Blender rig for standard male NPC

[Springheel]

Ouch, they keyframe every frame? Missed that. That would be a pain to modify.

[Arcturus]

I think most anims are 60fps. You can scale down the fps on import. One can modify multiple keyframes using animation curves. For example If you want an arm to be further from the body during the whole time frame you can move a curve responsible for rotation on certain axis up. You can smooth out the curves. But it requires work.

[Bikerdude]

Some basic things one has to know about it:

As the file is so small it could be uploaded to our wiki with a small article based on your second post.

I have created the wiki entry Arcturus, please check it to make sure its all correct.

 

- http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Blender:_Rig_for_standard_male_NPC

[Arcturus]

Thanks. I corrected order of the GIFs.

[fletcherkildren]

The wiki link for the blend file is broken, is there another link?

[Sotha]

The urinating AI package contains the source blenderfile. It contains the rig, too.

https://drive.google...dit?usp=sharing

 

"proguard_animation_urinate_headfixed.blend"

[Arcturus]

I uploaded the file on my private Google drive and updated the link in the wiki.

[Arcturus]

I checked that exporter Sotha mentioned: http://arxendofsun.s...o_scene_md5.zip

 

It works nicely with Blender 2.70. I didn't know about its existence. I did small test, and yes, it produces larger files than the exporter I used for Blender 2.49. 36 frame animation - this exporter: 221 K, old exporter: 156 KB (which is still 3 times more than files exported from Maya). It has indeed four decimal places more in every coordinate.

 

The good news is it supports bone layers, which means you can probably with it skip the baking to the second skeleton part and export straight from the skeleton you use to animate.

[Arcturus]

I made a female version of the rig in Blender. I did small changes to the control armature. In Darkmod's skeleton there are bones called LeftArmRoll and RightArmRoll. They are short bones in the middle of the arm.

 

 

They have been causing a lot of trouble in my rig:

 

 

They have to stay straight at all times. You can manually correct its rotation but it's counter-productive:

 

 

That's why I decided to delete those bones from the control armature:

 

 

Arm does not cause trouble any more.

 

 

In fact I should have done the same with male armature, but male NPCs usually have clothes so the problem is not that noticeable.

 

I changed hand rig. I added additional bones. Rotation and scaling of those bones animates the fingers while you can still animate each finger bone separately. Animated GIF (open to see):

 

 

There are three different body types plus one head. Head is not placed 100% correctly, but I did my best:

 

 

I also recreated first frames of idle animations. Those can be used to make new idle animations that will blend seamlessly with existing ones:

 

 

You can of course export animations with exporter for Blender 2.70. You don't have to bake the animation. When you've finished animating with 'armature_control' armature, just select the models plus 'tdm_ai' armature and you can export (uncheck reorient). However you have to be careful. If you export animation with only small body part selected, bounding box in game will be too small:

 

 

That's why you have to select all (you don't have to select the head I think) and then export:

 

 

There is a weird bug in the 2.70 exporter. I can export only mesh from the first layer. When I try to export from other layers I get this error:

 

 

I have no idea why, just remember about it.

[Sotha]

Looks very handy! Thanks for doing it!

 

Few questions:

1) does it export directly into the female model scale, or does one need to scale when exporting?

2) which exporter are you using for this? ARX: EOS exporter?

3) In this blender version / rig, will blender still export excessive unneeded keyframes?

4) Can I have anims/poses easily moved from the male rig to this new female one? I.e the praying animation I made for the male AI rig suffers from the female arm issue. How easy would it be to get the male animation into this female rig and make an arm-issue-fixed version for the females?

[Arcturus]

1) does it export directly into the female model scale, or does one need to scale when exporting?

Yes, it exports directly to female model scale. No need to scaling down.

2) which exporter are you using for this? ARX: EOS exporter?

Yes.

3) In this blender version / rig, will blender still export excessive unneeded keyframes?

Yes. That depends on the export script, and that didn't change. Doom 3 / Darkmod has a built in converter for Maya animation files. I wonder how hard would it be to modify it to read blend files and convert them to md5.

4) Can I have anims/poses easily moved from the male rig to this new female one? I.e the praying animation I made for the male AI rig suffers from the female arm issue. How easy would it be to get the male animation into this female rig and make an arm-issue-fixed version for the females?

Not easily, because:

a) scale is different

there are no armroll bones

which means animations will look bad and will require a lot of fixing.

[Arcturus]

Actually, I take back what I've said. I loaded some proguard's animations and they don't look that bad at all.

