Squill's Animations Thread

[squill]

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.

 

i saw some demonstrations of MB which looked nice but i'm used to animating in maya, so i don't see reason why i should learn another package just for animation. It's just the whole fbik thing that i'm not used to. You have to set all kind of modes and different ways of keyframing then usuall

 

Creating animations for human characters is all about observing people and when you animate it's best to act it out yourself and tape it. I've learned a lot from doing character animations for the last couple of months non-stop.

[Domarius]

Ah, here's were I explained that already. But I didn't have the part about pose tweaking, so I just added that. It's a stickied tutorial thread in the modelling forum. I should really Wiki-tize that.

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=3563

[squill]

thx domarius.... but for now i'll stick with maya. Maybe i will take a look at MB sometime but for now i'm short on time to actually dive into the package.

[Domarius]

It's just the whole fbik thing that i'm not used to. You have to set all kind of modes and different ways of keyframing then usuall

Huh? There's only one way to keyframe. You press "Key".

 

Creating animations for human characters is all about observing people and when you animate it's best to act it out yourself and tape it. I've learned a lot from doing character animations for the last couple of months non-stop.

Yeah that goes for any animating. I'm talking about the development process. Making complex subtle movments is made much easier and quicker and more flexible in MotionBuilder. It's the whole point of it - it's a software package just made for animating.

 

Suit yourself of course. I barely knew any animating software other than Flash, and basic 3D animation, and I picked it up instantly after watching the vid in the thread I linked to. It's dead easy to use.

[squill]

Huh? There's only one way to keyframe. You press "Key".

 

yes it's ctrl+f for fbik otherwise it's just S but i'm still reading thru maya's help file on fbik

 

Yeah that goes for any animating. I'm talking about the development process. Making complex subtle movments is made much easier and quicker and more flexible in MotionBuilder. It's the whole point of it - it's a software package just made for animating.

 

Suit yourself of course. I barely knew any animating software other than Flash, and basic 3D animation, and I picked it up instantly after watching the vid in the thread I linked to. It's dead easy to use.

 

yeah it sounds great and i've seen the layering in action. Also when working with a director it's very handy and fast to make instant changes when reviewing your animation.

 

I'm not saying i won't look into it because i can read from your comments it's a very nice animation package. But just for now i'll keep my workflow into 1 package.

[squill]

i've redone the failedKO and sitdown animation, now the start and end positions are the same. I've also added a GetUp and the rough LayDown animation. I'll send the source mb and md5anim files to Ascottk.

 

failedKO

home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/darkmod/anim/anim_FailedKO_004.avi

 

SitDown

home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/darkmod/anim/anim_SitDown_001.avi

 

GetUp

home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/darkmod/anim/anim_GetUp_000.avi

 

LayDown (rough)

home.planet.nl/~kolk0405/darkmod/anim/anim_LayDown_00.avi

[Springheel]

I wonder if we can play animations based on the direction of damage? That failed KO one would also work well for an attack from behind.

 

They look excellent, Squill. Good work!

[Ishtvan]

They do look great. The sit down/ get up: How are we actually going to implement those? We can do a suck-in operation on the AI for the XY plane, but what about the vertical? Their butt is only going down to some height in Z, that would mean the chair has to be exactly at that height or they'll either hover or clip in. Is it possible to use some kind of ass-IK to make them bend their legs the right amount to sit at different heights?

[Springheel]

Our seating really should be a standard size (don't know about the ik thing, but I know D3 didn't use it for sitting). There would be some clipping for AI sitting in the taller sofas, but not a lot, and it could probably be forgiven as sinking into the cushion.

 

If we have other models that are too tall we might need to resize them.

[Ishtvan]

Well, the code for leg IK is all in the SDK. I think it can support multi-legged creatures. It might turn out to be a simple matter to extend that to ass-IK, if, when the AI are sitting, we treat the two feet and butt as three feet that have to stick down to a stepped surface (the chair). We won't know until someone takes a look at it though.

[Crispy]

Intriguing idea!

 

I'm not sure whether it would work or not. In the case of leg IK you adjust the angles of hip and knee to position the ankle correctly. To do ass IK you'd have to adjust the angles of the knees and ankles to position the hip, so it's more or less the same setup but in reverse. So it's going "up" the hierachy instead of down. That may or may not be a problem. The other problem is that you might get a conflict if you've got IK applied to the same joints twice, but in opposite directions. Again, I dunno whether this is a problem in practice.

 

It should be doable with enough SDK modifications, of course. Probably not worth the time right now unless it's really easy though.

[Springheel]

I think the fact that we have an actual sit down and stand up animation puts us far ahead of TDS where characters teleported to a standing position. Given that, I can live with a little clipping.

