Blender rig for standard male NPC

[MirceaKitsune]

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

 

Ouch... how do I make my characters have working mouths and eyes then? I can't finish them without that, but I didn't think this might be a problem Any chance you could update the proguard rig and add the head armature and its base animations sometime, please?

Edited December 22, 2015 by MirceaKitsune

[Arcturus]

What do you want to do? If I'm not mistaken, mouth opens and closes automatically based on a sound waves in TDM. Wait, are you making completely new models? Then I guess you need to upload MD5 mesh of a head to Blender.

[MirceaKitsune]

What do you want to do? If I'm not mistaken, mouth opens and closes automatically based on a sound waves in TDM. Wait, are you making completely new models? Then I guess you need to upload MD5 mesh of a head to Blender.

 

Yes: I plan to rig an entirely new model (already in Blender) to the TDM animation armature(s), and export a whole new character. Both the body and the head are completely new meshes, and I'll need to rig and weight any important armature and vertex group on them. I need to know how to do both the body and the face rigging properly for this.

 

What do you mean upload MD5 mesh of a head? The proguard template already has a head, with the necessary vertex groups even... just no actual armature for the mouth / eyes / eyelids. If I simply create the vertex groups and give them the correct names and weights (eg: "jaw"), will they work automatically when I export the final character... or do I need to include the non-existent head armature and export with it selected too?

[Arcturus]

Yes, MD5.mesh files have both geometry and joints. You will need to export both.

[MirceaKitsune]

Yes, MD5.mesh files have both geometry and joints. You will need to export both.

 

Ok. Where do I get the extra rig for the head then, to put it into the blend file and export with it?

[Arcturus]

In some PK4 with other md5.meshes.

[MirceaKitsune]

In some PK4 with other md5.meshes.

 

Alright... so I need to find the md5 file of an existing head, import that into Blender, and extract the armature from it? That's a bit worrying since import scripts tend to either not work either not import all data. I would appreciate it if someone else could try this step and post the blend file, but I'll try it myself later if not. How do I even connect it to the control armature, as is done with the normal rig?

 

For now I rigged the new mesh to the primary armature, and it seems to be animating very well! If everything goes accordingly (exporting to md5, creating the character definition, creating the material definitions) expect an interesting new set of characters for TDM sometime Not making any promises yet since it's the first time I do this with idTech 4... in any case I'll be publishing what I do have at worst.

[MirceaKitsune]

Good news: The import script worked, and I managed to obtain the face rig from an existing head! I've put the unmodified version in a simple blend file, so you can easily add it when you plan to update this rig again (it's an essential missing component so I assume that's the right thing to do): http://www.pasteall.org/blend/39789

 

I'm still uncertain how I should position it for now. The character I'm making contains both the body and head in their exact positions, but the head mesh I imported contained only the head at location 0 0 0. I'm worried that if I snap the head of my character out of place, I can't re-position it back with the same precision... I will however want the body and head to be individual md5 files, so the head can work with existing bodies aside from its own. Any advice please?

[Springheel]

ideally you want some kind of detail there that can hide the seam, since lining it up exactly will be nearly impossible.

[MirceaKitsune]

ideally you want some kind of detail there that can hide the seam, since lining it up exactly will be nearly impossible.

 

The seam will have to match exactly... the model isn't mine and I'm only making the necessary changes to port it to TDM, so I must work with what I have. Hopefully I can convert the Blender units between object centers into a distance in the entity definition, which should give me a precise position... another thing I'd greatly appreciate any tips on.

 

For now I finished rigging the entire face, and made use of all important bones. I repositioned them accordingly, which will hopefully not cause any extreme deformations when the existing animations will play on the rig. Might be able to export a test md5 soon enough if all goes well, though there's still a lot to do.

[VanishedOne]

 

Hopefully I can convert the Blender units between object centers into a distance in the entity definition, which should give me a precise position... another thing I'd greatly appreciate any tips on.

Unit conversions: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Conversion_of_Game_Units

 

There's an offsetHeadModel spawnarg--the description in DR is 'A vector with an offset to move the head into a better position relative to this model. (Seems currently not to work anymore.)' but it worked when I tried it in relation to http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4221

[MirceaKitsune]

Unit conversions: http://wiki.thedarkmod.com/index.php?title=Conversion_of_Game_Units

 

There's an offsetHeadModel spawnarg--the description in DR is 'A vector with an offset to move the head into a better position relative to this model. (Seems currently not to work anymore.)' but it worked when I tried it in relation to http://bugs.thedarkmod.com/view.php?id=4221

 

Thanks very much! This might come very handy once I start putting the actual character together in TDM.

