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Cats and dogs?


MirceaKitsune

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That looks great. For my purposes, though, I want its head down, eyes closed, & sleeping so I can just slap a purring speaker over it & don't need any trickery to explain why it's not moving.

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Head down is no problem, but closing the eyes is difficult for me as I have not yet applied any texture in Blender. I will look for a tutorial this evening and will see, if I can modify the texture, though. If I can't do it, I could only look for another cat model, if there is one with closed eyes.

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I will give it a try. One question though: Will it cause any probelms that the cat uses quads and not tris?

 

Edit: This is what my first try looks like:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/4jg67ktmme3m6om/Cat-curled.png?dl=0

 

As far as I'm aware, every game engine prefers tris over quads, and the exporter will probably triangulate all faces anyway. Also that pose looks really good to me!

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I managed to close the eyes of the cat. If you look too close, it does not look very good, because I just copied some of the fur and painted it over the eyes, but I think it is convincing enough in the game. This is what the updated version looks like:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/xlznme69vnhrucn/Cat-curled_closed_eyes.png?dl=0

 

However, I cannot export the model. The ase-exporter does not work, most likely due to version issues. I have also already converted the quads to triangles (at least I hope that Ctrl-T in Edit Mode really did the trick), so there should hopefully no problems. Still, it is possible, that I am just doing something wrong, whiloe exporting so here is the blender file, if someone else wants to try.:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5z2o2fize4bgp3c/siamese_cat_lowpoly_closed_eyes.blend?dl=0

 

Edit: I showed the model to my girlfriend, and she told me that the ears are wrong. Apparently, they look as if the cat is not at ease but rather attentive. To fix that I will have to add a couple of bones and link them to the ears. Another thing I have not done, yet, so this might take a while.

Edited by Destined
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Cute cat you have there, nice work!

 

Is the little beast gonna be a fully animated character? If that is the case, it should be an MD5 model, right?

 

To swat as many flies at once as possible, it might be a good idea to think about general quadruple animal animations. So that eventually all our cats, dogs, wolves, sheep and platypuses use the same animations to get as much stuff working with minimal animation work... But yeah, I know, I thinking waaay too much ahead here.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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Thanks Destined! This hopefully works. If I want to tweak it some more, I think I can try my own hand at it from here.

 

I need to get it in a form to put in-game--something I've never done before--but I'm sure the wiki has the method. If anyone knows where the instructions are let me know, or if it's a super easy method they can just post it, or let me know if there's some complications to look out for.

 

@Sotha, The cat is a finished model I found on BlendSwap that Destined kindly volunteered to modify to a form I could use it.

 

Of course I'd like to see a framework set up for quadrapeds.

I'm pretty sure this has been discussed before somewhere around here.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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That looks great. For my purposes, though, I want its head down, eyes closed, & sleeping so I can just slap a purring speaker over it & don't need any trickery to explain why it's not moving.

 

At least put on an alternative hissing sound that gets triggered if someone is that cruel and hits her with a black jack! :angry:

"Einen giftigen Trank aus Kräutern und Wurzeln für die närrischen Städter wollen wir brauen." - Text aus einem verlassenen Heidenlager

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I think the player won't have a blackjack at that point.

If she does, then I'm putting the cat in a place it can't get BJ'd.

They might be able to jump up on the cat, but then the joke is that that cat must really, really be asleep.

 

Actually now I'm thinking to put the cat up on top of a bookcase close to the ceiling or even inside one so there's not really any physical way to touch it.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Cute cat you have there, nice work!

 

Is the little beast gonna be a fully animated character? If that is the case, it should be an MD5 model, right?

 

To swat as many flies at once as possible, it might be a good idea to think about general quadruple animal animations. So that eventually all our cats, dogs, wolves, sheep and platypuses use the same animations to get as much stuff working with minimal animation work... But yeah, I know, I thinking waaay too much ahead here.

I can try some animation with it. However, I will have to set up all the bones in a dope sheet as this is not done so far. The thing I want to try first, though, is creating bones for the ears, so they can also be moved. After that I will have a look at setting up the dope sheet. When this is done, my first instinct was to make a cat that is awake and can maybe look at the player and twitch its tail a bit (as a modest start for me to begin with animations). After that the next step could be a walking animation and then, of course, laying down and standing up, to link the two. But this may be quite far in the future.

 

Thanks Destined! This hopefully works. If I want to tweak it some more, I think I can try my own hand at it from here.

 

I need to get it in a form to put in-game--something I've never done before--but I'm sure the wiki has the method. If anyone knows where the instructions are let me know, or if it's a super easy method they can just post it, or let me know if there's some complications to look out for.

 

@Sotha, The cat is a finished model I found on BlendSwap that Destined kindly volunteered to modify to a form I could use it.

