Bow And Arrow Animations

[oDDity]

I'm going to see if I can get these done now, but I have questons first, mainly for domarius since he's the one dealing with the weapons, so he may have looked into this already.

First of all, do I need to have the arrow mesh in the bow animation, or is that a separate object with its own animations?

And for the animations, I'm guessing we'll need:

 

- left hand disappearing and reappearaing with bow (again, is this handled automatically by doom when you add new weapons, or do you need to animate this yourself?)

- Right hand disappearing and reappearing with arrow

- nocking the arrow (I have never shot a bow, so do you balance the arrow on the hand holding the bow first and then nock the string, or the other way around?)

- pulling back the string

- the shot

- an 'exausted' anim for when you hold the string back too long and have to slacken it again.

[sparhawk]

Normally you hold the bow with one hand. Usually they have a small ledge where you put the arrow on. You grab it with two fingers at the end where the feathres are. Compund bows are handled a bit differently, because they have some string attached to the arrow but we don't need to worry about these.

[Springheel]

Will we use the same animations for the AI and the player?

 

- nocking the arrow (I have never shot a bow, so do you balance the arrow on the hand holding the bow first and then nock the string, or the other way around?)

 

Basically, you hold the bow in your left hand at arm's length, with the bow pointing towards the 2/8 oclock positions. The arrow is held by the feather end, and the point is set down on top of the left hand. Like this:

 

 

Then you worry about getting it on the string. Of course, the player wouldn't see most of this from their perspective.

 

After it is on the string, the bow is raised up to firing position.

[oDDity]

NO, it's different animations for the player. First person perspective. Basically just animating disembodied arms. I think I'll install Thief 2 and check out the bow anims, and maybe even T3. Were the bow anims in T3 any good?

[Fingernail]

Yeah, they were actually. And the extra angle seemed more realistic (the bow is more slanted in T3, T2 would be kinda hard to get enough force at that angle).

[_Atti_]

Yeah, they were actually. And the extra angle seemed more realistic (the bow is more slanted in T3, T2 would be kinda hard to get enough force at that angle).

i didnt really care about the angle..but its sound was awful in t3:)

Edited January 19, 2005 by _Atti_

[Springheel]

I agree, Finger. I was going to suggest we keep an angle like T3.

[New Horizon]

I have a couple of small vids from T1 and T3. Since we're not doing body awareness there would be less business to do in it. If we kept the simplicity of the T1 anims and the angle of T3, it would look pretty cool.

 

I'll post the vids.

[New Horizon]

Video of T1 bow and arrow.

Video of T3 bow and arrow.

 

Both use Xvid.

[sparhawk]

That new sig of yours is scary. Currently there are 4 New Horizons staring it me and I wonder what they are up to.

[New Horizon]

That new sig of yours is scary. Currently there are 4 New Horizons staring it me and I wonder what they are up to.

:lol: Eight eyes watching you. ha ha. I changed it a little to spice things up.

[oDDity]

Thanks for the vids, saves me a lot of hassle)

SO, I see from them that everything happens out of shot except the drawback and release. I think I'll just keep it that way.

Also, the effect in T3 is for the camera to pull or zoom back a little when drawing the string back, we should have that.

Are we having that ridicuoius rectangular aiming thingy attached to the side of the bow? I hope not :/

Is there a bow model for the thief already?

[New Horizon]

I thought there was a bow model previewed here somewhere, but I don't recall if it was just a mockup or if it was game ready. Something tells me it was a mockup though. Anyone reading know if that's true?

[oDDity]

Looking at the md5mesh and md5anim, for the grenade and its .def and .script files, I've worked out that the way to do the bow is this:

Make the animaton with the bow arrow in place as normal, when animating the release animation, the feather end of the arrow only goes as far as the left hand and then a second skin with an alpha is used to make it disapper. THis is wrtten into the scrot fikle and not the .def. THe actual arrow is in a file of ts own with no animation at all, it takes over and flies off to your target.

Shouldn't be too hard (if I've worked this out correctly)

[Springheel]

I thought there was a bow model previewed here somewhere, but I don't recall if it was just a mockup or if it was game ready. Something tells me it was a mockup though. Anyone reading know if that's true?

 

Tryot did more than one version, but I don't think either were game-ready. They needed textures.

[oDDity]

I'll just model the player arms and a new bow while I'm at it. THe bow's easy anyway , 15 minutes work at the most.

A short bow, right?

[New Horizon]

Yup, short bow it is.

[Darkness_Falls]

Video of T1 bow and arrow.

Video of T3 bow and arrow.

 

Both use Xvid.

Ahh yes, gotta love T3's framerate You must've been pushing at least 10FPS there! I remember those days all too well. I hope Doom 3's framerate is much better than T3's for our project.

[New Horizon]

Ahh yes, gotta love T3's framerate You must've been pushing at least 10FPS there! I remember those days all too well. I hope Doom 3's framerate is much better than T3's for our project.

:lol: Yeah, I should have turned on the fps indicator in fraps...the old framerate in T3 can be pretty mind numbing on the old Geforce fx 5200 that I bought to tide me over until I can afford a good card. It does drop a lot more with fraps turned on however.

 

I must say though, my Doom 3 experience has been much more enjoyable on this card.

[New Horizon]

Just for giggles I converted the old Thief 2 bow/ sword/ blackjack arms into lwo format.

Thought it may help to have them for hands on study, just to see the shape and angles of the originals. Might help in the creation of our own.

LWO_ARMS.zip

[Ishtvan]

Question: Could someone explain why the tilt in the bow while firing is more realistic? (I'm really not trying to be an ass, I just want to know, 'cause I've been taught basic archery before and was never told to do this. Is it an advanced thing?) I remember hearing it's so the arrow doesn't fly off to the left side (assuming right-handedness) when you don't have a place to rest it on the bow, right? I thought if you had a good draw and supported it with your left hand properly, that wouldn't happen, but maybe this is for 'speed' shooting or something?

[god_is_my_goldfish]

It's for better control from what i've seen and done. You can aim better at times when you have it on a slant rather than horizontally. Just an idea.

[Springheel]

It's basically for what you described, Ish. It keeps the arrow from coming off your left hand at the last minute and ruining your shot. It's not absolutely necessary, but it helps tremendously if you're moving or shooting quickly.

[sparhawk]

Well, if you look at olympic bowshooting you will never see one that slants his bow in an angle. They all usually hold their bow straight up. And when I was bow shooting I also saw none who did it this way. IMO that slant looks cewl in a movie. Just like the gangstas in the movie hold the pistols in impossible ways, which looks cewl but doesn't help for aiming.

[Ishtvan]

I think what Springheel just said is it helps when you're moving and shooting quickly. Olympic archers have all the time in the world (I think.. maybe there's a timed shoot event, I dunno). But maybe if you're trying to fire off an arrow at someone that's running at you with a sword, some of these 'combat shooting' techniques come into play?