Animation Issues

[Springheel]

Ok, now that we have a few new animators signing on, it seems like a good time to sort out some issues that could come back to bite us later.

 

I'd like to hear from all three of you (Domarius, Solis, and Merkin) about these--I have little-to-no technical knowledge about animating, so I'm relying on you guys to help me keep us organized, and with a decent workflow.

 

The way I see it, we need to get the following issues sorted out ASAP--we need to know which ones have to be dealt with before any further animating is done, and which (if any) can wait until later. I don't want us to be making animations that have to then be totally redone because of one of the following problems.

 

1. Are we going with mitten hands (I'm now in favour of it)? If so, who is going to make them? How hard is it to attach them? Does it mess up current animations?

Background: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...hl=mitten+hands

 

2. When is the best time to remove the weapons from AI and prepare them for AF attachments? How much work is it to do this?

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4332

 

Seems like this is not much work and should be done now. The AF attachment system is currently being designed and weapons will be able to be reattached soon. Currently not assigned to anyone.

 

 

3. How do we prepare our models for head-swapping? How easy it is to cut the heads off (especially on models like the builder guard who has a specific neckguard), and is a new attachment joint needed to attach them? We probably need to do some research for this one. How does cutting the head off a model affect the animations?

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4331

 

Domarius has volunteered to cut the heads off our current AI and prepare them for head-swapping.

 

 

 

4. Robed characters (noblewoman, builder priest/acolyte/prelate) need feet added before they are animated. Who is going to take on that task and how much work is it?

Background: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showt...;hl=robed++feet

 

5. Are we going to try and use facial animations for the first release? If so, how does that affect our models? I assume it only matters for the heads.

 

6. How do we go about splitting the AI in sub-meshes so that we can separate the textures into different materials? How does this affect the existing animations?

Background: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4063

[Solis]

Well, I'm not entirely sure of most of the technical/programming aspects when dealing with Doom 3 engine animations, but I'll try to chime in about what I can.

 

1. I'd prefer full fingered hands, although I think it should be dependant on the model. It would be nice being able to choose between depending on the character, for example in Half-life 2 the main characters of importance (Alyx, etc) are full fingered, while most of the enemies just use mitten ones. Are we going to be using the exact same rig for all the characters though? If so we'll have to decide on one or the other, personally I prefer full fingered hands becase it's beneficial for some characters (like the archer as mentioned in that thread, or for specific actions and cutscenes, if we decide to have some).

 

2. Not entirely sure, since I don't know how objects have attachments applied to them in Doom 3. Although if it's like I think it is, we can simply keep the sword on the model we animate with and the rig animations could be imported to the Doom 3 model that has the sword attached in-game. In that case we could remove them right away.

 

3. Hmm, well from what I understand we'd need to edit the models at the neck and set the points as attachment areas, but how a head is reconnected to that I don't know.

 

4. With any luck this should only be a small tweak, since there are already bones for the legs in the model and all we'd have to do is attach the feet to them. Although I'm not sure if extra bones would need to be added to the robes themselves to get them to flow realistically. I was kind of hoping we could simply have robes be a physics material in the game and it would animate them in realtime, although that option does have it's problems (especially given how Doom 3's physics engine works).

 

5. I'd like to use facial animations, but it might be difficult to add, especially since we'd need a working mouth (unless we just want to do simple things like frowning and such, then it shouldn't be hard).

 

6. Err...sorry, no idea at all on this one.

[ascottk]

I know tds AI had 2 fingers and a thumb so that might be a nice compromise between full fingers and mittens. Also, if we decide to go with mitten hands, that'll cut down some options down the road.

 

From what I saw (at least in oDD's mb files) was that the AI mesh was already broken up. And I found a few stand-alone heads in the LWOs. As for the rest of the LWOs I think they are one mesh.

 

Can't we just copy feet from another AI? I'm not sure they'll match these other models though.

[Ishtvan]

4. With any luck this should only be a small tweak, since there are already bones for the legs in the model and all we'd have to do is attach the feet to them. Although I'm not sure if extra bones would need to be added to the robes themselves to get them to flow realistically. I was kind of hoping we could simply have robes be a physics material in the game and it would animate them in realtime, although that option does have it's problems (especially given how Doom 3's physics engine works).

Cloth physics is unlikely. Giving them feet is mainly for the ragdoll state when they might get dragged around/turned upside-down. To see a D3 character that accomplished a skirt + legs pretty well, spawn env_ragdoll_poppy. Not sure how they did it or how it will effect animations.

[Domarius]

1. This is a modelling issue. We should use mitten hands. There are no "characters of importance", since this is a generic toolset that doesn't contain plot characters. There will always be multiple clones of every character we model for this toolset.

 

2. Whenever. It means the anims have to be re-exported though. I think the more important question is - when will the command line interface for adjusting AF attachments I came up with going to be implemented? Otherwise you'll be back to spending hours on one attachment

 

3. It doesn't mess up the anims but it means they'll have to be re-exported. How you're going to swap the heads in game is up to the coders.

 

4. This is a modelling issue.

 

5. Personally I don't think that takes priority over doing the animations we had to cut out (such as a female walk cycle). In Thief you're barely ever face to face with other AI.

 

6. This is a modelling issue.

 

 

Regarding the modelling issues, I suggest re-posting them in the modelling board if you can. I can possibly provide some input (not much) but I'm running late right now.

[Solis]

5. Personally I don't think that takes priority over doing the animations we had to cut out (such as a female walk cycle). In Thief you're barely ever face to face with other AI.

