Solis

Hello all. Been a while since I've stopped by here (darn real life obligations mixed with forgetfulness), but the fairly popular Youtube channel OutsideXbox just today posted a video of "7 Fan Mods That Totally Transformed The Game" and The Dark Mod was one they covered! Their videos usually get between a quarter and a half million views, so I'd imagine we'll see a decent number of new people trying the mod. Pretty positive impression they give of it too, as well as some amusing commentary. The Dark Mod section starts at 10:48:

Ahh thanks, that explains it since I had grabbed the most recent .fbx file there was. Hmm, that might cause some difficulty for me, but I'll see what I can do (always had trouble animating in Maya).

Hmm, I'll have to double-check that, but it's possible I grabbed the wrong model by mistake. Well I think that the old model can be converted to the proguard skeleton if needed, but I'll have to see what the process for that is if this one isn't compatible with the current skeleton (and honestly I think some of the animations would be better off just being remade since I'm seeing a lot of other issues with the way I did the animations I didn't notice the first time around, but I wanted to hear what others thought of them before that anyway). Edit: Hm, going to check the SVN for the more recent animation skeleton.

Well, it's been some time since I've chimed back in, but I've definitely not forgotten about The Dark Mod. I've been working on some sitting animations in the meantime, although unfortunately after having some setbacks in the form of needing to get the right version of Motionbuilder (apparently the newer versions aren't backwards compatible with the older version's files) and realizing that I was really, really rusty from not animating so long, I wasn't able to do these as fast as I hoped. But still, hopefully these will be of use once I get some feedback and finish tweaking them, although admittedly I'm not all that happy with them right now but figured I should at least show what I have so far. Oh and in a few of them the fingers aren't animated yet (mostly the yawning animation). I based these animations off of a citywatch model that was on the FTP which should be using the modern/current skeleton (at least, I hope so!). I noticed that there seems to be a few issues with some of the angles of the arms and such when I bend them in certain ways (especially noticable in the reading-in-hand animation), but I'm hoping it will look fine when the skeleton is applied to the normal models that are used in-game. Here's a list of all the individual animation files that are included: Eating Reading book held in hand Reading book on table Relaxing start Relaxing loop Writing in book on table Yawning/napping start Yawning/napping loop I've uploaded the video file and the animation archive to sendspace (animation archive password is darkmod) since I can't access the FTP for some reason since it's telling me the password is incorrect. Here's the compiled video of the animations so you can get a general idea of what they look like: http://www.sendspace.com/file/8cby3s And the archive file is uploading now so I'll edit this post with the link to it once its done.

Sure thing, I put it up on sendspace for now. I've included both the Motionbuilder file and the Maya Binary that it created. Not sure if I still have the original source file that I used to animate it though, so I'm not sure how well it will work as a rigging base. http://www.sendspace.com/file/s346l8

Is the zombie animation the one where the right arm is pulled up as he lurches forward (I don't have the more recent mod files so I can't view it myself)? If so then yes, that's the one I worked on way back. It's difficult to animate the stock Doom 3 models because we don't have an IK rig or mesh set up for the skeletons, so you have to animate them entirely with FK and you can only see the bones themselves (unless we have a more efficient way of animating them now). I still have the animation file for it, so new animations could be added to the zombies if we need it, but it takes a fair amount more work than the models based on the standard rig/IK that's used. That probably goes for any other models that would be animated using Doom 3 skeletons.

Hello! Not much to say here except hello, glad to be back, and suggestions and animations I'm doing will be posted here From the sound of it, there's still a few walking/running/searching animations that might need to be done. Is the google spreadsheet for animation assignments up to date? I'm open to suggestions on what to work on for now, so let me know if you have any preferences, otherwise I can just pick some unassigned ones off the list and start working on them once I have access to the model/rig files.

Well, for those that remember me, I'm still here and (should) be available for animating again if I'm needed. From what I can recall, I had finished all the animation assignments I had on the main list and had taken a few others as well (shivering is one I remember). But I'm not sure if they made it into the game since they were just raw .FBX files that needed to be converted to the more recent skeleton structure we were using. If they haven't, it might be worth looking at them to see if any would be usable. Should we make a new master animation assignment list and hand out tasks? For oDDity's animations: they look pretty good, only major flaw I can see is that the right leg seems to snap a bit quick when the hips are raised too high in the peer and salute animations. Mostly just the peer one when he looks to the left, easy enough to fix by either lowering/twisting the hips a little or raising the heel of the foot (I find the latter results in less undesired side effects).

