Standard height for tables?

[Domarius]

Is there a standard height for tables yet?

 

Having one will let us do idle animations such as; lean elbows on table, reading a book, writing in a journal, picking finger food from a plate, etc.

[Komag]

I agree that this is important. Preferably the standard would be a nice even number (like a multiple of 8 or at least 4), so that brushwork tables/ledges/shelves/counters/etc could be made to the right height easily.

 

Authors would know the height and be able to map around it in some areas where they would like to have an AI do such animations.

 

If a dozen models had to be tweaked to fit a new standard I think it would be worth it for standarizations sake. Of course people will want some height variety, so they would just have to forego those AI animations in such cases.

[Domarius]

Certainly.

 

This would also apply for the "take" animation, which reaches out in front - to take something off a table, or to mime giving something to someone else.

 

 

Hopefully we can come up with one soon, so I can work on the idle sit anims for the milestone. It should be pretty easy - just choose the most generic table from our library and declare it as the standard Round it up to the nearest 8 if nessecary, like Komag suggested. I imagine "table surfaces" such as benches, sinks, etc. might be made of brushes from time to time.

[Tels]

Certainly.

 

This would also apply for the "take" animation, which reaches out in front - to take something off a table, or to mime giving something to someone else.

Hopefully we can come up with one soon, so I can work on the idle sit anims for the milestone. It should be pretty easy - just choose the most generic table from our library and declare it as the standard Round it up to the nearest 8 if nessecary, like Komag suggested. I imagine "table surfaces" such as benches, sinks, etc. might be made of brushes from time to time.

 

Tracked here:

 

http://bugs.angua.at/view.php?id=600

 

Heights of our current table models (which aren't easily placeable on the zero line, either):

 

coffeetable1.lwo: 21.8

dining_table1.lwo: 35

dining_table_small01.lwo: 35.5

wtable1.lwo: 36

table_wood_rough_small.lwo: 36.8

dining_table2.lwo: 37.8

endtable_round01.lwo: 38.5

endtable_square01.lwo: 38.5

dining_table_huge1.lwo: 39

pedestal_square01.lwo: 39.2

dining_table_med_01.ase: 40.5

 

I think settling on 40 would be thus ok, but we need to crosscheck this with the sitting animation. It might also be possible that slight variations *down* would be ok, e.g. if the animation is for 40 units height, a table with 38 units height will also work e.g. not look too bad. Especially if the object grabbed is big (like a bottle), a little variation won't be noticable.

 

However, coffeetable and benches etc. fall out. Maybe we can make it so that these are 24 units heigh, and then make two animations, one for "object sitting on table" and "object sitting on bench/stool/coffeetable/crate". The code can check the object height difference to the feet of the AI and automatically select the right animation.

 

bench_wooden01.lwo: 23.5 units

chair_simple01.lwo: 24.5 units

church_pew: 23 units (falling down a bit at the back)

rough_stool: about 23 units

 

etc.

[Domarius]

Ah of course - we need a standard height for tables AND chairs.

 

Well at the moment I can't see why all sittable objects shouldn't be the same height.

 

 

So what do we reckon - 40 for tables and 24 for chairs? If so, one of the modellers should make a default table and chair, that are exactly those heights, and I can import them into Motion Builder and use them as a guide.

[Tels]

Ah of course - we need a standard height for tables AND chairs.

 

Well at the moment I can't see why all sittable objects shouldn't be the same height.

So what do we reckon - 40 for tables and 24 for chairs? If so, one of the modellers should make a default table and chair, that are exactly those heights, and I can import them into Motion Builder and use them as a guide.

 

40 and 24 sounds like nice, round numbers (dividable by 8 etc).

 

As for the default models, would .obj files made by DR help? Then I can make them, otherwise I can't help with this.

[Springheel]

The chairs already are created at the same basic height, tailored to the existing sit animation.

 

If you assume a height of 40 for tables, that should be fine even if the table is slightly lower. It's better for the animation to be slightly above the table than to clip into the table.

 

The animations that involve interacting with an object have to be pretty generic, so they're not going to be exact anyway.

[Domarius]

Oh the other thing is - how far away must the table be from the chair, to allow the AI to actually navigate between the chair and the table to sit down? Since they won't pull in the chair like we do in real life, I'll have to animate these animations knowing how far away the table must be.

