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Noisycricket

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I do use the gimbal mode for rotation, very odd to see the axis planes turn parallel like that. I noticed with gimbal mode the shoulder rotate plane is different than the elbow plane. Is that a bug?

 

The rotation order options in the attribute editor i've never had any luck with. Its just the drop down menu of xyz,yzx,xzy,zyx, etc, right? I never got help from changing them around but i havn't tried much. I found a reference to an addon that is suppossed to help with gimbal lock on the net, but haven't found it yet.

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I support not putting key frames on exact frame numbers but only when absolutely nessecary. Sometimes when you time scale, snapping them to frame numbers can mess it up.

 

Also I did a "shake fist furiously at the thief" anim and there is no way I could have gotten his fist to vibrate fast enough if I couldn't place keyframes in spaces shorter than a frame.

 

But for all the nice smooth swinging combat motions I have kept them on the frames. I think MOST of the time you can.

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1. Is it important the set the length of the timeline to the first and last key?

 

2. I had luck using the idle_pose for the first two animations i uploaded, after some trial and error, but the idle_spit is giving me problems. For the first two, was somehow able to right click on the idle_pose in the visor and click "apply pose", then set keys, all done. I get an error: idle_pose:idle_pose is not attached to a character(use copy and paste to apply it to a character). I had this before but i can't remember what i did specifically that solved it.

 

I tried using the Trax editor, but after deleting the keys and 0 and setting the pose at frame 0 in the Trax editor, when i keyed the frame the model would go crazy( legs out the the front and back and the kilt( or whatever its called) would sretch out to 4x its actuall length.

 

Well i guess i found a way to work around that. I used "apply pose" in the Trax editor, with the frame a few keys away from the end of the animation, but I still got weird stretching of the model, but somehow, if i moved the key forward, past the end of the animation and keyed there, no problems..., then i just copied those keys from the timeline and pasted them at frame 0.

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the stretching happens when 2 clips in the trax editor are placed over each other because they both influence the character ctrls or you have keys on your character and loaded the pose clip in the trax editor which has the same effect.

 

Either way, to attach the pose to the character set you only have to drag it once on the trax editor and then delete the track in the trax editor and pose in unused poses(visor). The pose in "character poses" is the one which you can use to "apply pose" on the beginning and end frame.

 

if you have autokey on and choose "apply pose" it automatically sets a key for the new pose, knowing having all keys on the same frame.

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I do use the gimbal mode for rotation, very odd to see the axis planes turn parallel like that. I noticed with gimbal mode the shoulder rotate plane is different than the elbow plane. Is that a bug?

 

what is different?

 

The rotation order options in the attribute editor i've never had any luck with. Its just the drop down menu of xyz,yzx,xzy,zyx, etc, right? I never got help from changing them around but i havn't tried much. I found a reference to an addon that is suppossed to help with gimbal lock on the net, but haven't found it yet.

 

I rarely come across a gimbal lock using the gimbal rotation mode. But another tool to fix a gimbal lock is using the Euler filter (Curves -> Euler filter) in the graph editor, although it doesn't always work.

 

also you'll soon get to see a gimbal lock once you have to turn your character to a difference axis. Most of our animations are faced on the X axis which shouldn't cause any trouble if you stick to gimbal rotation mode.

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what is different?

 

When the proguard is in the idle stance, the blue axis(z) of the shoulder is parallel to the world's xy plane, with the elbow, the green axis(y) is parallel to the world xy plane. Havn't a clue whether that makes a difference or not.

 

Speaking of gimbal lock, i've seen pictures, probably from game development where the character's arms are straight out at a 45 degree angle in front of the character, i wonder if that was to combat gimbal lock. From this quote i read in the Maya docs: "Gimbal lock occurs when rotations about a single axis cause unwanted rotations about complementary axes or when axes become coincident." ...i thought i understood gimbal lock to be any unwanted rotation. Like when you key your arm from the idle position then key the arm scratching the other shoulder. Sounds like maybe im wrong. Anyway, im just talking out loud, you don't need to waste your time teaching me, i'll figure it out eventually.

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When the proguard is in the idle stance, the blue axis(z) of the shoulder is parallel to the world's xy plane, with the elbow, the green axis(y) is parallel to the world xy plane. Havn't a clue whether that makes a difference or not.

 

I've set it up this way but it doesn't make a difference for animating. It may not be consistent but you normally only use y-rotation on the lower arm.

 

Speaking of gimbal lock, i've seen pictures, probably from game development where the character's arms are straight out at a 45 degree angle in front of the character, i wonder if that was to combat gimbal lock. From this quote i read in the Maya docs: "Gimbal lock occurs when rotations about a single axis cause unwanted rotations about complementary axes or when axes become coincident." ...i thought i understood gimbal lock to be any unwanted rotation. Like when you key your arm from the idle position then key the arm scratching the other shoulder. Sounds like maybe im wrong. Anyway, im just talking out loud, you don't need to waste your time teaching me, i'll figure it out eventually.

 

simple image to demonstrate a gimbal on our character. I deliberately first rotated Y then X and you see the 2 meet up which causes you to lose the X-rotation on the side. That's why rotation orders are important to setup correct. In this case XYZ works fine for the upper arm but change it ZXY and you'll see what happens.

