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New animations


Noisycricket

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[THIS THREAD MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS]

 

I thought i'd create a thread to give mappers and budding mappers an idea of whats available and to make a place for discussion and requests for new animations.

 

Heres the latest animation:

. For an A.I. studying a chart or map, looking down in a court yard, out a window....at a victim tied to a table ;), etc ,etc, etc... Its followed by a loop of him breathing.
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I thought i'd create a thread to give mappers and budding mappers an idea of whats available and to make a place for discussion and requests for new animations.

 

Heres the latest animation:

. For an A.I. studying a chart or map, looking down in a court yard, out a window....at a victim tied to a table ;), etc ,etc, etc... Its followed by a loop of him breathing.

 

Whoa! That's nice!

 

Would it be difficult to make another animation, which is basically an alteration of this one so so that the AI looks forward and ponders?

 

Now when the AI hears the player making noise, he turns to look in that direction. Then the AI only stands there and watches.

 

It would bring the AI more into life if the AI sometimes played this pondering animation before resuming patrol route.

 

I mean this kind of sequence of events:

*player makes noise*

*Ai turns to look in the direction*

"I thought I heard...."

*Pondering animation*

"Nothing here now.."

*Resume normal patrol*

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I like this.

 

Do all animations need to take into account whether the AI is holding something (i.e. a torch)? Or can an animation request be marked "ignore if the AI is holding something"?

 

Ponder Downward might need a sister animation Ponder Downward While Holding Something. Imagine him doing this while holding a torch.

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@Sotha: I think a minor form of that behavior is already there. But to that extent, I agree, that would be very nice. That would need programmer support. A forward pondering animation is planned, but i think animations for interaction with bookshelves, working activities like hammering and moving crates are next.

 

@Grayman: I assumed that a mapper could just call these animations at a certain spot, but im not a mapper or coder, just an animator and general complainer. ;) Hopefully someone can confirm. Otherwise, some coding would be necessary.

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Yes, that's great and being so generic has lots of uses in all kinds of situations.

 

In the same vein, interacting with bookshelves and table tops, apart from special ones, perhaps the best general-purpose animation would be the AI leans forward slightly, his arms come forward so his hands are about table top height, and just generally move around a little, left and right, forward and back, up and down, circular motion, etc. Finally, the arms move back. That way it could be applied to lots of things.

 

If the above could be separate animations they might be used in combinations. So lean forward, arms forward, up and down motion, could be throwing a vertical switch, forward and back would be a lever, a circular motion would be a cook stirring a pot. A combination of any where there are objects to interact with might be anything in the mind of the player.

 

The player is not normally breathing over the shoulder of a live AI but across a room or further. So it is very convincing to see an AI go to a table with some objects on, lean forward, and his arms and hands move around in various ways, finally, he moves back and crosses the room and goes to a shelf and does similar movements. The movements do not need any special meaning as the player's mind can't help but be convinced there is some meaning even if he can't see it.

 

This is all way better than an AI just going to positions and standing there like an idiot. Apart from a patrolling guard of course.

 

One other specific animation that might be fun is pipe smoking. If you could perhaps modify the bottle drinking then I'm someone could come up with a pipe model and some smoke. Be nice if this could work sitting down too.

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@Sotha: I think a minor form of that behavior is already there. But to that extent, I agree, that would be very nice. That would need programmer support. A forward pondering animation is planned, but i think animations for interaction with bookshelves, working activities like hammering and moving crates are next.

 

@Grayman: I assumed that a mapper could just call these animations at a certain spot, but im not a mapper or coder, just an animator and general complainer. ;) Hopefully someone can confirm. Otherwise, some coding would be necessary.

 

There is a path_anim entity, which lets you play any anim (or anim sequences) on any AI. However, that is hard-coded, if you want an animation to appear before resuming patrol, that indeed needs code support. But we could code this in as general support for a spawnarg ("anim_ponder_before_resume") and any animation listed there gets random choosen and played once, so the mapper can later easily override this.

 

@graymen: it is possible to alter the list of anims played for certain AI, this means torchbearers skip this animation.

