Warm hands by fire

[Domarius]

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkmod/movies/Do...s/WarmHands.avi

 

I uploaded this one, it's in the game, ready for you programmers to do your thing.

 

BTW Thanks squill for the tip about the cut down def file trick, that helped speed things up a bit.

[greebo]

Thanks, I'll look into that in the evening.

[SneaksieDave]

Looks very natural! My only pause for concern would be the bend-over. That's appropriate for floor-based/low lying heat sources. But if it's a tall walk in fireplace, or a high barrel or even just a burning wall (whatever, you get the idea), it would look odd. No reason that standing up straight can't apply for all cases (low, medium, high). Anyway just a suggestion.

[Domarius]

Yeah I figured it could look like he's leaning towards it... well what does everyone else think?

 

It would be trivial for me to change it to standing up and angling the hands forwards if I have to. Thanks to Motion Builder I can do it on a new layer without changing the existing key frames.

[greebo]

I can't see the video here on my work machine, unfortunately, so I can't comment on it right now.

[Springheel]

I think some leaning forward is fine, but I'd cut what's currently there in half, and perhaps angle the hands up just a tad (this animation would also be used while sitting). The rest of the movement looks pretty good, though I'm wondering how the fingers look when rubbing together, as they don't appear to move. I suppose some minor clipping is ok.

[Domarius]

Re: "cut in half" - So you mean you want him to stop after he holds his hands up?

 

Angling the hands, no problems. I'll try animating the fingers during the rub too.

[squill]

hey looks cool. Animating the fingers would add some more just a bit of opening and closing would do.

 

i see a small pop in his right knee when he's bending over. You could lower his hip a bit more when he's bending. Also his head is not moving. Before he's bending over you could first make him look down to the "imaginary" fire. Now his head is just going straight forward with the torso.

 

I was also thinking about a guard blowing in his hand to warmup.

[SneaksieDave]

Just thought of what I was trying to indicate: he could also be warming hands on a torch on the wall.

 

That is all.

[Domarius]

hey looks cool. Animating the fingers would add some more just a bit of opening and closing would do.

 

i see a small pop in his right knee when he's bending over. You could lower his hip a bit more when he's bending. Also his head is not moving. Before he's bending over you could first make him look down to the "imaginary" fire. Now his head is just going straight forward with the torso.

Thanks, I'll try those. I liked the pop, I thought it made it look less stiff but if it's not selling it then I'll get rid of it.

I was also thinking about a guard blowing in his hand to warmup.

Well that's an idle animation, I've already got reference footage for that too, but this one is for the milestone, to react to fireplace stims.

 

 

Just thought of what I was trying to indicate: he could also be warming hands on a torch on the wall.

Hopefully angling the hands up will help with that. I personally think the leaning helps it be more generic to low and high things actually, cause with high things they could be leaning towards it, whereas if he's standing up straight, there's no explanation for why he's not bending down to low things. Let's see it in action.

[sparhawk]

Looks very good. I don't know about the bend. Don't think it's to much, because for a lower heat source, I would expect even a stronger bend. As this looks to me, it would be pretty good for ovens or fireplaces as well. Or did you already update the link with a new animation?

 

A warmup with blowing in the hands, where no heatsource is available makes sense. After all, many gaurds will not be placed nearby one.

[Springheel]

Re: "cut in half" - So you mean you want him to stop after he holds his hands up?

 

No, I mean have him lean forward about half as much as he does now.

[Domarius]

Oh right - glad we cleared that up early then

[jdude]

Is it possible to make him glance at the player every once and a while? I think that would make him feel less like a prop, but great stuff I cannot wait to impliment him

[Domarius]

Well this is the animation forum, I think you want the coding forum. AI heads already dynamically look around during the game, and can turn to look at you if they hear something.

[Domarius]

Spring, I updated the vid - he's leaning about half as much, the hands are angled up a bit, and I tried animating the fingers.

