Zombie rise

[angua]

None of our head anims works for sleeping, the death anim doesn't have the eys closed and most of the anims don't look terribly good (one of the vertices is weighted to the wrong lip also, which doesn't exactly help).

So I still need a new anim with eyes closed for sleeping and KOed AIs. Could someone do this for me?

[Flanders]

I don't know how to deal with weighting issues but I'll see if I can make a sleep anim, although the head rigging looks confusing.

[Springheel]

the death anim doesn't have the eys closed and most of the anims don't look terribly good

 

Which head are you using for testing? I had to do a lot of work on the builder guard head to get the lips working properly; the weighting is probably still wacky on the other heads.

 

I'm certain I saw the death animation close the eyes in the past. Does the head you're using blink properly? I can look at the weighting around the eyes and try to get it working (though it's never going to be great...the heads are too low-poly for good facial animations).

[Flanders]

I'm getting weird errors, whether I import the existing citywatch_head.md5mesh or use the citywatch_head.mb from the model repository to make the animation I get a "citywatch_head md5mesh has wrong # of joints than head_sleep.md5anim".

[Flanders]

I can look at the weighting around the eyes and try to get it working (though it's never going to be great...the heads are too low-poly for good facial animations).

The citywatch and builder guard don't have eye lids, so a closed eye animation will always look bad and deformed.

[angua]

Which head are you using for testing? I had to do a lot of work on the builder guard head to get the lips working properly; the weighting is probably still wacky on the other heads.

 

I'm certain I saw the death animation close the eyes in the past. Does the head you're using blink properly? I can look at the weighting around the eyes and try to get it working (though it's never going to be great...the heads are too low-poly for good facial animations).

Ah, didn't know that, I only tried the citywatch head. I don't think the eyes were closed properly during blinking either.

 

The citywatch and builder guard don't have eye lids, so a closed eye animation will always look bad and deformed.

Hm, what shall we do then? Just close them as much as possible before it starts looking too bad?

[Springheel]

I can do some work with the heads. That was on my list of "things to do eventually". Getting all the weighting cleaned up wasn't something I thought needed to be done before 1.0, but I can eat least get the eyes working decently.

 

Which head are you using for most of your testing, the citywatch? I can start there, as there's a bad shadow that needs to be fixed anyway. The citywatch also has that bad mouth weighting that I fixed on the builder guard02 head.

[Flanders]

I can do some work with the heads. That was on my list of "things to do eventually". Getting all the weighting cleaned up wasn't something I thought needed to be done before 1.0, but I can eat least get the eyes working decently.

 

Which head are you using for most of your testing, the citywatch? I can start there, as there's a bad shadow that needs to be fixed anyway. The citywatch also has that bad mouth weighting that I fixed on the builder guard02 head.

 

Yeah, the citywatch. And there's a problem with the weighting around the left eye, you can see it if you try to close it. Seems like the AI will stay in their painful dreams a little longer.

[Springheel]

Weird. Checking out the citywatch head, the "death" animation just seems to twitch the jaw...the eyes don't move at all. Is that what you're seeing too? If so, we definitely will need a new animation just to pull Ruplid and Luplid down. In fact, a sleeping/death animation should probably OPEN the mouth slightly, not pull it closed like the current one does.

[Flanders]

Weird. Checking out the citywatch head, the "death" animation just seems to twitch the jaw...the eyes don't move at all. Is that what you're seeing too? If so, we definitely will need a new animation just to pull Ruplid and Luplid down. In fact, a sleeping/death animation should probably OPEN the mouth slightly, not pull it closed like the current one does.

Yep, I see that too. I can't determine whether the death animation opens the mouth closes it.

[Springheel]

Ok, I checked out the original death animation in Maya. It looks like it's just a freeze frame of the face with the eyes closed. There's no actual animation involved (don't know why the jaw twitched viewing it in LW).

 

So technically, it should work. I think the problem is that only two verts are weighted to that particular joint, and they're both in the corner of the eye. I'll subdivide that area a bit and see if I can get something that looks better.

[Springheel]

Huh. I'm not quite sure what's going on here. I added a lot of new polys to the eyelids and weighted them heavily to Ruplid and Luplid, yet they don't seem to move any differently during blinking and still do not close on death. I checked the animation in Maya and it seems that I'm dealing with the right joints, so I'm not sure exactly what's wrong.

 

At least I was able to fix the badly weighted vert in the mouth.

[Springheel]

Ok, I've managed to get a decent closed eye effect by adding more polys to the eyelids. Below is the "death" animation, which should do fine for sleeping. I notice that there's a bit of a twitch in the jaw which might look odd when it's looped, but it might also just look like breathing.

 

 

@Angua: Ascottk mentioned something I wasn't aware of--that a head animation will play if there is an animation of the same name playing on the body (which is I guess why the "idle" head animation plays...I assumed there was separate code to do that but now I suspect not).

 

Do you want me to just create a head animation shader for sleeping? If it is named "idle_sleep", it should play automatically when the AI plays that sleep animation. Or maybe you want to stick with the system you've created to play head animations?

[angua]

Thanks Springheel, and sorry for not posting earlier. I kept my new system and just renamed the anim to be played to idle_sleep in the script. Finally they can sleep a little bit more peacefully. The eyes look a lot better now, the twitch in the yaw is a bit funny but it's not really a problem IMO.

 

Flanders: could you please change the animations so that the origin stays between the AI's feet? The origin and with it the AI's bounding box (which is solid, and alerts the AI when the player walks into it) stays behind on the ground when the AI lays itself down.