 

@nosslak: Nice one, although I think it is a bit overdone. When have you last seen someone pondering this way? :) For the forward ponder I think a "gaze to the lower left/upper right, rub chin lightly" would be more appropriate.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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But we could code this in as general support for a spawnarg ("anim_ponder_before_resume") and any animation listed there gets random choosen and played once, so the mapper can later easily override this.

 

And the list of animations could involve all kinds of head shakes, shrugs, pondering or whatever people tend to do when they think they saw/heard something and conclude it was just their imagination.

 

Sounds simply awesome. :wub:

 

And remember, such animations are the ones the players are going to see a lot in this game genre: guards going "Nevermind, it was just rats." But it should not be overused if we have only a small amount of anims in the beginning, so maybe it needs some kind of percentage when the pondering animations get played. Sometimes/usually the guards should simply continue their patrols without pondering.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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And the list of animations could involve all kinds of head shakes, shrugs, pondering or whatever people tend to do when they think they saw/heard something and conclude it was just their imagination.

 

Sounds simply awesome. :wub:

 

And remember, such animations are the ones the players are going to see a lot in this game genre: guards going "Nevermind, it was just rats." But it should not be overused if we have only a small amount of anims in the beginning, so maybe it needs some kind of percentage when the pondering animations get played. Sometimes/usually the guards should simply continue their patrols without pondering.

 

Yeah, I think it will not be difficult to add this logic:

 

* if alert level going down from 1 to 0: 
** if probability (random number) smaller than "anim_ponder_probability", then select anim at random from list "anim_ponder", play it, then continue.

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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And remember, such animations are the ones the players are going to see a lot in this game genre: guards going "Nevermind, it was just rats."

 

Yes, this has always been an intended behaviour, for AI to play after giving up a search. I was imagining more of a "hands on hips" or shrugging behaviour, but it is easy to select from a random list.

 

Noisycricket, this looks great and could be very useful for AI stopping at paintings, bookshelves, etc. I'll add it to the game if you like. Where should I look for the originals of these files? Do you upload them to models_src?

 

One other specific animation that might be fun is pipe smoking. If you could perhaps modify the bottle drinking then I'm someone could come up with a pipe model and some smoke

 

Once we figure out the bugs in the attach/reattach system, the possibilities for cool animations like that are endless.

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Good animation! I was already happy when the "eat apple" and "play cards" behaviours appeared in 1.02; this will be another colour on the palette. It shows perfectly how TDM is a growing mod. :)

Come the time of peril, did the ground gape, and did the dead rest unquiet 'gainst us. Our bands of iron and hammers of stone prevailed not, and some did doubt the Builder's plan. But the seals held strong, and the few did triumph, and the doubters were lain into the foundations of the new sanctum. -- Collected letters of the Smith-in-Exile, Civitas Approved

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I'll add it to the game if you like. Where should I look for the originals of these files? Do you upload them to models_src?

 

Of course, i have been doing a lot of touch ups to the placeholder animations, like throw and others, so i'll upload a few 'finished' ones tonight.

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Just a suggestion: don't be tempted to go for the more exotic animations before the more general purpose ones; the latter will get much more use. I'd like to see them all of course but just saying, imo the most common ones missing are the general hand and arm movements when an AI goes to a shelf or table. I'd hate to see them overlooked in favour of bum scratching. :) Both is better of course.

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@Fidcal:

 

It's all well and good to have animations that are flexible and can be used in more than one context. But you need to be careful not to go too far in terms of generic movements or there's little point to having a capable animator do the work.

 

You can't compartmentalize lifelike motion. Stringing together a sequence of modular parts sounds very much like programming a robot and I imagine the result would look about the same. What do you think about complete but general tasks like jotting something down, counting items, or maybe even just resting against something for a moment? Do any of those sound adequate?

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imo the most common ones missing are the general hand and arm movements when an AI goes to a shelf or table.

 

What do you want them to do that the use_righthand animation doesn't cover? Simple things like that I can make, but I can't do the kinds of things Noisycricket can do.

 

i have been doing a lot of touch ups to the placeholder animations

 

If you're looking for animations to improve and replace, our female animations are weak. I made new idles for both the noblewoman and wench characters, but not only am I an amateur when it comes to animating, but I had to make them using the proguard mesh. They're definitely in the placeholder category.