You're welcome! I can try to export it as an md5 model. This can also be used in DR and TDM, but I am not sure, if further def files are needed in this case. I will have a look this evening.

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However, I cannot export the model. The ase-exporter does not work, most likely due to version issues. I have also already converted the quads to triangles (at least I hope that Ctrl-T in Edit Mode really did the trick), so there should hopefully no problems. Still, it is possible, that I am just doing something wrong, whiloe exporting so here is the blender file, if someone else wants to try.:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/5z2o2fize4bgp3c/siamese_cat_lowpoly_closed_eyes.blend?dl=0

 

I couldn't find a working ase exporter for the latest version of Blender either. Use lwo for static meshes instead, that worked perfectly for me! In this case however, I'm hoping we want cats to roam around and such... so a skeletal md5 with animations are probably what you should go with. In the case of the cat, who won't attack the player or raise any alarms, I believe an AI based on the rat can do the trick.

Edited by MirceaKitsune
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As I said: The animated cat will most likely be something further along the road, but I agree, the rat-AI should be fine. Although, it would also be nice, if a scared can could alarm AI. Wasn't that a feature in TDS? Might be that it was another game, but I remember, that a roused cat alarmed the guards. The same would be possible, if we had animated birds

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but I agree, the rat-AI should be fine.

 

 

I doubt that would look satisfactory. Rats randomly walk, run, and play idle animations in a pattern that would look highly unrealistic for cats or dogs.

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It depends on an animator's ambitions. There's a spectrum from simple triggered motions like head turning, to triggered running on cue, to ambient AI motions walking & lying around and running when scared, to the full set of motions for monster AI including searching, attack, and getting hit animations.

 

I think the animator should pick the track they want to do & release it as a package. People can always come back and add more too.

 

But if someone can make the ambient animations, I am like 85% sure someone will make a script just for an ambient cat to randomly walk & lie around & maybe run off if hit. It'd be something between the rat & a commoner, and that code could be a model.

 

While we're on the topic though, if I'm allowed to say this, what we really need is someone to finish off the last few werebeast animations too. He's so close to being finished! I think it was just running, idle, and injury animations left to go.

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What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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Lowest level of cat "AI"

1) make a sleeping cat model MD5mesh

2) when player goes near it, the cat goes MEOW! (alerting nearby AI)

3) cat plays run-away-at-unnatural-speed animation and disappears

 

In game effect, the cat would be an "alarm mine." It could be implemented with a func_animate and a trigger. If we have resources for more elaborate behavior, it could also react to sound, which is not possible with mere trigger work.

Clipper

-The mapper's best friend.

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I doubt that would look satisfactory. Rats randomly walk, run, and play idle animations in a pattern that would look highly unrealistic for cats or dogs.

 

For dogs I agree... we'll want them to act somewhere in between a rat and a guard I think, giving them the ability to have alert levels and to attack (maybe spider AI is a good starting point?). For cats I think it should be fine, since they should never attack the player and will mostly roam around and sleep... perhaps just a bit smarter than the rat, so they know how to run away if the player hits them?

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Some ideas can be modeled on the rat code, but the punchline is the cat needs its own code and quite a few things will need to be custom made for it. Cats really aren't that frenetic. They're lazy lumps of fur that are good at walking to the next best place to sleep if they have to, and a few other things.

 

I am not sure if can do it, but I can at least take a look. I will check the werebeast thread, which animations are missing and I think Obsttorte has the latest version?

Destined, the relevant thread & status is in the Dev forum. Do you have access to that?

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/topic/18413-werebeast-status/?do=findComment&comment=395722

What do you see when you turn out the light? I can't tell you but I know that it's mine.

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I have managed to make a couple of bones, with which the ears of the cat can be moved. It may look weird, if you are not careful though, but the ears are an improtant indicator if a cat is relaxed or excited. Sadly, I will have to redo the sleeping position as I was not able to link the bones to the mesh without borking the rest of the model in the sleeping position and thus had to use the original position. However, if I will hear from Obsttorte soon, regarding the werebeast, I would priorize the latter.

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I'm glad if this is finally happening now. Considering TDM 2.05 is bound to have a lot of new assets I hear, so pets might definitely be a great thing to add while at it :D

 

Are you planning on working with the wolf model I linked as well? I think it looks great and fits TDM like a glove. I'm currently working on a map, but I was thinking of generating the shadow mesh and a few texture variations.

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Some ideas can be modeled on the rat code, but the punchline is the cat needs its own code and quite a few things will need to be custom made for it. Cats really aren't that frenetic. They're lazy lumps of fur that are good at walking to the next best place to sleep if they have to, and a few other things.

One of those things is catching rodents though, so ideally the two would react to one another accordingly. Failing that, either mappers avoid putting them near each other or the handwave is that every TDM cat already has a full stomach tonight.

Some things I'm repeatedly thinking about...

 

- louder scream when you're dying

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