Squill's Animations Thread

[squill]

Ok well as soon as i read which animation Springheel assigned me to, i was in the mood to do some animating

 

First draft of Failed KO:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/movies/anim_FailedKO_00.avi

[ascottk]

I like it! It looks natural but if there's a way to constrain the pauldrons to match the movement for the shoulders, it'd be great . (leftpad/rightpad are the joints controlling the pauldrons).

[Springheel]

Yep, that's quite nice. If you're going to be that fast I'll have to give you a list.

[squill]

@ascottk:

yeah would be cool but i must say i was fairly quick used to the rig... so good job.

 

my only question is regarding the feet. Translation on them works but rotating the controller and setting a key gives me an error message with something like "animCurve creation or connection failed..."

What am i doing wrong?

 

@Springheel: doing idle animations goes pretty fast.. except now it's weekend and at least for now the only days when i have some free time to do some animation.

[ascottk]

@ascottk:

yeah would be cool but i must say i was fairly quick used to the rig... so good job.

 

my only question is regarding the feet. Translation on them works but rotating the controller and setting a key gives me an error message with something like "animCurve creation or connection failed..."

What am i doing wrong?

I rarely use rotation with these rigs (mainly hips, spine, neck, or head) so I'm not sure why it's doing that.

[Springheel]

Well, if you're looking for more to do, Squill, how about a sit down/get up animation? I'm assuming once the character is sitting it can play regular idle animations (drinking, coughing,) just on the torso channel, so the arms won't have to be doing anything too special.

 

You probably will need to take a look at a couple of our chair models to see exactly how high the character should sit. There's no exact measurement, but generally speaking it's better if he clips into the chairs a bit rather than floating above them.

[squill]

Well, if you're looking for more to do, Squill, how about a sit down/get up animation? I'm assuming once the character is sitting it can play regular idle animations (drinking, coughing,) just on the torso channel, so the arms won't have to be doing anything too special.

 

You probably will need to take a look at a couple of our chair models to see exactly how high the character should sit. There's no exact measurement, but generally speaking it's better if he clips into the chairs a bit rather than floating above them.

 

yeah sure, sounds cool. Also here's another small variation on the KO anim with a foot step.

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/movies/anim_FailedKO_01.avi

 

I've looked again at rotating the feet but the error in maya doesn't nessecarily cause any trouble when animating... but have to check it when exporing, which i can't do now because i don't have the export plugin setup in maya etc.

[ascottk]

I've looked again at rotating the feet but the error in maya doesn't nessecarily cause any trouble when animating... but have to check it when exporing, which i can't do now because i don't have the export plugin setup in maya etc.

Just in case here's the wiki article: http://www.thirdfilms.com/darkwiki/index.p...Anims_into_Doom

 

& the link to the plugin on ftp:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Tutorials...tx86(Maya7).rar

[squill]

i've exported the animation but i can't get the model with animation to work. Exporting works fine but for example, when adding the .md5anim into the existing citywatch def file i get a message saying "different number of joints".

 

md5anim file:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animations/failedKO.md5anim

[PinkDot]

Squill - I like it! Nice touch with the footstep!

 

You probably will need to take a look at a couple of our chair models to see exactly how high the character should sit. There's no exact measurement, but generally speaking it's better if he clips into the chairs a bit rather than floating above them.

 

Just for the reference:

As for now AI won't be able to sit on every chair/sofa without noticeable clipping or floating. Are we going to decide for some standard chair height? (I'm asking for the future reference, as a modeller).

[squill]

thx PinkDot.. i could could take an average of the chairs on the left (chair 3,4,6 from the left) for now.

[Springheel]

Thanks for that reference, Pink, that's handy. Most of those chairs look pretty close to the same height. The plushy chairs are a little higher, but an AI would naturally 'sink' into them anyway, so clipping a little should be alright.

 

As far as future reference, let's let the animation dictate the height. Whatever is the nicest fit for our existing chairs will become the default for any other ones.

[squill]

sitdown anim.. there are some weighting problems with the legs. I'm also having trouble locking the default idle postions. Some of the controllers, even though i set keys at the beginning, move from position after keyframing other parts.

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/movies/anim_SitDown_00.avi

[Springheel]

Other than the giant erection, it looks great.

[Springheel]

Would it just work in reverse as a 'get up' animation, or would that have to be made separately?

 

Also, since you did the sit-down one, would you also like to do the 'get up from lying down' animation? Basically it would be used for guards sleeping on beds. It should start with the AI lying on his back, then he moves into sitting position perpendicular to how he was lying (he swings his legs over so he is sitting on the edge of the bed). The same 'get up from sitting' animation could then be used to finish it off.

 

I fired up TDS to fool around with the other day, and I noticed the sleeping guard do this in the first map--it blew me away! I'd never seen that animation before or since in any of the maps.

[Domarius]

Would it just work in reverse as a 'get up' animation, or would that have to be made separately?

Depends what "works" for you

 

When you sit up, the first thing you do is lean forward. Try it without leaning forward and you'll see what i mean.