 

I think the fingers are better than before but not nearly as good as I'd like. Unfortunately they are extremely difficult to control - there are 3 bones - thumb, pointer finger, and mitten fingers, and moving any one of them might randomly affect the others, over several keyframes - it's as if some of the finger verticies share weighting between more than one bone or something. This is as good as I could get it.

[greebo]

Just for the records, I couldn't implement that animation yesterday because SVN was unreachable for me, but I will try it this evening.

[Springheel]

I think it looks quite good now.

[greebo]

I added the script and def lines for this anim, it's in-game now. The idle animation set is growing and growing, this is good to see.

 

Btw, I renamed the warm_hands.md5anim to idle_warm_hands.md5anim, as it is an idle animation and should fit the naming scheme.

[SneaksieDave]

This brings to mind a couple of questions (possibly mentioned elsewhere that I didn't see):

 

1. Can the mapper have any control from the editor (properties on an AI) as to which animations are included for an AI (or I guess any entity)? In TDS/UnrealEd, you could use the UI to add or remove anims to a given AI (or new class). I recall using that to remove yawning from all of the AI for my stuff. This would of course be kickass.

 

2. Also, would we have to link a fire stim to playing this warm hands anim, or will that be handled by code yet to come? This one I could go either way on. It'd be nice to have such an ability, but it's also nice if it's just handled and mappers don't have to worry about it.

[Springheel]

idle_warm_hands.md5anim, as it is an idle animation

 

Hmm, aren't idle* animations called at random while the AI is in an idle state? This one shouldn't be called randomly, as it wouldn't make much sense unless there was an actual heat source. It would have to be called specifically, with a path_animation or stim/response or something.

[greebo]

1. Can the mapper have any control from the editor (properties on an AI) as to which animations are included for an AI (or I guess any entity)? In TDS/UnrealEd, you could use the UI to add or remove anims to a given AI (or new class). I recall using that to remove yawning from all of the AI for my stuff. This would of course be kickass.

The idle animations can be overridden by the mapper, just set the "idle_animations", "idle_animations_torso" and "idle_animations_interval" spawnargs.

 

2. Also, would we have to link a fire stim to playing this warm hands anim, or will that be handled by code yet to come? This one I could go either way on. It'd be nice to have such an ability, but it's also nice if it's just handled and mappers don't have to worry about it.

This would be handled very specifically. I guess it boils down to what Springheel says below.

 

Hmm, aren't idle* animations called at random while the AI is in an idle state? This one shouldn't be called randomly, as it wouldn't make much sense unless there was an actual heat source. It would have to be called specifically, with a path_animation or stim/response or something.

Yes, I haven't spend much thought about that, I must admit. Currently, it's called at random, but I agree that it doesn't make much sense. A path_animation is one solution, of course, but I'm not sure how much work the S/R setup would be. We could setup a separate idle state in the SDK for that, but I will only do this if the team agrees that we need this for the next release.

 

Anyway, I'll remove the anim from the idle_animations set again. edit: done, I also renamed it back to warm_hands.md5anim.

[SneaksieDave]

Excellent! Didn't know we could override anims (I assume we can put "0" or something for none), and didn't think of path_animation. Very good.

[Springheel]

A path_animation is one solution, of course, but I'm not sure how much work the S/R setup would be. We could setup a separate idle state in the SDK for that, but I will only do this if the team agrees that we need this for the next release.

 

I don't think we need to do this for the next release. The only way we want to use the animation is to have one seated AI use it (the one sitting in front of a fire). Of course, for that individual AI it *would* work as a random idle animation. We could always use the animation swapping system to replace one of the other less appropriate idle animations, however (I doubt a homeless beggar would brush off their arm, frex).

 

The rest we can leave until after the release.

[greebo]

No problem, I'll deal with the situation in the release map when it crops up. It's always easier to work on a specific example to come up with a practical solution.