Adding Feet To Robed Characters

[Springheel]

Continued from Animation thread:

 

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

 

 

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).

 

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

 

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.

[Springheel]

I think Oddity suggested just taking feet from existing models and attaching them.

 

The noblewoman and maiden models need feet, which could come from the naked pagan.

 

The prelate, acolyte and priest need feet, which could come from the builder guard.

 

I don't know what that does to the rigging, however. Wouldn't adding new body parts mess things up?

[Domarius]

Well I'm assuming (can't check while at work) that they use the same rig as everyone else, unless oDDity specifically deleted the leg bones etc. Which I doubt.

 

In which case its just a case of adding more polygons to make legs, and rigging the leg bones to them.

 

Then of course, any existing animations will need to be re-exported.

[Solis]

From what I saw, the noblewoman uses the same rig as the standard characters, just with the leg bones assigned to the robes. It would be nice if the legs could actually be on a separate set of bones from the robes so that if the robes lift at times and you could see their feet as they move (for example as they're running away from you, their legs would probably kick up the back of the robes and you could see their legs), but that would probably take a while to do and most likely isn't worth the tradeoff.

 

So the easiest way would just be to stick the legs to the bottom of the robe and attach them to the leg bones that are already in the rig, and then they should move along with the robes and hopefully will move right when they're in ragdoll mode. Although I'm not sure how the robes look when they turn into ragdolls, do they actually collapse inward like cloth material would? If the robes are assigned to the same bones as the legs, I'm not sure how that would affect the ragdolls.

 

 

Then of course, any existing animations will need to be re-exported.

Well, considering how often you've said that, I think it's obvious at this point that it will have to be done for one reason or another

 

I think we'll eventually have to reexport the animations that are already done anyway since most of the solutions to our current problems seem to involve that, so should we maybe concentrate on how to perform all the tasks together and then only need to reexport the animations once? It would probably be best if we set up the rigs and models how we want them, import as many animations to the new rigs as we can and reexport them, and then work on finished up the rest of the animations. I wouldn't want to hold back from making neccissary changes just to salvage older animations, since it would probably hurt more in the long run and is something that would be harder to do the longer we wait.

[Springheel]

so should we maybe concentrate on how to perform all the tasks together and then only need to reexport the animations once?

 

This is what I was wondering. Some of the things that are easy to do (adding feet, removing weapons) should definitely be done now, by the sounds of it.

[Springheel]

So the easiest way would just be to stick the legs to the bottom of the robe and attach them to the leg bones that are already in the rig, and then they should move along with the robes and hopefully will move right when they're in ragdoll mode.

 

Sounds good. I get the sense that this one isn't as significant right now as some of the other issues, because we aren't actually in the process of animating any robed characters yet. Is that right?

[Ishtvan]

I thought someone wanted to work on animating the noblewoman, but maybe they disappeared?

[Domarius]

No, I'm right here. It's just that we are going to re-use the existing anims for now, so the only animating to be done for her is just the mundane task of applying the existing anims to her.

 

Ideally, extra bits (like dangling belts, and flowing robes) should have their own bones, but if we can just get everyone using the same skeleton for the first release, that would be best.