[MirceaKitsune]

News is great: I finally finished a testable version of my model, exported it to md5, and was able to preview it in-game! I got both the body and head rigs to work, as well as the head to be positioned exactly where it should (almost). However I have two remaining issues:

 

- I tried weighting the eyes (low-poly spheres) to the eye bones on the head rig, named "leye" and "reye". While this seems to work in Blender, the eyes pop out and float a meter in front of the AI's head in-game. What am I doing wrong? I attached the eyes to the normal "Head" bone temporarily, but prefer the eye bones in case TDM supports eye movements when NPC's look at various spots.

 

- The body contains a second object, which is not part of it and is meant to be defined as a separate model. This model however is also rigged and must be deformed by the armature. I know how attach simple objects to a bone, but how do I have multiple objects make up the body and animate with its rig?

[MirceaKitsune]

Still looking for an answer on my above question, if anyone is experienced with the rig: If I weight the eye spheres to the leye / reye bones on the head armature, the eyes float in front of the head in-game. Should I be relating the eyes to these bones differently, or what am I doing wrong?

[Bikerdude]

Only people on here who I think might know would be Arcturus or maybe Springheel.

[Springheel]

I'm not aware of any heads using eye bones, so I have nothing to offer.

[MirceaKitsune]

I'm not aware of any heads using eye bones, so I have nothing to offer.

 

Ok. I haven't seen any either, but if support is there I thought to make use of it. Especially if this went untested for a while, I wouldn't be surprised if the default animations for these bones somehow got broken.

[Springheel]

There are currently no animations that use those bones.

[MirceaKitsune]

There are currently no animations that use those bones.

 

Weird. I could have sworn that during my test, I saw the eyes move and dart to various locations, even if it was hard to tell due to them floating one meter in the air.

[Arcturus]

- I tried weighting the eyes (low-poly spheres) to the eye bones on the head rig, named "leye" and "reye". While this seems to work in Blender, the eyes pop out and float a meter in front of the AI's head in-game. What am I doing wrong? I attached the eyes to the normal "Head" bone temporarily, but prefer the eye bones in case TDM supports eye movements when NPC's look at various spots.

Heads in TDM don't have separate eyeball meshes.

- The body contains a second object, which is not part of it and is meant to be defined as a separate model. This model however is also rigged and must be deformed by the armature. I know how attach simple objects to a bone, but how do I have multiple objects make up the body and animate with its rig?

I doubt you can do that. You can make this object part of the same mesh. Maybe you could hide it with a skin file when needed.

[MirceaKitsune]

Heads in TDM don't have separate eyeball meshes.

 

I doubt you can do that. You can make this object part of the same mesh. Maybe you could hide it with a skin file when needed.

 

I know. Like I said, I simply noticed that the bones exist, and they did appear to make the eyes dart toward where the AI was looking. But if they're officially not supported, I'll just leave the eye spheres rigged to the head.

 

As for the second issue, I got away with exporting these other pieces to lwo and simply attaching them to the bone I needed.

[MirceaKitsune]

Sorry for reviving an old thread again, but I wanted to be sure of something I forgot ask: Was this rig built specifically for TDM, or is it a generic template? If so, is any licensing applied to the skeleton itself?

 

I'm asking because I'm working on a total conversion for TDM, which aims to ultimately break away from all CC-BY-SA-NC dependencies. I assume no one would go as far as licensing a layout of joints and the names and positions of animation bones, which my characters have to use to stay compatible with TDM animations as well... however if the author considers the armatures themselves an asset, I might have to make new ones just to place the same bones in the same positions myself (which I really hope is not the case). I prefer making extra sure so just thought I'd ask.

[Springheel]

It was built specifically for TDM. I can't answer the licensing question.

[MirceaKitsune]

It was built specifically for TDM. I can't answer the licensing question.

 

Good to know, thanks. Honestly I assume licensing shouldn't be a problem... it's only a simple bone setup used for generating the weights, which was included in this blend only (IIRC it isn't even a TDM asset). I might have to remove the example animation from my source blend however, as that might have been taken from TDM even if it's there for example purposes.

[Bikerdude]

It was built specifically for TDM. I can't answer the licensing question.

Everything made for TDM is covered by Creative Commons.