Programmers, What Anims Next?

[Domarius]

SZ is talking about his new searching routines so I think I'll do a searching animation we can use for that.

 

What else is coming up that you guy will want anims for?

[sparhawk]

IMO the most important animations, at this point, are

* searching

* detecting the player

* becoming suspicious (different ones depending ont he type fighter, servant, etc).

* becoming alert (same as above)

* fleeing

* whimpering

and general casual stuff like

* sitting down

* standing up

* reading a book (sitting, standing)

* going around in thoughts

* going around purposefully

* opening/closing something (window, locker, chest, ...)

* stirring

* poking in the fire

* relighting a candle

* relighting a fire/lamp

* kneeling

* pressing a button

* pulling/shoving a lever

* bending over

* sitting idly on a chair, sofa, bed, ... (they are all different)

* drinking

 

Well, the list is not exhaustive but I think it is a good start if you get bored. Fighting is not needed right now, because we already have the attack animation, which we can use for now.

 

It would also be good if the animations are done in such a way that the can be blended over with like modules. For example, relighting a fire can be done in standing and in kneeling, depending on the position of the fire. Or somebody could sit idly in a chair and drink from a cup, etc..

[Springheel]

We already have a pretty comprehensive list, broken into reasonable stages. Any animations we come up with that aren't there can be added to the list.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=1650

[Domarius]

Yeah the list is fine - but it may not accurately reflect what features the programmers are currently implementing.

 

The idea is that once they complete searching etc. there's an anim ready to go for it immediately.

 

What anims from that list are needed soonest?

[Ishtvan]

The only thing I know of being done for the AI right now is SZ working on the search algorithm, so they'll need some searching anims. Keep in mind too that their FOV is tied to their head, and the longer something is in their FOV, the more likely they are to spot it, so if they move their head side to side too fast, it's going to be hard for them to spot things.

 

Sheathing their sword when going back down in alert state is something I could add in 2 seconds to the script, too. I think the line is there, just commented out, so that's another one that could be done.

[Domarius]

Well I just uploaded a search anim, so my next two will be sword sheath and unsheath (because I want to improve on the existing unsheath).

 

That will be fairly quick to do. So what else after that?

[sparhawk]

I guess we should animate the head turning on our own, to make sure it is in sync with the searching sweep. Otherwise we might end up with the AI looking to the right, while it is detecting the player on the left.

[Ishtvan]

@Spar: That should be automatically synced. The FOV of the AI follows the head bone in the animation. You just have to make sure that the head bone doesn't swivel around too fast, otherwise it won't be a very good search because he's zooming over the area he wants to be searching.

 

Btw: How are we going to integrate these with the separate head thing? All the AI in D3 have heads that I guess are separately animated, altho I guess they're attached to the neck bone or something?

[sparhawk]

We have to do it the same IMO. How else would we be able to do an independent head swipe? The again, it may not be ncesseary for this, but for the head sweapping it would.

[oDDity]

The head models all inherit the animation from the head bone of the parent model.

[Ishtvan]

@Spar: What I mean to say is, D3 already does this, we don't have to do anything with the FOV sweeping code since it's already linked to the head bone.

 

@Odd: That means we shouldn't have to change any of the existing animations, right? Also, can we do all our facial expressions / lipsync stuff as separate anims on the head model?

[Domarius]

Thanks Ish and oDD, that answers my question in the Searching Anim thread. Good news

 

Cause then we can randomise it, and it will look really good, rather than repeated and predictable.

 

And then we can control it with a setting, and make it another difficulty setting for users to tweak!

[Ishtvan]

Yep, playing animations at random is very easy to do in the script.

[Domarius]

Oh - that, well that's possible too.

 

I was talking about actually rotating the joint with the code - it's just a simple rotation on one axis. Then you can control what direction they look, and for how long they linger in that direction.

[Ishtvan]

Oh. You can do that too. SZ figured out how to do it with the lean and the waist joint, so the head should be rotatable using the same method.