Bow And Arrow Animations

[New Horizon]

One thing I noticed while playing around with Thief 1, 2 and the Thief 2 arm meshes is that they didn't bother to model a left hand for the bow animations. They stuck the arrow in there and had the end of it back far enough to not even need a hand. Just thought that was clever, never really paid much attention to it before.

[oDDity]

That's not really an issue. I just model one arm and then mirror it anyway.

They had to do the full animations for the T3 Garrett because it was 3rd person as well, but I like the look of the T3 bow anims more.

[New Horizon]

Yes, I like the T3 animations better myself. Amused me that I never noticed that little sleight of hand until now though.

[Ishtvan]

As a random sidenote, the T3 video reminded me that when we texture our arrow model, we should probably use black or gray or dark red or blue... something dark for the fletching, as opposed to T3's day-glo green.

[Springheel]

The broadhead arrow is already modeled and textured, with a nice, realistic brown.

[Domarius]

Sorry I've been away so long oDDity.

 

You are correct, the weapons you see in first person view are NOT the same models or animations you see when the weapon is lying around. It is a whole new model.

 

Every weapon, including the hands holding it, is a new md5mesh, with individual md5anim files that go with it.

 

Even though we think the arrow is the weapon, the bow is part of the weapon too. The bow only exists in the animation, as an aesthetic thing. You dont' have a "bow" weapon with different "firearrow" "waterarrow" ammo - you have whole new weapons - a "waterarrow" weapon, a "firearrow" weapon, etc.

 

Although since the only thing that might chance between arrow weapons is the colour of the head, you could probably pass new materials to the same mesh and anims in the def file for each arrow weapon - they are doing something SORT OF like this with the existing weapons - different materials can make parts of the mesh disappear, but I think you just discovered that out for yourself.

 

Otherwise, the entire bow, arrow, and hands, are all one mesh, and there is a totaly new one of these meshes for each arrow weapon. But even in this case, since all the arrow weapon models have the same number of joints, the animation files can be re-used.

 

 

BTW, excuse my suggestion for "weapon animations" in my new "rope" thread in the 3D modeling board. I didn't see this thread until now.

Edited January 22, 2005 by Domarius

[oDDity]

But each arrow type needs it's own file anyway doesn't it? It's the one that takes over when the arrow in the bow animation dissappears with its new skin.

Even if the arrows are all different models, it'll only mean rigging and weighting a new arrow, and I'll be able to use the same stored anumation.

And each arrow type will need its own def and script file too, I imagine.

[Domarius]

But each arrow type needs it's own file anyway doesn't it? It's the one that takes over when the arrow in the bow animation dissappears with its new skin.

 

Not nessecarily - you tell each weapon what models, animations, skins and materials it's using in the .def file for that weapon.

 

But if making all seperate models is easier and simpler, which I daresay it is, go for it. We can optimise out any redundant models and textures after everything is working. The point being, to save RAM for people running the game.

 

Yes, all weapons have their own def files, as I mentioned. Only the def files are relevent to the visual side of things. (Except for the timing for the animations in the script). I'll take care of those things, unless you are comfortable with filling out the file paths for models and skins etc. in a def file, which would save me a bit of time. Otherwise you have to be very clear about what file does what.

[oDDity]

The player arms.

[oDDity]

bow.

[Ishtvan]

VERY nice arms!!!

 

For the bow, it looks a little too "straight" to me. It could be my imagination, but the strung shortbows I recall seeing were a little more bent than that. I like the general shape and the recurve though.

[Ishtvan]

Here's a link with a picture of a 25-50 lb shortbow (made of mostly wood but some fiberglass ) that APPEARS to be more curved ( again it could be just my imagination ) :

 

Short bow

 

While looking for this, I saw something else, and I'm sorry I didn't find this earlier. Bow hunters use pieces of beaver fur attached to the string as "silencers" that damp out string vibration, which leads to 50-75% sound reduction when firing the bow.

 

It seems to me like a thief would use these also, and it would be very cool if they could be included on the bow string in the model. Here's a link with a picture (larger picture pops up if you click on it) : http://www.3riversarchery.com/Product.asp?...86&p=107&i=5107

Edited January 22, 2005 by Ishtvan

[oDDity]

The pic of the bow there is from slightly behind so it cuts off some of the angle. THis is it from the side.

THat bow you showed is a modern bow, I don't think you would have seen anything like that 400 years ago.

See what others think about string silencers, I don't mind.

[kfmccall]

Just an opinion, but I think the thief's bow doesn't look personalized enough. I mean this weapon should look like its treated as this guys pet, with various wrappings in places, with maybe some designs and various niche's that personalize it to our thief.

[Ishtvan]

Ah, sorry, I didn't notice that that view was at an angle before.

[oDDity]

I was under the impression that bows 400 years ago would not last very long anyway. Maybe a few months at most. THey'd be easily cracked or snapped, or just lose their spring. It's not like this is a family heirloom or anything, it's a functional item.

I intentionally kept it as simple and rugged a desgn as possible.

None of these things have to be the final game version though, but they'll do for now in testing.

[oDDity]

Edited January 23, 2005 by oDDity

[Springheel]

The arms look great, oDDIty. I love the texture of the clothing and I like what you've done with the bracers. I hope you're going to add the fingerless gloves at some point.

 

On the topic of the bow, I think your second version is fine. I'm fairly ambivelant about ornamentation...I don't think our Thief is throwing his bow out after each mission, but we aren't going to see much of it up close anyway.

 

As for the fur...the concept is neat, but again, will we actually *see* the bowstring during the animation?

[Ishtvan]

I think we would still see a fur silencer, maybe not in the drawing animation, but in the "non-drawn" state when you have just selected the bow and walk around without drawing.

 

Looked for illustrations of the "silencer," and so far what I found was this:

 

So one of these near the top of the bow would probably be fine if we wanted to add fur silencers (the player probably never sees the bottom of the bow)

 

Again I don't think we NEED this or anything, I just remember a thread a while back asking about why the "twang" of the bow wouldn't give you away, and these things supposedly reduce that noise to a fourth of what it is without them. It makes sense that someone wanting to be quiet would use them. Also, I wanted to get this suggestion in while the bow modeling is going on. [edit - So for now, it's a non-issue, but maybe when the modeling for the final in game bow is being done, it could be considered ]

Edited January 23, 2005 by Ishtvan

[Domarius]

oDDity, looks fine to me except the hands look like they belong to the necromancer off Hexen. Slightly dead, and somewhat evil looking.

 

String silencer sounds interesting.

[god_is_my_goldfish]

I think it looks fine. WE really won't be seeing much of the hands in any case, if we are going with a FOV similar to the original games.

[oDDity]

He'll have fingerless gloves eventually anyway almost certainly.

[oDDity]

HEre's the first draft of the bow animations.. It's not going to win any awards, but it'll certainly do for now. At least we can get the definition and script files written for the bow, and the mesh and animations can be easily tweaked or changed at a later date.

This big anim will be cut up into various sections, and when the arrow leaves the bow in-game it will dissapear with and alpha skin.

Everyone here seems to be an amateur archer except me, so I'm sure oyu'll all have opinions

[sparhawk]

The drawing/shooting/put away part looks nice. I don't know what this other stuff means though because it looks as if the bow is randomly flung about. And also that part where the bow flows in the middle of the screen. Is there a bug in my browser maybe, because it looks really strange?

[oDDity]

YOu mean the idle anim? Yeah, I think I've made that a little too rough, should tone it down a bit and make it a little more subtle.