 

Without that, it really will look like just what it is - a sit down animation in reverse. Unless the sit down anim (which I haven't seen) finishes with him leaning backward after being in a lean forward position, which could work well.

[squill]

Would it just work in reverse as a 'get up' animation, or would that have to be made separately?

 

Also, since you did the sit-down one, would you also like to do the 'get up from lying down' animation? Basically it would be used for guards sleeping on beds. It should start with the AI lying on his back, then he moves into sitting position perpendicular to how he was lying (he swings his legs over so he is sitting on the edge of the bed). The same 'get up from sitting' animation could then be used to finish it off.

 

I fired up TDS to fool around with the other day, and I noticed the sleeping guard do this in the first map--it blew me away! I'd never seen that animation before or since in any of the maps.

 

i'd rather create one seperatly. Infact i already made a get up anim but since start and end positions change for some reason i'll have to fix that first.

 

After sitting down, he does move his back a bit backwards which if you reverse looks like he's leaning forward but i'd still prefer a seperate animation for that.

 

After exporting, who needs the m5danim files?

[ascottk]

i've exported the animation but i can't get the model with animation to work. Exporting works fine but for example, when adding the .md5anim into the existing citywatch def file i get a message saying "different number of joints".

 

md5anim file:

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animations/failedKO.md5anim

I missed this post I'm committing the latest def, animations, & mesh to cvs (they should be up now). The joint names don't match so you'll need to reexport it. I tweaked the rig according to some suggestions by oDDity & if you export the animation now you should get the proper joints & joint number . . . hopefully

[squill]

I missed this post I'm committing the latest def, animations, & mesh to cvs (they should be up now). The joint names don't match so you'll need to reexport it. I tweaked the rig according to some suggestions by oDDity & if you export the animation now you should get the proper joints & joint number . . . hopefully

 

i've fulled synched this evening but now your test_animation map won't load because it can't find a joint called "sword". When adding my animation (re-exported) it returns an error with "joint names don't match"...because of the re-naming

[ascottk]

i've fulled synched this evening but now your test_animation map won't load because it can't find a joint called "sword". When adding my animation (re-exported) it returns an error with "joint names don't match"...because of the re-naming

Open the md5mesh & the md5anim in a text editor. Both will tell you how many joints are there & the names of those joints. If they don't match perfectly then they won't work. This is one thing about d3's handling of animated figures I hate. In tds you can have subtle variations of joint #'s & tds won't care about the skeleton size in the animations. The AI will retain their size in the mesh & the animations won't alter the size.

 

I had to do a lot of research & experimentation on order to get d3 skeletons & animations to work with each other.

 

Another thing that might cause you problems is a missing animation. It might be defined in the def file but missing in the directory.

[ascottk]

Aw crap I forgot I added Solis' surprise animation to the def file & not the actual animation itself Okay, the new animation is on cvs . . . just smack me a little bit

[squill]

ok thx... i've checked the # of joints before so that's correct, but i haven't checked the names so i'll do that when i get home.

 

i know it takes time to get things working, i've also spend many hours figuring out small things like getting models, textures and animation into the engine (before i joined DM) but a full animated character is always tricky and takes time. But i appreciate your help ..and we all can forget something sometimes

[squill]

just got home... synched and it works!

i also had to add your export options in the def file or else i would get the "joint names don't match" message and the scale wouldn't be the same.

[squill]

i wanted to do some animations but things just keeping me from doing it. I downloaded the new citywatch rig but when making a rotation and settings keys it gives me this:

 

 

How do you exactly animate with this rig Ascottk? I'd rather prefer non-fbik rigs with normal Ik feet and fk arms. That's because i always worked with that before. But if we all are using fbik then i'm still willing to learn how to work with this.

[Domarius]

Heh... that looks painful...

 

Well my MotionBuilder workflow seems to be shaping up nicely. I highly recommend using MotionBuilder if you want to create human animations that don't look robotic. Layering movements is very easy to do, and more importantly, to maintain when you want to make changes.

 

Say you have a walking animation. You decide that he's not leaning forward enough for the entire animation. In maya, you'd have to go through every keyframe for his back and rotate it forward.

 

But in motion builder, you just make a layer, and set one keyframe a the start for the back, rotate it in the positoin you want it, et voila, the entire walk animation has him walking the way you want him to. I have a layer specifically for this, that I call "pose tweaks".

 

As for layering secondary movements, I think I explained this somewhere else here, but basically if you want more sideways movement to something that is moving forward, you can make that sideways movement keys on a seperate layer, whihc means you can control the sideways movement independantly and it will be applied to the existing forward movement. With only one timeline, those two things you want to control seperately are mushed together in the same key frames, so, well it's hard to explain without a picture. You have to edit your forward moving keyframes so that they have sideways movement in them, and the sideways movement will have different timing (and hence, keyframes at different poitns in time) than the forward movement, so you have to add more keyframes to that same timeline, further cluttering it and setting the overal movement in stone, and increasing the amoutn of keyframes you have to edit when you want to change the way he moves.