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Guard Animation For June 17th Video


Domarius

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I think this should be here and not in PM.

 

I could try and do it before I leave. If not, BlackThief can take over anyway.

 

I was wondering how long it would take to put the search animation to use for the trailer. If that wouldn't take to long, it would be cool, because then we could make a short sequence of it for the trailer. Since the searching is one important part of the game, it would be cool, if we could show that we already have done work on this. Maybe one of you could take some shots for NH?

 

What I had in mind, would be a short sequence where the thief is entering a building over some balcony or window - zoom inside where a watch is standing for guard - back to the thief, making some small noise - closeup of the guards head, jerking it's head around - full view of the guard slowly drawing it's sword while goint into search mode. We already have some arrow kill animation, so this could come afterward maybe as the closing of it.

 

So we are talking about a pre-rendered sequence with a one-off animation specifically for the vid.

 

How do we pull this together? If me and BlackThief have been asked to animate the guard, who's doing the rest of the animation? Or are we meant to do the whole animation? Or, if I animate the guard in Motion Builder, can I send someone an FBX file and they can drop it into their animation? Or will someone send me the scenery he's supposed to be in, and I render the actual shots myself?

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I know what spar envisioned, but to implement everything exactly as described in his script ingame is way too ambitious - we'd have to make several specific animations for the guard and for the thief + a camera animation and implement that as a cutscene. Apart from the fact that no one here actually knows how to do an ingame cutscene it would require probably weeks to get the animations done properly.

 

However we could do almost the same thing (with less fancy effects and dramatic scenes) ingame as soon as searching works. We can easily make an ingame vid of the player knocking over a chair or something and then we could do the "zoom to guard" using noclip, nohud and a completely blind guard.

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Specific animations would only be used for the head jerking around, and the other one where the guard slowly draws the sword while anxioulsy looking around. IMO these two would be a minor part of it. The head jearking is probably very easy as it is less then a second in view and I would expect that this doesn't take much to animate. It can be easily done in a 3D app, because, as I said, it will not happen this way ingame anyway, but visualizes the working soundprop.

The drawing of the sword is a little bit more work, but you already did such an animation IMO so it would be more a matter of tweaking it for this purpose. I don't think that this is a lot of work IMO. The drawing of the sword would be not so special IMO as well, as it can randomly be used when the guard becomes more suspicious and starts to search.

 

Since Zombie already asked for peering animations, the searching part can be already done with the regular code without any special considerations IMO.

 

So the only 'fake' stuff, would be a closeup of the head jerking around when the Thief bumps into the stool. BlackThief already recorded this, and it would be a nice trigger for the searching.

Gerhard

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Expecting that you would bail out I already took care of it anyway. Strange that you argue with a team vote but yet would except NHs single 'order'. LOL

 

It's exactly this kind of 'working' why I always maintained that the trailer should be only done with a VERY small number of people without interference. Thanks for prooving that point.

Gerhard

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Okay now you're making no sense at all.

 

Regarding NH: He's the one who's been working on the video, so he's be in the best position to say what's most appropriate for it. Just like you're in the best position to say what's best for the light gem.

 

Regarding "bailing out": Exactly how did I do this? BT answered my questions and told me how it should be done. And he is also in a better position to say so than you are.

 

Regarding "Taking care of it": Exactly what did you take care of?

 

 

Seriously, if you've got a problem with me, get a plane ticket and come over here so I can deck you, old man. But don't make wierd and innapropriate accusations. You always have some point to prove, like you're on a crusade to make me look bad. Please, for the sake of the mod and the rest of the team, grow up. You need to get over whatever it is you don't like about me.

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Spar and Dom. If you guys have some personal issues to work out...log onto IRC and deal with it. I'm getting a might bit pissed at having to read through these verbal attacks every day.

 

As for the trailer...what exactly has been taken care of, and why am I suddenly out of the loop? Have you assumed responsibilty of the video and not told me Spar? I'm not opposed to working with others on it...so long as it doesn't get completely remade. I would like to just finish the bloody thing and get it out there. At the time it was started, we didn't have stim/ response or any of the AI routines...and of course...since it has taken so long, now everyone wants to put them in. I say, leave well enough alone for now and lets tweak the movie we have.

 

I would much prefer to get this trailer out there and then release some tech videos occasionally.

 

We're just going to end up remaking the whole trailer. Lets put it to rest and get it out already.

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Well so am I.

 

You'll notice I never have a problem with him untill he attacks me out of the blue like that. Otherwise we'd be fine.

 

Anyway, I can promise you, no more verbal attacks by me to him.

 

For example, the previous post would be the same, minus the last paragraph. That's how I'll do it from now on.

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However we could do almost the same thing (with less fancy effects and dramatic scenes) ingame as soon as searching works. We can easily make an ingame vid of the player knocking over a chair or something and then we could do the "zoom to guard" using noclip, nohud and a completely blind guard.

 

BTW: This was my understanding. I never intended to make all kind of complicated hoops for this. Obviously my description is how I envisioned it, but that doesn't mean that it has to follow it to the latter. What the scene should achieve is, to show that soundprop works and guards react to noise, which is an impoartant aspect of the game, as well as the searching, which is already in a far enough state to consider it working to some extent.

