not final and you have little time to work on it. I've also spend a lot of time on the current walkcycle which i recreated a couple of times from scratch over the past few years. The difference is not that great and most common players won't even notice the difference. I also told you before you could make this "alternate" walkcycle stand out by making it more unique(a walk with character etc.) which would add more value to the mod than just offering more of the same which i think a lot of people will overlook. i understand you want people yo see your work, but i think it's best to spend your energy on new animations for the next release.