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What if the head is part of the model?


Springheel

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At the moment I can't think of any human AI that have their head as part of the model (the way the zombies do, for example). However, I was thinking ahead to our female characters--both of the meshes have bare necks, which will be impossible to line up properly for def_head attachment. Even if the head lines up perfectly when the AI is looking straight ahead, the moment they move their head the split will be obvious. I've managed to hide that to some degree on the male models by making large collars, but that isn't possible for the female meshes.

 

My question is, what happens if I just leave the head attached as part of the md5mesh? There is a head joint, so I assume the head will be able to turn and do all the head animations properly, but what about the facial animations, like the blinking or the talking? Those joints are part of a separate head skeleton, so I'm not sure how that could work. What would this do to our blackjacking code if there was no def-attached head?

 

I was actually going to try and get a female character rigged for 1.0 so we could actually have women in the TDM universe, but if there's no easy answer to this hurdle I don't think it can happen.

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What would this do to our blackjacking code if there was no def-attached head?

For blackjacking it's not an issue, it uses the head AF body which is actually referenced to the headless model. You'll still have to fill in the name of the head joint and head AF body name in the def file, but nothing is lost by not having an attached head.

 

As for the facial animations, I have no idea. I can only suggest looking at the D3 zombies without attached heads to see if they had any facial expressions.

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The zombies have the bones that control the face built right into the main skeleton. I suspect that is what would be required, which means we would need a separate skeleton (and possibly separate animations) for that. Bugger.

 

The only other option for female characters is that way of connecting the body and heads that Ascottk tried way back and couldn't get to work. It basically allows the head animations to deform the neck as well, so presumably the head and neck wouldn't separate when the head moves (though we were never able to actually try it to confirm this).

 

I'll play around with this a bit and see if it works any differently with the new skeletons and meshes.

 

Oh, Ascottk, one other thing about the citywatch...the way they are set up currently, none of the existing D3 heads will work on them, as the model ends right at the base of the neck....I can get the D3 heads to sit right on top, but when they look up, you can see into the neck. In order to make that not happen I have to sink the neck into the AI model a bit, but that makes them sit far too low, as you can see above.

I'm going to respond to this twice & you can't stop me ;) But I found something but it doesn't quite work because the head's rotation goes awry:

 

	"copy_joint Neck"			"neckcontrol"
"copy_joint Head"			"headcontrol"

 

This section goes underneath the "head_joint" in the def file. Essentially the main skeleton animations can control the head skeleton's mesh too. Basically the head becomes an extension of the body instead of a separate entity.

 

The head anims do not have neck animations, but the body anims do. If you want the neck to deform with the body then you copy the body's neck & head controls to the head.

 

Here's what happens when I do that with our stuff though:

 

copyjointwj7.th.jpg

Kind of looks like a sleeping bird . . .

 

I'll try a d3 head to see if I can get a different result.

 

EDIT: Yeah, it's oDD's skeletons causing the funky head rotation.

Well, it's no wonder we can't copy joints from the main skeleton to the head rig. The animation rotations are screwed up.

 

entityDef atdm:ai_thief
{
"inherit"		"atdm:ai_humanoid"
"ragdoll"						"guard_base"
"model"							"tdm_ai_thief"
"def_head"						"head_thief"
"head_joint"					"Head"

	"head_thief"				"4 0 0"

"copy_joint Neck"			"Neck"
"copy_joint Head"			"Head"

 

This allows the main body animations to control the head joints (as well as the mesh). With this, there'll be no more open mesh between the body and the head when AI look around. When the neck moves on the body, the mesh on the def_head will move too. Seamless integration between the body & the head.

 

This is the shot of the thief's main skeletal pose (used for the mesh rig):

oDD_skeleton-af_pose.jpg

Everything's nice and straight.

 

Compare that to the idle joint rotations:

oDD_skeleton-idle.jpg

This is all screwed up <_< When we use these declarations on the def files then the head mesh totally distorts because the animation rotations are totally different from the mesh.

 

Since I've been revising the maya binaries to help future animators, I may fix this problem but this will take a while.

 

EDIT: The copy_joint works like this:

"copy_joint main-neck_joint"			"head-neck_joint"
"copy_joint main-head_joint"			"head-head_joint"

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Couldn't you have either:

 

* have the females have a "high collar" too (on their dress?)

* OR have the neck be part of the head?

"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man." -- George Bernard Shaw (1856 - 1950)

 

"Remember: If the game lets you do it, it's not cheating." -- Xarax

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* have the females have a "high collar" too (on their dress?)

 

That would require redesigning the meshes, which I don't want to do. I *like* the bare-neck look that our current meshes have.

 

OR have the neck be part of the head?

 

That wouldn't solve the problem. The head would just rotate around an unmoving neck like a bobble-head doll.

 

No, I think we really need to get this neck_control issue sorted out--not every male mesh is going to be able to have a high neck collar (we had designed bare-chested pagan concepts at one point) so it's going to need to be dealt with eventually. Better to do it now while the new skeleton is in its infancy.