Gerhard

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As for the trailer...what exactly has been taken care of, and why am I suddenly out of the loop? Have you assumed responsibilty of the video and not told me Spar? I'm not opposed to working with others on it...so long as it doesn't get completely remade.

 

That is 2 of the things I was referring to.

 

The 3rd thing is me "bailing out". How have I done that?

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*sigh* Okay, in absence of explanation or apology, I'm assuming Spar's post was just nonsense. I hope everyone has seen this. Moving on...

 

 

 

@BlackThief - so all we have to do is get the search animation into TDM, and place the fingers around the sword properly?

 

If this is the case, then on the weekend the first thing I'll do is fix the hand around the sword. Then I'll see what I can get done before monday, in the way of learning how to get the animation into Doom 3 and then actually doing it. If you can point me towards some info related to this, that would be great.

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well it's not that complicated once you've got the right maya version + export dll. best way would be to read through this tutorial:

http://people.freenet.de/darkmod/exportModelsD3.pdf

 

and then get maya 6 or 7

 

 

 

(btw you don't really have to read all the shit - important stuff comes at the end, like writing the def file etc. )

 

edit - missed that:

so all we have to do is get the search animation into TDM, and place the fingers around the sword properly?

 

I guess that would be all, yes. Head turning and stuff while in search-mode should be done by the programmers.

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Anyway, I can promise you, no more verbal attacks by me to him.

 

*sigh* Okay, in absence of explanation or apology, I'm assuming Spar's post was just nonsense. I hope everyone has seen this. Moving on...

 

I'm sure that doesn't count as a verbal attack again?

Gerhard

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I guess that would be all, yes. Head turning and stuff while in search-mode should be done by the programmers.

 

Searching will be worked on by Zombie already, so the only thing left is the head turning. If you or Dom can do the head turning animation we can use that ingame as well, because it can be also used when a guard hears something suspicious but is not yet fully alerted. It would be a visual representation of "What whas that? Must have been rats." Otherwise it can also be done in a renderapplication directly. Using it ingame would also make it look realistic, because if you are a guard, the first thing you would do if you hear something, is to look in that direction. At least if the noise was in such a way that it doesn't immediatly tell you that something is wrong.

Gerhard

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... because if you are a guard, the first thing you would do if you hear something, is to look in that direction. At least if the noise was in such a way that it doesn't immediatly tell you that something is wrong.

 

 

and that's why it has to be done by code and not by an animation ;) otherwise we'd have to do 180 different head animations for every possible angle...actually head turning should be almost ready out of the box, since doom3 NPCs are already turning their heads slightly towards to player.

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But I think we will need a seperate Guard/Head model for this. Otherwise the animation will be part of the regular animation just like any other movement, like walking and such. AFAIK currently we have only full models where the head is part of the mesh.

Gerhard

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I'm sure that doesn't count as a verbal attack again?

No - it's a fact. Unless your post is explained to me, it will remain nonsense to me.

 

But I think we will need a seperate Guard/Head model for this.

Well we don't. Like BT said, the Doom 3 monsters do this already, and I've seen the meshes for the Imp etc. It's all one mesh. It's done with bones. The programmers can directly interact with the bones no matter what animation is playing.

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No - it's a fact. Unless your post is explained to me, it will remain nonsense to me.

 

It may be a fact to you, but since you are appealing to the crowd its not really your private opinion anymore. It may be more subtle so you can play the poor and innocent victim. And it also not in accordance with your previous claim that you will refrain from personal remarks in the future.

 

No, you don't. Like BT said, the Doom 3 monsters do this already, and I've seen the meshes for the Imp etc. It's all one mesh. It's done with bones.

 

Good. My understanding was, that all the D3 original models had seperate heads. Do our models have these bones then? And does this mean that a bone animation can simlpy be coded by moving the bones via code, or does it still need an md5 animation accompaning it?

Gerhard

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It may be a fact to you, but since you are appealing to the crowd its not really your private opinion anymore. It may be more subtle so you can play the poor and innocent victim. And it also not in accordance with your previous claim that you will refrain from personal remarks in the future.
Forgive me for needing to appeal to everyone else to see if I was the only one causing the problem, but as I said, I have tried everything else, and this is a last resort. Now that I know I'm not the only problem, I don't have to do it anymore.

 

Also I feel you're just focusing on this to avoid explaining your post. Are you going to or not? If not, then this line of discussion stops here. Well, you can reply if you like, but if it's not an explanation, I won't respond to it.

Good. My understanding was, that all the D3 original models had seperate heads. Do our models have these bones then? And does this mean that a bone animation can simlpy be coded by moving the bones via code, or does it still need an md5 animation accompaning it?

The bones are required to animate them in the first place. Yes, to the best of my knowledge, bones can be moved with code, even while an animation is playing. That's how ragdolls are performed after all, and it's also how the D3 monsters look at you.

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So to understand this correct:

 

The bones are required for coded animations, while the MD5 files are requiered for generic animations, but for this there would be no bones needed as it is applied directly to the mesh? And you can have a mix of both, meaning that you can apply an MD5 and at the same time interfere with code?

 

Is this understanding correct?

 

Still the question is, do our models already have these necessary bones?

Gerhard

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