For dying, it would probably be easiest to signify it by having their body jump a few inches in a random direction as soon as they die and turn into a ragdoll. No need for a fancy animation or anything, just a small physics push that makes it look like the rat jumps from shock as they keel over. Then it would be easy enough to see that their body is indeed dead and turned into a ragdoll, and it shouldn't interfere with a physical object hitting and killing them (box, arrow, etc.) since the object would have far more force than the small death push would. Otherwise, man that's a nice looking rat. Amazing how much detail that thing will have considering it will be so small in the player's view. Could definitely be resized to be bigger without hurting its realism. Oh and for the mouth, I'd suggest adding one just in case, but honestly I'm not sure if it would even be very noticable if it doesn't open it's mouth when it attacks. Would still be a nice detail though. Just out of curiosity, if we do start adding more ambient animals into the game, would it be worthwhile to maybe have certain creatures attack/respond to eachother? I think it would be pretty cool to see cats attack and kill rats, dogs barking at cats, etc. (assuming we even have enough ambient animals for that). It obviously wouldn't require guard-level AI complexity since we can pretty much just ignore everything except line-of-sight between creatures, but I'm unsure of what other issues might crop up because of it.

As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, here's the files for several of the animations I was working on. Included are: Conversation/chatting Shrug Running while guarding face Running scared Warming hands Shivering in the cold (probably going to update this one in the future, however) I'm not including the death animation yet as I still have to take care of the oddly raised floor issue...for some reason even though I followed the instructions Domarious (sp?) mentioned in the other topic, I can't actually see the floor plain, and I did manage to disable the foot orientation with it but then for some reason it limits where I can move the foot. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong? I zipped up all the FBX files rather than making videos and links to each one, and then they can be converted to whatever they need so that they fit on our current skeletons. Oh, and note that I didn't run that animation/plot all command on them yet so that might need to be done too. Unfortunately the zip is a little big for geocities so I had to resort to *sigh* sendspace. Here's the link to it, password on the files is "darkmod": http://www.sendspace.com/file/oqq4uc And yeah...I'll get around to figuring out how and where to upload these to the FTP at some point, for now this is just temporary (need to finish up the animations anyway).

Hello. Sorry for giving another "update without a real update", but I thought I might as well post to confirm that I am still working on animations, or at least will be again soon. I've been having a few computer problems over the past few weeks and have been working to diagnose/fix what I can. Don't worry, all my Dark Mod stuff is backed up so nothing is lost, and finals just got over this week so now I'll have more time to spend on animating, once my computer is back up to fully working status (right now it's only running on half the RAM it normally would be). If Doug hasn't given any objections yet, I'll work on his animations once I finish up my running loops, and hopefully have a big batch to upload in a few weeks. Once that's done I can move on to something else. Oh, and out of curiosity, do we have an updated motionbuilder model that's rigged for the newer skeletons we're using instead of needing to convert them first?

The hands up/generic convo/death animations are done (just need to tweak the death animation now that I know how to tweak the "floor" pane), the run away animation will be based on the normal running animation. Probably something sort of like this, with the arms out farther than normal: http://www.geocities.com/canisinvicti/runscared.avi And a back shot (since you'd probably be seeing them running away from behind) http://www.geocities.com/canisinvicti/runscaredback.avi

Has it really been nearly a month? Bah, I need to get off my lazy butt and do more...anymore animation assignements that need to be done? Are those latest 3 being done by Domarius or are they open to anyone? Anyway, I've almost completed the runcycle that I'll use for the civie run/shielding face animation. I can also modify it for any other running animations we might need. I've included a zip with 3 different views of it (a normal one, one in slow-mo, and another of running in place). Should make it easier to get a feel for what it looks like (as with before, ignore the trailing polygons behind him as he moves forward since it won't show up on the actual animation): http://www.geocities.com/canisinvicti/Run.zip It's still a little rough in some parts, I'm considering just scrapping the hip motions and redoing them since the movement is a little eratic for the upper body at some points. And for some reason it seems like he should be running at a faster rate for as quick as he's moving his legs, so I might increase the movement speed a bit (although it also depends on just how fast we want him to be able to run in the game). Also I still need to tweak the arm movements a bit. Otherwise, I think it's good enough for now.

Oh, so that's how you fix it. I had problems with that as well, when I was trying to make the death animation where the character falls to his knees.

Thanks for the feedback. And yes, I spent a pretty long time on the death animation, I might even go back to tweak it a little later for other types of characters or motions after I get the running animations done. And for some reason the first link doesn't work when you click on it, but when you right-click and save target as, it seems to download fine...odd, well try that. Oh, and no, these aren't on SVN yet, I still have to have my access set up for it and I'd need to post the Motionbuilder files anyway as I don't have the updated skeleton to convert it to an md5anim that's compatible with our current models.