Builder Animations

[oDDity]

NOw that we have an animator again, and the first faction model set are done, we should detail exactly which animations the various builder models will need.

 

There is already a comprehensive animation list in the thread below this one, so refer to that for the generic animations that all Builders can share. You should do those main ones first I think.

 

THe individual charcaters will need some animations of their own as well though.

 

Priest -

The priest can cast various spells, and lay on hands to heal people, thoug that could be shown by him standing with outstretched arms, in a palm out type of stance.

 

Forge workers will need blacksmith type animations, hammering particularly.

 

Prelates wield a hammer in each hand, so they'll need a lot of their own animations for attacking, and they can cast bolts from their hammers.

 

THe Acolytes are basically servants, so they could do with anims like brushing floors, or on their knees scrubbing etc They wear a heavy weight around their neck as a kind of test of strength and devotion, so it woud be nice if their walking anims and posture reflected this, but it's not absolutley necessary. We dont want to swamp you with work.

 

All of the builders, except the acolytes wield hammers.

 

Feel free to add any character specific anims anyone can think of.

 

 

 

For some technical details.

I've tried to model the characters with good vertex positioning around deformation areas. If you find you need tham set up differently, then I can adjust them in lightwave quickly without affecting the UV mapping, IF you can adjust them yourself, then that's fine.

 

Animations for Doom don't need to be done in cycles of one. For a walk anim for example, you can animate two full strides with forward motion. This is nice, since it gives more room for creative cycles with mre character. If you need any technical details of how to animate or set rigs up for doom, PM me.

There is some technical information I need to give you for Maya, but I don't know which app you're using yet so I'll leave that for now.

I haven't uploaded the models to the FTP yet, since I don't know which format you need them in.

Edited June 9, 2005 by oDDity

[Springheel]

The priest can throw bolts of fire from his hammer so we'll need some kind of animation for that. For their spell-casting animations, it would be great to see them with one hand out, palm outward, and the other hand clasping the holy symbol around their neck (this would also work as a generic 'blessing' animation).

 

They will also have a few hammer attack animations for hand to hand fighting.

[Springheel]

Welcome aboard, Mike. The following are basic animations shared by all human characters, and they're probably a good place to start.

 

Walk forward, casual

Walk, turn 180 degrees (we don't want an artificial spin on a dime turn)

Stand in place, casual (shifting weight side to side)

Stand in place, alert (weapon out, more erect, chest out)

Climb stairs (? -- don't know if this needs a separate animation or just uses the walking one)

Turn head 90 degrees left / right (for looking around)

Glance over shoulder (turning torso as well)

Walk forward, alert (not actively searching, but weapon out, looking around)

Run forward, attack (weapon out)

 

The Builders are a religious order that are strict, unyielding personalities. They move with proud, rigid purpose.

 

If it matters, their weapons will generally be kept on their backs (except perhaps the prelates).

[miketrujillo]

Welcome aboard, Mike. The following are basic animations shared by all human characters, and they're probably a good place to start.

 

Hope this was directed to me - is there any technical concern for number of keys or world position to start? Also I prefer using Maya. is that an issue?

 

I have a pretty good handle on the style of the game but any other games I can look for, motionwise, for inspiration? or to put it another way, what do you guys think is some of the better/best animation around gamewise.

 

Also is there a list or previews of models that are ready (character/animation specific.) Would be good to look at everything and figure out what is the median for weight proportion etc..

 

All of the modeled stuff I've seen looks real nice. . Any rigged characters availabe? Looking around I didn't see anything animation ready.?.?

[Springheel]

Hope this was directed to me - is there any technical concern for number of keys or world position to start? Also I prefer using Maya. is that an issue?

 

The guy who did the models, Oddity, is going to be away for the summer, so I don't know if he'll be able to answer the technical questions (I certainly can't). Corth is probably the person to ask in his absence.

 

I have a pretty good handle on the style of the game but any other games I can look for, motionwise, for inspiration? or to put it another way, what do you guys think is some of the better/best animation around gamewise.

 

I thought the animation in HL2 was pretty good. Thief 3 is definitely NOT what we're looking for.

 

Also is there a list or previews of models that are ready (character/animation specific.) Would be good to look at everything and figure out what is the median for weight proportion etc..

