Animations?

[someTaff]

Hi all!

Since ai animations are a bit unnatural and not fluent, been wondering how to got new ones? How it's done novadays - motioncapture?

[demagogue]

Go for it, dude. If you can get the equipment, you can do motion capture, but you could also do it by hand (even with a video backdrop), and just get very practiced at it with a lot of work until it looks good. (It is possible to have good-looking hand done animations.) In any event, there's no alternative to just jumping in the deep end and getting experienced. 3DS Max or Maya are the big programs to learn; just pick one. We really need some zombie & wolfman animations too, and are currently understaffed with experienced people to do them (even aside from fixing existing animations).

 

Unless you're just posting to say we should look for some animators to do some work for us. Then we already know that, and at least I've been asking around for people that might know people that could help out. If you want to contribute something, other than learning an animating program yourself, and you have animator friends, or just want to start hitting up forums asking for people, you could ask them if they're keen to help us out. That might be helpful, although we'd need to make sure they do quality work and have a vetting process first.

[someTaff]

Ok, is there any tutorial on darkmod skeletal animation? What one will need for such a task?

How exactly current animations been made? I would like to try

[New Horizon]

Ok, is there any tutorial on darkmod skeletal animation? What one will need for such a task?

How exactly current animations been made? I would like to try

 

Just a question, have you animated anything before? From your questions, it sounds like you haven't.

[someTaff]

How transition happens between animatons, f.i. "walk" and "attack"?

[someTaff]

I've done some biped animation in 3ds max long ago

 

Just a question, have you animated anything before? From your questions, it sounds like you haven't.

[SeriousToni]

Hey someTaff, a bunch of new conversation animations would be cool

[demagogue]

Heh, from what I've read, animation takes many months to years of hard work to learn properly. But if you're very motivated, there's no reason you can't start learning to help contribute. Good animations are something we have a persistent need for. I'm not an official word on it, though, that's just my personal feeling.

 

Just go in with the right expectations. Your early animations may not be accepted if they aren't up to the quality standards. There might be other reasons too, if the art director doesn't think they fit the AI even if they're technically ok (he gets the last say about stuff like that). Also, some AI have like 40 animations, so it's a lot of work. But if you really want to learn, it may as well be with our animations than just random stuff.

 

You should search the Dark Mod wiki for tutorials (the link is at the top of the forum page). Also just do a bunch of general google searches for animation tutorials.

[someTaff]

Heh, from what I've read, animation takes many months to years of hard work to learn properly. But if you're very motivated, there's no reason you can't start learning to help contribute. Good animations are something we have a persistent need for. I'm not an official word on it, though, that's just my personal feeling.

 

Just go in with the right expectations. Your early animations may not be accepted if they aren't up to the quality standards. There might be other reasons too, if the art director doesn't think they fit the AI even if they're technically ok (he gets the last say about stuff like that). Also, some AI have like 40 animations, so it's a lot of work. But if you really want to learn, it may as well be with our animations than just random stuff.

 

You should search the Dark Mod wiki for tutorials (the link is at the top of the forum page). Also just do a bunch of general google searches for animation tutorials.

 

ok

[SeriousToni]

It doesn't take years and months at least not to make your first achievements. If you got the basics of rigging a character, you just can start with animating it. In modern software like 3ds Max its very easy to get into it.

[someTaff]

hey the darkmod wiki section is awesome!

How to see animation list on model?

I see it in script editor editDecl -> ai_base -> edit

 

Check this out http://vimeo.com/17966780

 

Edited November 19, 2012 by someTaff

[Noisycricket]

I wouldn't worry about rigging unless thats of interest for you, or your trying to get a job. As far as animating, all you need to know to get started is blocking, blocking and blocking, don't worry about any timing what-so-ever until your all blocked in. Google is your friend.

 

That Kinect motion capture video is cool. Would be cool if you could get that going.

Edited November 28, 2012 by Noisycricket

[Springheel]

Hey Noisycricket, good to see you around.

 

Do you have any time/interest in making some zombie animations in the next while? We're trying to replace the D3 zombie, and while we've got a new mesh rigged to our humanoid skeleton, we could really use some basic zombie animations (walk, attack, etc).

 

Also, you did some great animations for us a while back (like the new combat animations), but we only have the md5mesh versions in models_src. I can't import those into Maya so I haven't been able to convert them for use on the female models (which have to be exported at a slightly smaller scale). Any chance you still have the original Maya files around?