Top models to be rigged?

[Domarius]

Hey Spring, I just saw the Noblewoman was done but with the proguard rig. I think you'd want me to re-rig her at some stage, but since she's had so much work done she's probably lower priority than someone else, like a stocky model.

 

Could you list in order which models you'd like to see rigged?

[Springheel]

There are a couple things could would be very useful.

 

1. I could really use a noblewoman animation rig. It's very awkward animating with the proguard rig, especially since the proguard has nothing connectd to the low skirt joints. I'm not sure whether it's possible to create an animation rig in Maya while keeping the already existing weights, however.

 

2. The stocky characters do not work very well with the current skeleton/animations. Most of the animations rotate the torso around the Spine1 joint, but that cuts right across the biggest part of the belly on these characters, and looks terrible. I don't whether that can be fixed by better weighting, or whether it needs modification to the animations, or what.

 

The best character to work with for this would be the Builder Forger. I have the updated character as a lightwave and md5mesh file atm, but could probably convert it to another format.

[Domarius]

The way I see it, is they'd use the same bone structure, so they get the head turning and all the dynamic stuff - but they'd be rigged and weighted from scratch.

 

Also they would have their own animations, not interchangeable with the other types of characters. Men, women, tall, and short, all move differently than each other.

 

Noblewoman first it is then.

[Springheel]

Noblewoman first it is then.

 

Those two I listed above weren't necessarily in order of importance.

 

If you're going to work on the noblewoman, be sure you don't overwrite the md5mesh. You're only creating an animation rig. Assuming you can't import the existing weights, you'll need to match them manually as closely as possible.

[Domarius]

Hm well if the problem with her is that her animations are bad because the skeleton isn't appropriately sized for her - then the only way to fix it is to re-adjust the proportions of the skeleton to suit her, re-weight her vertices, and re-do all the animations. I figured that's what I'd be doing. So I'd have to re-export her md5mesh.

[Springheel]

No, the problem with her is that I've had to animate her without a proper animation rig (using the proguard rig). I've already created an appropriately sized skeleton, weighted it, and created new animations for her. It just would be a lot easier to work on the animations if I could preview them on that mesh, rather than the proguard mesh.

[Domarius]

Ah so what you want is the handy controls that only exist currently in the Proguard's MB file.

 

So the models_src\noblewoman_mb\noblewomanmesh.mb file, if I just add the controls directly to that file, that's all we need?

[Springheel]

Ah so what you want is the handy controls that only exist currently in the Proguard's MB file.

 

Yes.

 

So the models_src\noblewoman_mb\noblewomanmesh. mb file, if I just add the controls directly to that file, that's all we need?

 

No, because that .mb file is out of date. At this point, you'd have to either import one of the .md5anim files (such as idle_demure.md5anim), or find some way to import the Lightwave version of the mesh.

 

Or, leave the female characters right now and work on the stocky characters instead, which are basically still untouched.

[Domarius]

I see. Well I want to make sure all the characters are up to date with an MB rig, it will be easier to maintain, and I'm sure you're familiar with how much time having to load up Doom 3 to check your results adds to the development time of animations. I'll start with the noblewoman to warm up, because I'm sure the stocky people will be harder, being so different.

 

I have female reference footage (thanks to my friend Kate) for all our common animations (walk cower etc.) even character varieties such as guard, noblewoman, and stocky washerwoman. I filmed that back in 2008 but haven't uploaded it with the other male stuff I uploaded already. I'm copying it to my laptop now to edit on the bus.

 

I should also find a stocky person to act for me now... the way they waddle when they walk, and cumbersome way they move, it's very unique...

 

I wonder if I should credit these people in our credits... I think I will

[Springheel]

Well I want to make sure all the characters are up to date with an MB rig

 

Well, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, since only two characters (out of our dozen or so) do.

 

If you want to work with the noblewoman that's great, but just make sure that whatever you do is consistent with the work that has already been done on her.

 

I filmed that back in 2008 but haven't uploaded it

 

That would certainly come in handy if you get a chance to upload it to the ftp.

[Domarius]

Well, you've got a lot of work ahead of you, since only two characters (out of our dozen or so) do.

Ah but I only have to do the majorly different types.

1. The proguard pretty much covers every regular male. A tweaked copy of that will cover the robed males.
   
2. The noblewoman will cover every female with a dress, and a tweaked copy of that will coverall the females without a dress.
   