 

The Builder Family is the best place to start. You can see a decent screenshot here:

 

 

The prelate (robed guy with breastplate) already has some placeholder animations (a run/walk cycle).

 

 

Any rigged characters availabe? Looking around I didn't see anything animation ready.?.?

 

My understanding is that all of the above are rigged. Do you have CVS access yet? The ones on the FTP site may not be the most up to date versions.

 

Welcome aboard again!

[miketrujillo]

hmm, yeah dont even know what CVS access means - that is the ftp log pass for the project? No, I don't know where to go for that.?.?

 

yeah, point me where can I get the rigged chars and see the existing animations. .

please

 

M

[New Horizon]

You will want to read up on these two threads to get an understanding of CVS:

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1319

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=359

 

That will get you started. Essentially, CVS is an up to date repository of the mod. Basically, it keeps everyone in sync so that there aren't ten different versions of the mod floating around. We do have to be careful when merging new data however. It's always good to do a quick update and then merge your files into the latest download before uploading as we don't want to copy over someone elses work.

 

You will become very familiar with CVS over time and grow to either love or hate it.

[Corth]

is there any technical concern for number of keys or world position to start? Also I prefer using Maya. is that an issue?

 

In your animation preferences, set the scene for 24fps (really important!). The animations can be as long as you want, but don't over do it, just do what needs to be done as best you can There should be an origin joint at 0,0,0 world space connected to the cog joint, just leave it there, doom3 uses that. Your using maya? absolutely no problem there! easiest way to make an md5 with doom3!

 

I have a pretty good handle on the style of the game but any other games I can look for, motionwise, for inspiration? or to put it another way, what do you guys think is some of the better/best animation around gamewise.

 

I'd say just make it believable, and try to get it as realistic as possible. Try to leave the cartoony stuff out of it.

 

All of the modeled stuff I've seen looks real nice. .  Any rigged characters availabe? Looking around I didn't see anything animation ready.?.?

 

oDD's been doing great, yep I'm not sure where oDDity put's his stuff though... I'm not the one to ask there

 

If you need any more help just join us on the irc channel, I'm usually there.

 

edit: oh yeah, welcome to the team

Edited June 22, 2005 by Corth

[sparhawk]

All the models which are ingame should be in CVS by now. Are they? Otherwise it would be good if Oddity and miketrujillo would talk to each other soon before Odd goes on vacation, otherwise the animations will have to wait until after it if there are open issues of him to clarify. I would prefer if the anims could already be started, as we have nothing really of that and are lagging behind with them.

[oDDity]

I'm not away for the summer, just taking a break from modeling for a while is all, before my head explodes.

None of the characters are rigged (i.e. with IK, point constraints etc) I thought the animator would want to do that himself to suit his preference, but I can do that for you, sure. I've been using a maya script called dwRiggingTools which makes the job a lot easier, but I'm no Maya rigging guru, I'm sure you and Corth would know more about it than me.

As Corth said, all we want are realistic human animations, the stuff I've seen from you is all excellent, so just do it how you want.

There has to be an origin bone at the top of the hierarchy at 0,0,0 and it is this bone that should recive the main forward/backward animation for run cycles etc, rather than the hips, and you do need forward translation for doom walk cycles, not the usual running on the spot like in most games, but the bonus is that you can make te run/walk more than one cycle - most of the doom monster's cycles take two whole strides per cycle which alows the animator to get more character into the walk.

If you want to check out the doom monsters cycles for technical purposes you can download a maya script for importing them here If you haven't doom installed I can put some of the monster MD5's on the FTP.

The animations I've done so far were mostly done with tweaked motion capturein Motionbuilder, but I can upload thoese as well.

Also, the doom engine does have some blending beween animations, so you don't have to worry about matching things up to perfection.

Which version of Maya are you using?

[sparhawk]

Do we have a list of animations that we will need?

 

Some animations that may be needed:

Walk cycle

Run cycle

Open/close/lock/unlock door

Open/close/lock/unlock chest

Death

pulling a lever

striking a gong

press button

searching

frustration

bored

sit down/get up from chair/bank

spilling some flask

moving some kitchen utensils.