[Ishtvan]

Intriguing idea!

 

I'm not sure whether it would work or not. In the case of leg IK you adjust the angles of hip and knee to position the ankle correctly. To do ass IK you'd have to adjust the angles of the knees and ankles to position the hip, so it's more or less the same setup but in reverse. So it's going "up" the hierachy instead of down. That may or may not be a problem. The other problem is that you might get a conflict if you've got IK applied to the same joints twice, but in opposite directions. Again, I dunno whether this is a problem in practice.

 

Yeah, that's true, it's more complicated than a system of 3 independent legs, because the 2 legs have joints that are also used in the IK of the third "leg." I agree it should be fairly low priority, but it would be nifty if possible. I haven't really looked at the IK code myself, other than to verify that it actually is in the SDK. There's code for arm IK in there too, (which we could potentially use for picking up / putting down things anims), but I don't think it was ever utilized, so it might be buggy.

[Springheel]

Just a question about the sit-down animation. Do we also need to have just a simple, idle sitting pose? Currently it doesn't seem to be possible to set AI to be sitting when the map starts. I know there are D3 characters who are sitting by default.

[ascottk]

Just a question about the sit-down animation. Do we also need to have just a simple, idle sitting pose? Currently it doesn't seem to be possible to set AI to be sitting when the map starts. I know there are D3 characters who are sitting by default.

I made a sitting idle based on squill's animation. It wasn't too hard actually since I kept the sit pose while deleting the rest of the keyframes. I'm not sure how to implement it aside from using a specific object that overrides regular animations. Maybe have an initial sitting animation but when the AI is alerted he gets up. Getting him back to the chair to sit would be tricky though.

[Springheel]

We may need some code to support that then. I don't remember any D3 charactes getting up or sitting--they seemed to be stuck in one position or the other.

 

Ideally we want characters who can be sitting and playing some idle animations (torso up) then get up when alerted, then come back and sit when they return to their spot. However, we also want characters to be able to potentially sit in chairs somewhat randomly, even if they don't start there.

[sparhawk]

I think we said that we would want to support that, by giving chairs a sit invitation stim, so that AIs can randomly use it. For example like a noble man walking around in his room randomly, reading a book, sitting down for a short while, admiring a painting and so on.

[Domarius]

They will need a "sitting" state in the code, because they will need to know what they can and can't do in that position. One of the things they can do, is look around, and play certain anims only, like eating or sit-idle, but if they get startled and want to run or attack, they have to know that they need to get up.

[squill]

kneeldown / investigate

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...m_kneeldown.avi

 

he moves very robotic right now but i'll tweak it later.

[Springheel]

Wow, other than the one bit clipping through his chest, it looks excellent to me.

[squill]

updated kneeldown version..actually i installed Motion builder today and started from scratch. Result from 1 hour working in MB (right) instead of 2-3 hours work in Maya(left)

 

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...eeldown_002.avi

 

Domarius was right about MB It's a really great and easy tool tool when working with fbik. The fbik rig in Maya just causes to many undesired motions which doesn't happen in MB and it's easy to learn.

[Springheel]

The one on the right is definitely better. And if it takes only half that time, that's pretty significant!

 

One suggestion...right now, it looks like he is looking at something directly in front of him. Chances are though, the AI will kneel a foot or two away from the thing he is investigating. Could you tip the head up slightly so he's looking a little away?

[PinkDot]

MB animation is colour unlike Maya one, which is just in greyscale - so it is better indeed... Seriously - there's subtle diffrence between them and the right one looks more natural.

 

BTW: I have some question about animation in general - can we do some several variations of one action so computer would choose one randomly, instead of playing the same one each time? I know it's just esthetic thing and we prefer to work on new stuff instead of polishing existing ones, but I'm just asking if it's possible.

[Springheel]

Yeah, I've asked about that eariler, Pink, and the consensus seems to be that it's possible. I'd like to do that (eventually) for things the AI will do a lot, like walking/running/searching, etc, so they don't all move exactly in sync.

 

http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=5157

[squill]

One suggestion...right now, it looks like he is looking at something directly in front of him. Chances are though, the AI will kneel a foot or two away from the thing he is investigating. Could you tip the head up slightly so he's looking a little away?

 

yep np.

 

MB animation is colour unlike Maya one, which is just in greyscale - so it is better indeed... Seriously - there's subtle diffrence between them and the right one looks more natural.

 

MB clearly has some advantages over Maya with layering, poses etc. Copy and pasting keys in Maya were my biggest problems with the fbik system. Using custom rigs in Maya works fine..the fbik system is just handled better in MB.