3. And then one more for the stocky men.
   

 

Maybe in the future if we have stocky females, I would add that too when the time comes - hahah. (eg. fat washer-women type thing)

 

If you want to work with the noblewoman that's great, but just make sure that whatever you do is consistent with the work that has already been done on her.

My plan is to import the proguard rig into her mb file and re-weight her. Then I will see if the animations need changing, but I want to export her md5mesh from that mb file - so that what you see in Maya is what you get. All characters should be like this. Working on the bus is working out great, so I certainly accept the challenge of tweaking or re-doing any animations.

 

 

That would certainly come in handy if you get a chance to upload it to the ftp.

No worries, that's definitely happening.

 

I just got a portly guy to agree to be filmed doing all the movements we need, so that's coming too

[Springheel]

My plan is to import the proguard rig into her mb file and re-weight her

 

You can't use the mb file on SVN, it's hopelessly out of date. As I said, you're going to have to either import the existing md5mesh, or convert the .lw version into a format Maya can read.

 

Make sure you save all your files with different filenames...I don't want to overwrite anything that is already working until everything is duplicated.

[Domarius]

Ok no problem - I thought you meant just the rig was out of date. Yeah I'll import the md5mesh and add the new rig to it, no worries.

 

And yeah good idea, I'll make her a noblewoman_domarius until we're sure she's working, then we can swap her in.

[Domarius]

Where is the lightwave source file for the noblewoman? I found "noblewomanposed.lwo" in the proguard folder, not sure if that's the right one (or if it's meant to be there).

 

Or maybe you consider the md5mesh to be the latest "source" because they're easily imported & exported?

[Springheel]

Or maybe you consider the md5mesh to be the latest "source" because they're easily imported & exported?

 

If you have a good md5mesh importer, that would probably be the best. Otherwise I'll have to convert the .lwo file for you, and that often tends to do unintended things like merging meshes. I'll upload the latest noblewoman files to models_src.

[Domarius]

Cool thanks - I'll see what I can do about just importing the md5mesh. You'd think it would be possible by now.

[Domarius]

Well, good news - I imported the md5mesh just fine, skeleton and all - all I have to do is add the animation controls to it, and you can use it to animate with. Not nessecary for me to export the md5mesh

[Springheel]

Cool. What did you use? It would be pretty handy if I were able to do that as well.

[Domarius]

No probs, here it is;

http://seithcg.com/wordpress/?page_id=26

 

Download the file off that page (it's a .rar)

 

Put the md5toMaya_019b.mel in a folder of your choosing. Edit the file, near the top is a path pointing to Doom 3 on your hard drive, you have to edit that and save it.

 

Then in maya make a button - open shelf editor: click Window, Settings & Preferences, Shelves, make a new shelf, select it, open the script editor Window: General Editors, Script editor, paste below into the script editor, replacing the first line with the location of the mel script:

 

source "D:/md5toMaya/md5toMaya_019b.mel";

md5import;

 

Select it all, click File, Save selection to shelf

 

Now when you click that button, the importer window should open and you can specify a model to load.

[Springheel]

Turns out I already downloaded that file, but never got around to trying to make it work.

 

Thanks for the instructions...looks like it's working now. This will be very handy!

[Springheel]

Hmm, I notice when importing a zombie animation, that they're keyframed on almost every other frame. That's highly annoying to work with...is there any kind of command to 'even out' the keyframes somehow?

[Springheel]

Ok, here's another potential problem. When I loaded up one of our md5meshes and saved it with a slight alteration, then exported it with D3, I got a "different number of joints" error when trying to load the game.

 

I suspect that it has something to do with all the addoptions in the def file:

 

addoptions -keep origin Pelvis Pelvis2 Hips LeftHips_Dummy LeftUpLeg LeftLeg LeftFoot LeftToeBase LeftToe_end RightHips_Dummy RightUpLeg RightLeg RightFoot RightToeBase RightToe_end sword Spine_Dummy Spine Spine1 Spine2 LeftShoulder_Dummy LeftShoulder LeftArm_Dummy LeftArm LeftArmRoll LeftForeArm LeftHand LeftHandIndex1 LeftHandIndex2 LeftHandIndex3 LeftHandIndex4 LeftHandRing1 LeftHandRing2 LeftHandRing3 LeftHandRing4 LeftHandThumb1 LeftHandThumb2 LeftHandThumb3 Neck Head RightShoulder_Dummy RightShoulder RightArm_Dummy RightArm RightArmRoll RightForeArm RightHand RightHandIndex1 RightHandIndex2 RightHandIndex3 RightHandIndex4 RightHandRing1 RightHandRing2 RightHandRing3 RightHandRing4 RightHandThumb1 RightHandThumb2 RightHandThumb3 joint8 joint9 leftpad rightpad joint7 RightFrontUpSkirt RightBackUpSkirt LeftFrontUpSkirt LeftBackUpSkirt RightFrontLowSkirt RightBackLowSkirt LeftFrontLowSkirt LeftBackLowSkirt

 

I suspect the main rig has a certain number of joints and these addoptions are designed to modify the number of joints somehow. Since the md5mesh is already modified, importing it and then and running it through these addoptions again is probably doing something to mess it up.

 

This is a bit out of my depth though. Any ideas, Dom?

[Domarius]

Well if that were the case, you could delete the addoptions section entirely

 

Try it anyway, not sure if it will work. I'm pretty sure "addoptions" is where it makes the joints "visible" to the game. Each joint name has to be listed here or it's not imported.

 

As for animations - yeah you will never get the original anim from the exported anim, that goes for probably every animation format in existance. Keyframes are what you work with, but the final format always flattens the information into individual key frames, so that no processing has to be done during the game.

So you have to always come from the MB file, you definitely can't work backwards unless you want to deal with all those frames.

 

 

Anyway let me know how you go.

[Springheel]

Try it anyway, not sure if it will work. I'm pretty sure "addoptions" is where it makes the joints "visible" to the game. Each joint name has to be listed here or it's not imported.

 

No, that didn't work. In both cases, the final animation has 68 joints, instead of the original 71. Doing a comparison I see that "LeftBackLowSkirt" is one of the ones missing. In fact, all the LowSkirt joints are missing...I assume that's because the proguard mesh doesn't have anything weighted to those joints? The new animation also has two origins, oddly.

 

Besides that, the names of the joints appear to have been changed. The original animation looks like this:

 

hierarchy {

"origin" -1 1 0 // ( Tx )

"Pelvis" 0 63 1 // origin ( Tx Ty Tz Qx Qy Qz )

"Pelvis2" 1 0 0 // Pelvis

"Hips" 2 0 0 // Pelvis2

"LeftHips_Dummy" 3 0 0 // Hips

"LeftUpLeg" 4 56 7 // LeftHips_Dummy ( Qx Qy Qz )

"LeftBackUpSkirt" 5 0 0 // LeftUpLeg

"LeftFrontUpSkirt" 5 0 0 // LeftUpLeg

 

After importing that animation, saving it as an .ma and then exporting it, it looks like this:

 

hierarchy {

"origin" -1 0 0 //

"female_walk_cycle_origin" 0 1 0 // origin ( Tx )

"female_walk_cycle_Pelvis" 1 61 1 // female_walk_cycle_origin ( Tx Tz Qx Qy Qz )

"female_walk_cycle_Pelvis2" 2 0 0 // female_walk_cycle_Pelvis

"female_walk_cycle_Hips" 3 0 0 // female_walk_cycle_Pelvis2

"female_walk_cycle_LeftHips_Dummy" 4 32 6 // female_walk_cycle_Hips ( Qz )

"female_walk_cycle_LeftUpLeg" 5 56 7 // female_walk_cycle_LeftHips_Dummy ( Qx Qy Qz )

"female_walk_cycle_LeftBackUpSkirt" 6 0 0 // female_walk_cycle_LeftUpLeg

"female_walk_cycle_LeftFrontUpSkirt" 6 0 0 // female_walk_cycle_LeftUpLeg

 

Even if the number of joints matched, wouldn't the new prefix cause an error because the joint names won't match?

 

"female_walk_cycle" is the name of the original md5anim, so it seems like the importer is adding that to the joint names for some reason.

[Springheel]

I tried making an open door animation for zombies, but same problem. The exported version has only 74 joints, when the original animations have 77.

 

I tried adding the joints and changing the names manually, but that didn't work as then it complained about the joint hierarchy.

 

Sadly, it doesn't look like this importer is going to be much use to me after all.