Carrying a tray

[oDDity]

I've already pointed him to the relevant thread.

[miketrujillo]

hey guys, yeah crazy week including total meltdown of my computer.. still haven't completely figured CVS - way over my head there but coming along and looking at that now. thanks for all the info and will get on these things hopefully soonish.

 

I'm on maya 6 - might go to 6.5 soon.

[Corth]

I'm on maya 6 - might go to 6.5 soon.

 

I'd suggest holding back on that upgrade for now, as there's no md5 exporter for 6.5 yet (please correct me if I'm wrong anyone...)

[miketrujillo]

CVS is stumping me - - what does a succesful login look like?

[SneaksieDave]

First you get Pageant going with your key and run your CVS client. If you are set up correctly and authorized, you can do Create->Checkout Module, then set the module name to 'darkmod' (no quotes) and give it a path where you want to receive the files locally, and then Okay it to start things off. If it's working, it should open up a dos window and send some modem activity, after which it will crunch your HD a bit and then just start downloading files a few seconds later.

[sparhawk]

There are at least two threads devoted to get CVS working and there are a lot of screenshots as well.

[Springheel]

Don't worry Mike, CVS has confused just about all of us at one time or another. There are a good set of instructions and screenshots here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=359

[mrdes]

Hey there. I was wondering if the animation work for these characters could be shared, as I am itching to work on something

 

I have a few other questions as well. I'm not sure about some things with the walk/run cycles with forward translation.

 

You mentioned that the forward translation is needed, does this mean stationary cycles do not work at all then?

 

And is it preferred that we animate at least two whole strides (for each limb of course)? Or is it basically what we feel works best for that specific character?

 

Thanks

[oDDity]

You don't have to animate two strides, but it is useful in some situations, mainly for odd creature walks through - but we will have some creatures as well.

Doing the forward translation is not a problem, just animate your cycle as usual and then apply the appropriate forward translation to the origin bone. The only animation the origin bone needs is Z (or X in some cases for sidestepping maybe) no Y. THe origin bone starts at 0,0,0 and none of the mesh is weighted to it, it is just the parent of your charcater. Yu only need to animatie it when the chacater is moving forward, back or sideways.

THere is a maxscript for importing md5meshes and anims intyo Max. You should take a look at some of the doom creature animations.

http://home.tiscali.de/der_ton/3dsmax-md5importer.zip

 

Which animations do you want to start with?

[mrdes]

Ok, sounds fairly simple. Thanks for the md5 importer link as well.

 

And I'm guessing the best idea would be for me to start on all the stage 1 animations (referring to Springheels "Comprehensive Animation List" thread) but I'm not sure which animations have been completed yet.

[oDDity]

No final game animaitons have been started yet, so as long as you say what you're going to animate before you start, so no one else does the same ones.

Take this Builder Guard to work with. I'm not sure if we'll use the same walk/run for all of the Builders though. The forge worker would definitely need his own, and the guard will need a lot of his own, but the priest. prelate and acolyte could easily share nearly all their anims, and of course each one will have some unique ones of their own.

 

Builder Guard

[mrdes]

Great. Thanks. I'll go over the list and see which animations I should start off with. I was wondering if you have the rigged version of this model or is this not the same one that you used for your run/walk/attack animations? It's not much of a problem for me to rig it myself but it looked like you did a good job rigging it already so I figured it'd just be quicker for me to use that and get on with the animations.

[oDDity]

I use Maya so the rigged character would be much good to you. It's pretty quick and easy setting them up in CS anyway, though I always prefered the skin modfier and painting weights to that ridiculous physique nonsense.

YOu're obviously going to need separate bones for the shoulder pads and you'll have to animate them separately when necessary. Their movement is very simple though so I just leave it to the end and block in their positions so they're not cutting through anything. It isn't even necessary to have extra bones for the skirt.

[mrdes]

Ok no problem. Yeah, I always always use the skin modifier and just paint weights. I really don't like physique at all.

 

I'll start the rigging right now and I'll eventually decide which animations I'm gonna do and let everyone know. They'll probably be most of the stage 1 animations like I said though.

 

edit: Oh and about the fingers - Do you want a bone for each finger or mitten-hands and thumb?