While I do agree that facial expressions wouldn't be seen very often, I think they should at least take effect when guards are in alert and attacking modes. Seeing a guard taking swipes at you and running at you with his sword drawn baring a totally blank expression would look pretty odd, and would hurt the whole illusion of the AI being an actual character. Also having a facial expression for when a character spots the player would be nice as well, if a guard or civilian steps right up to the player and then sees them, they should at least have a look of shock or surprise on their face. I always found it looked kinda cheesy in the Thief games when a character would make this elaborate jump backwards and raise their arms, yet their facial expression stays as a blank stare. Their face should reflect their actions in extreme situations, at the very least.

 

If this wouldn't be too difficult to impliment (a day's worth of work or less), it would be nice to at least get basic facial expressions for a few of the major actions.

[Ishtvan]

3. It doesn't mess up the anims but it means they'll have to be re-exported. How you're going to swap the heads in game is up to the coders.

Swapping the heads is already in vanilla D3. I think you just put in "def_head", and have to also name the head attachment joint. You can look at the def file for most of the D3 characters and it will show how to do this.

 

[EDIT: As for animating the faces, it's no work in terms of coding, vanilla D3 can already play animations on the "head" channel. It seems like the work it would take is the modelers and animators making some bone structure for the head and the animations to change expressions. I noticed that a lot of D3 characters change facial expressions when they're dead. Maybe it's just a single frame of animation that shifts it into the new state and then it stays there, I dunno, we'd have to look at how they did it.]

[Domarius]

@Ish re: head swapping - yeah that's right. Actually I revise this - this is a modelling issue. But still the anims will have to be re-exported.

 

@Solis re: facial expressions - Maybe just shocked & angry expressions could take priority over the extra movement cycles I wanted to do - but they're still a potential feature cut depending on how much work it is. It will at least take more modelling work, more rigging, and then animating, and then re-exporting all the anims because the bone structure changed. Just like the extra anims we cut out; I think facial expressions are really good, but not nessecary. We did a rigorous feature cut a while back to aim to get this thing out in 2 years, we shouldn't go backwards on that. Complete the essential stuff first, and if we have time for stuff like facials before 2 years is up, great. If we include things that aren't essential, then we'll find ourselves over the 2 year mark with an unreleasable mod becase its still missing essentials.

[Springheel]

I'm actually going to split this thread up so it doesn't get so confusing.

 

What I'm seeing is that a lot of these issues require re-exporting the animations. So how many times do we want to do that? Would it be better to just take care of these things first and THEN continue with the animating? I really don't know.

[Corth]

1. Are we going with mitten hands?

 

Mitten hands will definitly save us some poly's and since the D3 engine doesn't like alot of them, I'm in favor of doing this as well.

 

2. When is the best time to remove the weapons from AI and prepare them for AF attachments? How much work is it to do this?

 

Best time to separate them would be to have never put them together until the AF attachments (except for animation reference)... it shouldn't be too much work at all, just export the weapon and put them together with AF... though, I still don't know too much about the engine to give a definitive answer.

 

 

3. How do we prepare our models for head-swapping? How easy it is to cut the heads off (especially on models like the builder guard who has a specific neckguard), and is a new attachment joint needed to attach them? We probably need to do some research for this one. How does cutting the head off a model affect the animations?

 

Perhaps the neckguard could be part of the head model? just make sure the heads are actually saved. I know there's a bone that is needed in the body and head file that needs to match each other for placement, but beyond that, I don't actually know how it works, sorry.

 

4. Robed characters (noblewoman, builder priest/acolyte/prelate) need feet added before they are animated. Who is going to take on that task and how much work is it?

 

Hardly any work at all, copy/paste from existing characters I'd say (probably have to make new ones for the noblewoman though). Do those models actually have bones/jonits for their feet and legs?

 

5. Are we going to try and use facial animations for the first release? If so, how does that affect our models? I assume it only matters for the heads.

 

well after the heads are taken off, we could most likely add more bones for the facial expressions, I'd really hate to be playing against drones with no expression.

 

6. How do we go about splitting the AI in sub-meshes so that we can separate the textures into different materials? How does this affect the existing animations?

 

doesn't the material file cover this?

[oDDity]

You know maya, Corth, so maybe you can figure out a way to just select polygons on rigged chacater and give it a new surface name so they will export to the md5 file as separate shader entries.

The only way I know is to have them as separate objects in maya, exported from Lightwave as separate layers and have each polugon surface set pointing to a different image file, since it seems that the image paths end up as the shader names in the md5 file.

[Springheel]

Mitten hands will definitly save us some poly's and since the D3 engine doesn't like alot of them, I'm in favor of doing this as well.

 

Right now it's a choice between low-poly full fingered or mitten hands, it seems.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4330

 

it shouldn't be too much work at all, just export the weapon and put them together with AF... though, I still don't know too much about the engine to give a definitive answer.

 

This looks like something we're going to do now, especially since the dynamic attachment system is ready, thanks to Ishtvan. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4332

Still need someone to volunteer to do it though.

[Corth]

What you have to do is select the faces you want to separate, then under Edit Polygons, select Extract.

 

Unfortunately I don't know if the md5 extraction will work with the non-deformer history it creates, so the model might have to be re-weighted after that.

[Domarius]

Right now it's a choice between low-poly full fingered or mitten hands, it seems.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4330

This looks like something we're going to do now, especially since the dynamic attachment system is ready, thanks to Ishtvan. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=4332

Still need someone to volunteer to do it though.

Well I volunteer to do everything that needs to be done before any animating can continue, untill someone beats me to it. I'm starting with the head swapping, so other people can start with things like mitten hands, etc. But it all needs to be done, and I want to get back to animating