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No, I think we really need to get this neck_control issue sorted out--not every male mesh is going to be able to have a high neck collar (we had designed bare-chested pagan concepts at one point) so it's going to need to be dealt with eventually. Better to do it now while the new skeleton is in its infancy.

 

I agree. I am always slightly uncomfortable reading about the head swapping issues, because it seems like it is gaining one flexibility (choosing different heads) at the cost of another flexibility (designing characters without a high collar). Certainly I think that end users would be very upset if they were told they can only add their own AI if they conform to a certain "look" purely because of technical limitations.

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Certainly I think that end users would be very upset if they were told they can only add their own AI if they conform to a certain "look" purely because of technical limitations.

 

Well, end users who can model, rig and animate their own characters can do whatever they like. But if they want to use our animations and skeleton, then they'll have limitations anyway (proportion, for instance).

 

Still, I'd like to get the issue sorted out.

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I'm not entirely sure what Ascottk meant by "animations rotations". I'm guessing it has to do with the rotation of the head.

 

I've been working on lockpicking this afternoon, but I might have time to at least test it on our new skeletons...maybe the problem is already fixed.

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Well, no such luck.

 

head_prob1.jpg

 

Ok, so maybe the head is exported facing the wrong way? I'm not totally sure how to fix that. Oddly, even though it uses the same builder guard head skeleton, it's facing the opposite way of Ascottk's picture.

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Hmmm. Some progress. Trying a different head and body, I got the result below. No gap, but not exactly ideal either. Still, it's promising--probably just need to adjust the weights on the head.

post-9-1237403822_thumb.jpg

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Uh oh. Seems like the deciding factor is not the head, it's the body. When I use the citywatch body (old skeleton) it works. When I use either of the characters using the new skeleton, the head is rotated like the image above.

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Sweet - the fact that it actually works at all is good news. Looks like something else we need to do to the new rig.

 

I'm glad you looked into this, Spring - the barbie-doll head system has bothered me for a long time, for reasons people have already stated, and women often wear low necked clothing. I was resigned to our fate of high-collared characters but now that it's even remotely possible, we should definetly work hard to achieve this.

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Uh oh. Seems like the deciding factor is not the head, it's the body. When I use the citywatch body (old skeleton) it works. When I use either of the characters using the new skeleton, the head is rotated like the image above.

HMMMmmm... the "head" bone position is 0,-2,0 in the old skeleton, and 2,0,0 in the new one, I wonder if that has anything to do with it? None of the other values are different. Except for one called "radius" but I'm pretty certain that's not used in game, it just controls the visual size of the bone in Maya.

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the "head" bone position is 0,-2,0 in the old skeleton, and 2,0,0 in the new one, I wonder if that has anything to do with it?

 

It certainly seems a likely candidate. Changing the new head bone should be pretty easy, shouldn't it? It's not weighted to anything significant.

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We probably need to check both the head and neck joint if both are being used. But it looks like we checked neck in the other thread and it's okay too? It seems weird, you would think the problem is orientation, not position, if there's a rotation problem, but the rotation of those joints is the same in the old and new skeletons?

 

	"copy_joint neckcontrol"		"neckcontrol"
"copy_joint headcontrol"		"headcontrol"

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Oh, I assumed those values were the rotation. You're right, I don't see how position would have such a large effect.

 

I'll see what happens when I try just one or the other.

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Hmm, neckcontrol doesn't seem to have much impact.

 

If I just use headcontrol, things don't look much different from using both--the head on the new skeleton is moved forward but still rotated.

 

If I just use neckcontrol, there doesn't seem to be anything happening...everything looks the same as if I weren't using anything at all.

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I watched a few animations, and couldn't see any significant difference between having neckcontrol set and having nothing set. I'm sure it has some small impact, as when headcontrol is on but neckcontrol is not, the position of things is a little different than when both are on.

 

Anyway, I think we just have to track down what the difference is in the head+neck joints of the old skeleton with the head+neck joints of the new one.

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The only difference I can see is in position.

 

Maybe I could export a body that uses the new skeleton but the same position offsets as the old skeleton on head control and neck control?

 

Could you tell me what you're doing to do the tests? I've never done anything with head attachments before. I'd like to try it out and see what I can do.

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I'm just playing around with what Ascottk was talking about here: http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?s=&am...st&p=179298

 

Basically, if you add the lines:

 

"copy_joint Neck" "Neck"

"copy_joint Head" "Head"

 

to both entityDef atdm:ai_noble_man, and entityDef atdm:ai_nobleman, you can compare. The old skeleton (atdm:ai_noble_man) works (although the neck is stretched). The new skeleton (atdm:ai_nobleman) has a rotated head. The heads are the same, so it must have something to do with the neck and head joints.

 

"editor_var copy_joint jointname" "specifies a joint in the head to copy the specified body joint's animation from"

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