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Maybe I've not seen use_righthand animation. Is that the door handle one?

 

In Sotha's recent Knighton Manor for instance there is at least one AI who goes to a table and/or shelves and does the arm forward motion which I took to be the door-handle opening one. Just that simple motion is very effective - much more so than the AI just going and standing there. So my view is that some very simple movements can be effective in all kinds of such situations whereas very specialized ones are more limited even if excellent in themselves.

 

So some simple arm movements like just vaguely moving an arm/hand around in front - two arms as well, is what I'm saying. But how it's implemented I leave to you guys. I'm just speaking as a mapper. I have a city watch who goes and sits down at a desk with some papers, books, etc in front of him. Then he gets up and patrols around and comes back. While sitting he just sits. Any kind of general arm motion would be welcome.

 

With some vague and varied arm motions the player can accept it as almost anything from across a dark room. The same motion might be preparing food, examining a book, retrieving something from a shelf, etc. Whereas a specific action like stretching ones arms, while good, only has that one use and cannot be anything else.

 

But I'm not uptodate with what is already available so I'll review the situation in a couple of months.

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Maybe I've not seen use_righthand animation. Is that the door handle one?

 

Yes. It looks half-decent for what you're describing. I've used it for an AI turning pages in Builder's Influence--when you add a sound effect it becomes pretty convincing (just occurred to me that Noisy's new animation above will be great for AI sitting and reading too).

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  • 2 weeks later...

Whoa! That's nice!

 

Would it be difficult to make another animation, which is basically an alteration of this one so so that the AI looks forward and ponders?

 

Now when the AI hears the player making noise, he turns to look in that direction. Then the AI only stands there and watches.

 

It would bring the AI more into life if the AI sometimes played this pondering animation before resuming patrol route.

 

I mean this kind of sequence of events:

*player makes noise*

*Ai turns to look in the direction*

"I thought I heard...."

*Pondering animation*

"Nothing here now.."

*Resume normal patrol*

 

Like this?:)

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X1Nv5XvX0Q4

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This looks great! Would make a good idle animation for a few characters as well. :)

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@Sotha, Yeah, i agree, for that purpose, it probably should be shorter. Im completely forget the behavior in Thief 1,2 and 3, i should go back and take a look.

 

@Springheel, I noticed in i think 1.03 that the vertices in the lower rear part of the noblewoman's dress are attached to one or more of the feet bones. You might be able to also weight them to the origin bone and give it something like 25%. Maybe you've already tried.... Also, I noticed a folder for the forger character which has a bunch of placeholder animations that need work with what looks like maybe a new skeleton. I don't see any handles. Any info on that?

 

 

Simple things like that I can make, but I can't do the kinds of things Noisycricket can do.

Yeah you could, its just a whole lot o time thats all.

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Also, I noticed a folder for the forger character which has a bunch of placeholder animations that need work with what looks like maybe a new skeleton. I don't see any handles. Any info on that?

 

If you're talking about the models_src folder, most of the stuff there is out of date. There is an updated forger character on SVN that uses the proguard skeleton, but it just doesn't work terribly well. Even when I made animations more appropriate for his bulk, the way the big stomach rotated around the spine1 joint just looked bad (since he doesn't have a belt, the shearing along that joint was very obvious when turning). He either needs to be weighted better or needs a different skeleton, I don't know which.

 

I noticed in i think 1.03 that the vertices in the lower rear part of the noblewoman's dress are attached to one or more of the feet bones

 

Not as far as I can see when I look at the mesh. If you're talking about the way they move in game, I agree the dress moves up too far. I thought about weighting it to the origin, but then it looks odd when sitting or lying down. I probably need to adjust the actual walk animation to make use of the lower skirt joints, but it's very difficult to do when I've only got the proguard mesh to animate with. Domarius was going to make an animation rig for the noblewoman, but nothing came of it. <_< There's no question that ALL of the female animations I've made could use improving.

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Of course, i have been doing a lot of touch ups to the placeholder animations, like throw and others, so i'll upload a few 'finished' ones tonight.

 

I just checked models_src and couldn't find these. :mellow:

 

edit: oh wait; I just found them in the main darkmod folder under darkmod/a/?

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