[Arcturus]

I removed the naughty elbow bones from the male rig too. Link to the updated rig with latest animations is in the first post.

 

[Sotha]

Hi!

 

I just checked the new male rig and there is something strange going on with it.

Selecting some of the actions somehow distorts the character pose. If I choose the "fishing" anim and then "idle_pose" the AI hands are set in a weird fashion. If I browse other anims, and go back the idle_pose, the character is even more distorted. Like some of the bone positions would carry to the idle_pose when I select it.

[Arcturus]

Yeah, that happens because some actions have keyframes on certain bones when other don't. When you change action it's best to select all bones in pose mode and alt+r, alt+g - reset rotation and position. Then when you play animation it will be ok.

[MirceaKitsune]

I might use this to make some characters. I got the male and female versions of the blend files, the md5 script from the Bits and bobs for Blender page, but how do I actually put things together?

 

First of all, there are several objects and armatures in the scene. Some are clothing pieces, others are parts of the body, another seems to be a shadow mesh (I assume a lower polygon model for producing shadows more cheaply). Which layers and objects should I select before exporting? Are there any settings I need to set to a specific value, or is everything in the blend file prepared? Otherwise are there other guidelines or tips, on what to do before exporting and how the meshes should be for correct results?

 

Second issue is that, I'm not sure how each part in the model integrates into TDM. For instance, I know you can select the body and head independently for an NPC in DarkRadiant, and I'm not sure if the clothes are generic as well. Is there a tutorial explaining in more detail how character definitions in TDM work, so I know which parts of my model connect with which existing assets?

[HMart]

I like this simple Blender animation tutorial is made by a past Doom 3 modder, Brian Trepanier's, he has also a simple tutorial about character animation from 3D max to idtech 4 (the engine used by TDM) i think the principals could be the same on Blender.

 

More Tutorials from him for 3D Max but the principals again could be replicated in blender, i think:

 

Animated prop

 

Animated non-player character there's also a part about making ragdools physics for idtech 4 in this Tutorial, very important for characters.

[Arcturus]

Did you read this article on Darkmod Wiki?

[MirceaKitsune]

Did you read this article on Darkmod Wiki?

 

Seen it a while ago. It explains a bit about the armatures, but it still feels like I'm missing something. At the end for example, it talks about baking armature actions, but that's something I never heard of in Blender before (only baking lights or shadows or bumpmaps). Also, once I do export the model pieces correctly, a tutorial on how to write up the character def would be handy... I imagine this might be beyond the purpose of this thread though.

Edited September 29, 2015 by MirceaKitsune

[Arcturus]

Baking actions is no longer needed with newest MD5 exporter. All NPCs share the same skeleton (there are 2 versions for both sexes) so exported md5.anim file can be used by all NPCs. Character model in blend file is for reference, but also you need to select both mesh and armature when exporting. If you select only boots for example, 'bounding box' will be to small, which may cause incorrect shadows, so it's best to select all meshes. But it doesn't matter which character you export, md5.anim will be the same. As for def, I think it's best to modify existing ones.

[MirceaKitsune]

Baking actions is no longer needed with newest MD5 exporter. All NPCs share the same skeleton (there are 2 versions for both sexes) so exported md5.anim file can be used by all NPCs. Character model in blend file is for reference, but also you need to select both mesh and armature when exporting. If you select only boots for example, 'bounding box' will be to small, which may cause incorrect shadows, so it's best to select all meshes. But it doesn't matter which character you export, md5.anim will be the same. As for def, I think it's best to modify existing ones.

 

That helps a lot and I will keep it in mind for when I get to this, thanks!

[MirceaKitsune]

I plan to take a look at this during the next days, hopefully exporting the first actual character. I opened up the proguard blend file today, but noticed something peculiar:

 

There are no apparently no bones for the mouth, on either the real armature or control armature. TDM does however have lip syncing, and you clearly see characters flapping their mouths when they talk. What must I do to the new model to make sure that lipsync works? Does simply having and properly weighting the "jaw" vertex group on the head mesh suffice? Same story with eyelids for blinking.

Edited December 22, 2015 by MirceaKitsune

[Springheel]

Heads have a separate skeleton.

[MirceaKitsune]

Heads have a separate skeleton.

 

I looked but didn't find any in the blend files. The head object uses the same armature as the rest of the body (in this case tdm_ai_proguard). Is the rig incomplete, or am I missing something else?

[Arcturus]

Mouth has separate skeleton and animations. I never made a rig for the mouth.