ascottk

Are you using the new rig with the tunic joints? Are the md5anim files the ones with tunic joints? I haven't been able to connect very well the last few days so I haven't been able to check if the new md5anim files are up.

Done. Well, I did make this guy to be versatile so I further separated the materials so I can hide the pauldrons and cape as well as the armor itself. I don't have the heart to leave the builder imperial concept so that'll be an optional skin. I probably add a few new meshes so he can have regular boots and sleeves (only to be hidden as a default skin) so he can be a commoner. Here's a new screen of the proguard_02 family: Keep in mind I just started to make skins so expect more revisions and variations

Where would this guy fit logically in the directories? What folder/def/material? private_proguard rent_a_guard pro_merc merc_pro pro_wrestler & what color scheme (default)? Purple like the museum guards in TDS? Dark forest green? 2-tone like the proguard? Black? Magenta/Maroon?

Nice title for this guy City Legionnaire. City Watch color scheme?

So I'm comparing this guy to the guard & making necessary adjustments to match: What I notice offhand is that the cloth is a lot more coarse with the guard. Maybe a finer cloth works for the imperial? He has smaller feet, huge hands, there are less ornate decorations. Maybe he should be a little taller?

Yes & No It's how Maya handles angles & orientations. When you look at a joint in Maya, the attribute editor shows Transform Attributes in the upper area of the editor & I assume that info for animation. Below that is the Joint area with "Joint Orient" values & I assume that's for the default rotations. Those are the values I had to match in order to get the copy_joint thing to work. I posted pics of the attribute editor here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=182433

That can be but without the copy_joint decls & using the Spine2 attachment point. The mesh is not touched, only the head rig & here's a screen of swapping new head rig with old:

At least there are less joints to work with We would've had to rerig anyway. If the neck or head was used for attachment purposes then we should leave them out of the copy_joint decl. That might have been part of the problem. Oh, this new head rig is for the new proguard rig. I'm just making that clear in case it wasn't implied or even mentioned by me . . .

Problem solved: I made a special idle animation to test it . . . The problem was the joint orientation (lower half of those maya dialogs). I matched the Neck/neckconnect and Head/headconnect joint orientation. I later had to match the origin orientation or the translation/rotation would be off. A new head rig (from scratch might I add) with 25 joints. Nice and clearly labled & I added joints for the side of the nose and cheeks. EDIT: It now connects to the Spine2 joints like D3's: "head_joint" "Spine2" "offsetHeadModel" "0 0 -3" // defaultvalue if set "copy_joint Neck" "neckcontrol" "copy_joint Head" "headcontrol" EDIT2: Now on svn (model_src/ai_parts_mb/head_rig_new.mb)

copy_joint head issues: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=9174 Imperial: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=9129 AI prep for new rig and other things: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=181842 New rig discussion http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=181737

Well, I made some progress. The rotations on the head joint match the new body rig. But: The head is translated forward. In Maya you have to pay attention to the joint orientations. So here are the orientations for the body rig's Neck: Here are the orientations for the neckcontrol in the head: I matched the same rotations for the Head/headcontrol joints too. Here's part of the def file: "copy_joint Neck" "neckcontrol" "copy_joint Head" "headcontrol" & I modified the head rig even further.The new head has 23 joints while the old head has 42 joints. I wondered if less joints could be as expressive so I made a few poses: It can be as expressive as a fuller skeleton. Just gotta be creative with translations as well as rotations, not to mention scaling the joint.

I found my cheapass kb gear jam studio tablet. I rarely used it because quite honestly it sucks. But I figured it'll be useful for rigging in Maya & it works pretty well. So in order to get used to it I went into photoshop & opened a reference photo: Then did a freehand paint. The only thing I did was use the colors from the original photo (because I got tired of trying to match the colors by eye). First I did a rough sketch of the background in the base layer in photoshop (that's the easy part since the background was blurry). Then on a new layer I just kept adding on more details: It's not done yet. It needs more shadows, more of the blurred background people, some more detail, and sharpening the edges. My version looks more like Gimli . . . & he has no neck . . . I do pretty well with a photo references so I wondered what would happen if the reference was a sketch with no color or a real world reference? & enter Springheel's Elite Pagan concept drawing (those are cool designs for tattoos, Spring!): I'm still adding more detail and shading: I think the hardest part was trying to duplicate the designs & working on the face. & I missed a few tattoos. Even though this tablet is cheap & not very sensitive, I wonder why I don't use it more often! I never had such control working with computer graphics before. It is miles above using a mouse, that's for sure

New head: # tris: 1400

Those ears probably take up most of the poly #'s According to the md5mesh, the face itself has 4854 tris. Way too many. Added some straps & matched the helmet texture to the body: EDIT: oops . . . wrong screenshot:

Working on textures & normal maps: Close up of face (a little better):

It's an improvised design. I would've loved some concept art & was tempted to do some myself. But actually I find it easier to change the model I found some photos but I haven't worked on the head texture in a while.

I wanted something more fancy. And to stick to the traditional colors:

I didn't like the armor plate for the stomach so I'm going with the layered look (Maya render): An optional skin to remove the cape (Maya render):

I'd imagine any religious group would hire out if there's enough money in the deal. How would the Builders finance their . . . uh . . . building projects?

No normal maps yet. I'm designing this guy as I'm modeling & every change I make required a uv map tweak so it's no use doing normal maps yet. I think the helmet adds to the illusion too. I was going off this design: Changes to the mesh require changes to the uv map so I'm not bothering with normal maps yet. Easily fixed & I'll probably use one of oDD's buckles. OK I've been using tweaked chainmail found in the md5/chars directory. They do need to be smaller. If a high ranking noble or some royalty were in town, wouldn't they want a guard with a Builder's reputation? Especially if the noble has some religious affiliations. & wouldn't that noble want something classy but not too classy?

Yeah, no matter how I dirty the face up, he still looks clean I always have a hard time making a convincing normal map for a face. Hmmm . . . or how to best accomplish that . . . People wanted a heftier dude, well . . . he's been spending more time at the gym than guarding anyone The breast plate adds to the illusion too. I'm trying to decide how the colors are going together. The last version had the red cloth covering half his torso which tied things together along with the gold borders. Hehe, you should've seen him before the breast lift . . .

A redesign: Fixed eyes textures, new armor, new pauldrons, lengthened the back cloth, revised textures based on oDD's style (still WIP). no normal maps. This is a quick rig so I can see him in-game. I also used a reference model so I can match proportions.

I also found that if the anim decls have similar names then the head anims will complement the body anims. So if the AI goes into the pain anim, then that'll trigger a similar anim in the head. Should we break up this thread into different parts? I'm with squill on this since this no longer deals with the citywatch rig.

[Delete me] Browser/forum acting funky . . .

I thought I used the same head skeleton for all AI? Part of the problem with the head anims are that oDD's meshes were not designed to take advantage of facial animations. The mouths are sealed, the eye is built into the mesh (if we want blinking AI, this'll be a problem), etc. I did my best to modify them so they could take advantage of facial animations. Here's what I gathered from D3: "def_head" "head_campbell" "head_joint" "Shoulders" ... "copy_joint neckcontrol" "neckcontrol" "copy_joint headcontrol" "headcontrol" "copy_joint_world eyecontrol" "eyecontrol" I looked at campbell and the attachment is the equivalent of Spine2 on our new rig. But I think any attachment would work and the neckcontrol & headcontrol joints would already talk to each other. This is essentially treating the head rig and body rig as the same entity.