[Fidcal]

I don't see how the chair can be realistically anywhere near the table if it has to allow room for the AI to stand between it and the table. Perhaps two sit down animations - the standard one and one that sits on a chair from the side then rotates to face the table. We sometimes do that in RL if there is not enough room to pull the chair out further.

[Springheel]

Open the editor and try it out. Play the sit_down animation, and put a chair and table around the AI to see how much room they need.

[Fidcal]

I could never get the animations to work outside that test map. But maybe they are exclusive to that one model?

[Springheel]

They don't work for every model, but any model sharing the citywatch animations will be able to sit. You can easily get a list of which animations an AI has from the entity window.

[Fidcal]

Mmm... I can't even see any animations in Entity Inspector for City Watch itself. There is an anim property one can add but no info with it. There is an idle animation spawnarg but I can't find anything else like sit down.

[greebo]

The sit down animation is not ready for use as idle animation, nor is it used by any code/script yet, so you won't see it in "regular" map operation.

 

I guess the only way right now to see it is using the testmodel and testanim console commands or use DoomEdit.

[Springheel]

Oh, I should have mentioned I'm talking about D3ed. It allows you to selected, play and pause all the animations for a selected entity. Not sure how DR handles it.

[greebo]

DarkRadiant can't handle animations at all at the moment. I only recently found out about the animation preview in DoomEdit and I must say this is a really nice feature.

 

We'll finally get there, but at the moment it's future stuff as far as DarkRadiant is concerned.

[Fidcal]

Not urgent for me. I was trying the other day to see if my AI could sit down at the end of its patrol near the fire but it's not crucial at the moment, just looking to see what is possible.

[Domarius]

AFAIK, AI need more room than a real person, to navigate around in - I do wonder myself just how far away the chair would have to be.

 

This could be for later, but one solution could be to have the chairs reasonably close to the table, and rather than the AI try and stand between the table and chair, just navigate to either the left or right of the chair, and then play an animation which takes them into the chair.

[Fidcal]

... which is what I was saying. The AI sits down on the chair from the side then rotates under the table just like we do in RL if there is not enough room to pull the chair back.

[Springheel]

The sit down animation is not ready for use as idle animation, nor is it used by any code/script yet, so you won't see it in "regular" map operation.

 

You can hack in a sitting animation if you want...I made an invisible, attachable object that replaces the default 'idle' with the 'idle_sitting' animation. Can't think of the name atm but I'll try to remember to look it up when I get home.

 

I remember testing the animation out for distance, and if you just want the AI to sit there, or even stand up or sit down, you can have the chair pretty close to the table. I don't know about having them walk over to the chair and sit down, however...I suspect you'd need more room for that.

 

One hacky way around the problem might be to make the chair nonsolid--you'd just have to position it so there wasn't any horrible clipping when the AI sat down.

[Ishtvan]

Depending on how much work it is, we could try to get arm IK working and not have to worry about putting things on standard heights. That would also mean the AI could pick up things that the player dropped in arbitrary places without looking silly. But I'm not sure how much effort it would take. The code for arm IK is there in the SDK, but not implemented in D3.

[Domarius]

I'm in favor of height standards at the moment - it's a necessary part of mapping anyway (having standard room heights so that your stairs are easy to make, etc) and there won't be any extra programming work, and we know the animation will look good, every time. Of course there won't be any dynamic "picking up" but that's not a huge part of the game I think, and probably doesn't justify any extra programming work on it.

 

But if some coder magically put in IK limbs for anims in this way, in no time flat, I wouldn't complain My only concern really is the amount of time it would take to do this and wether it would really be worth it, and how much it would pay off without introducing other problems.

[Domarius]

I played Oblivion for a bit and I saw how they handled sitting at the table. Very nice I must say. Yeah they do the "sit from the side and twist in" thing that Fidcal mentioned, and they start out by first standing navigating to a point behind the chair before they engage the sit down sequence. The chairs look comfortably close to the tables and they pick things off the table like they're eating finger food. It's exactly how we could do it.

[greebo]

Can you post a video of that? We could use that as reference for our algorithm.

[Domarius]

Alrighty, guess I just need to get Fraps installed.