 

post-322-1242586548_thumb.jpg

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Can i just key the rotation orders as i go like this page suggests?

 

http://iansriggermortis.blogspot.com/2005/...imbal-lock.html

 

EDIT: I just made in two seconds the shoulder movement that took two days of messing with from the arm_scratch animation. Thats going to help.

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Hey, the new animations are looking great. :)

 

Do we have two different sneeze animations now? Noisycricket, if you can tell me what frame the sound of the sneeze should come in, I'll find a sfx for it. Same with the spitting animation.

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Hey, the new animations are looking great. :)

 

Do we have two different sneeze animations now? Noisycricket, if you can tell me what frame the sound of the sneeze should come in, I'll find a sfx for it. Same with the spitting animation.

The first sneeze animation should be deleted (I think) as it was not using Squill's idle pose.

 

Spit = frame 20

Sneeze is a little more complicated as i kind of built in a little hesitation as the guard figures out whether his body is actually going to go through with it, then all of a sudden it comes on. So there technically a:

1. (optional) subtle breath-in somewhere between 3 and 17 (head going back slowly)

2. (optional) the HA! at 17 (head going back then forward quickly)

3. the CHEW! at 30 (body moves forward, hand meets mouth)

 

New Horizon mentioned putting a sound on the sneeze as well, not sure if he had anything ready or not.

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Do i need to be setting the timeline so the last key is at the end of the timeline? Because i may need to re-submit all 3 animations if thats the case.

 

Also, when changing the rotation order setting, on the shoulder for example, the arm changes position, yet its rotation values stay the same, how do you get the arm back in the exact position so theres no hiccup between animations, or do you just approximate?

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Ok, I added a couple sneeze sounds for the moment. I added a spit sound too but haven't seen the spit animation yet.

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1.> Is it ok to rotate the head at the neck joint for an idle animation? I'm guessing not because it doesn't seem to be applying any weight to the head.

 

2.> To rotate the fingers individually, must anything else be done with the hand controls, or can i just change them at will?

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1.> Is it ok to rotate the head at the neck joint for an idle animation? I'm guessing not because it doesn't seem to be applying any weight to the head.

 

only the head is being used for head animations.

 

2.> To rotate the fingers individually, must anything else be done with the hand controls, or can i just change them at will?

 

what do you want to change?

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what do you want to change?

 

The roations, and if possible, translate the thumb base joint just a tad to achieve a specific pose. If its a pain in the ass to do or explain, i'll just use your handy channel editor attributes.

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I finally figured out how to see the animations in the game and im not very happy with mine. I spent a lot of time adding realistic detail to the curves which almost cannot be seen in the game. Im not exactly sure what it is but it seems to be a combination of low light and a low framerate. The solution i think would be to make some of the movements slightly more exaggerated, which i would like to do and see what that looks like. So i am going to get myself into a postion where i can distribute .md5anim's myself without taking up our lead coders precious time!

 

question: if, for example, i wanted to update the idle_sneeze animation and make it so all the character and maps have them. I need to the exportmodels command just one time and insert that .md5anim file into each character folder in the Darkmod subfolders that share that skeleton (just proguard and citywatch for now?)? And i can do that at anytime and not screw anyone up?

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question: if, for example, i wanted to update the idle_sneeze animation and make it so all the character and maps have them. I need to the exportmodels command just one time and insert that .md5anim file into each character folder in the Darkmod subfolders that share that skeleton (just proguard and citywatch for now?)?

The physical .md5anim file only needs to be added to the md5/chars/guards/proguard folder. All other characters are using the same file.

 

To make the characters actually use the anim, you need to add the corresponding line in their modelDef:

 

anim drawHammer	 models/md5/chars/guards/proguard/drawHammer.md5anim

 

And i can do that at anytime and not screw anyone up?

MD5 anims can be updated anytime, they won't do any harm, as long as they are based on the same skeleton. D3 will refuse to load characters if an md5anim file is missing or has a different number of joints.

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I finally figured out how to see the animations in the game and im not very happy with mine. I spent a lot of time adding realistic detail to the curves which almost cannot be seen in the game. Im not exactly sure what it is but it seems to be a combination of low light and a low framerate. The solution i think would be to make some of the movements slightly more exaggerated, which i would like to do and see what that looks like. So i am going to get myself into a postion where i can distribute .md5anim's myself without taking up our lead coders precious time!

 

welcome to game animations. Previewing animations in Maya is one thing but actually seeing them ingame is another. Game engines sometimes use different interpolation methods for keyframes. The result might not always be the same then what you see in Maya. I don't know how Doom 3 handles the interpolation but i usually find my animation look too smooth once i see them ingame.

 

the tools are also a bit dated because we're missing a decent animation editor to preview animations. Unreal Engine 3 has a very nice editor to preview and connect animations although i'm curious what id tech 5 brings on the animation front.

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I've been busy the last couple of days, but im almost finished with the stretching animation and im wondering if those are all the idle animations were doing. Actually i assumed we were doing more, but I want to make sure. If so, i'll add what is listed to the google spreadsheet were using and start working on them after i figure out what is going wrong with the exportmodels function. I'd also like to tweak my existing animations, but maybe i'll do that later.

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Actually i assumed we were doing more, but I want to make sure.

 

In general, the more idle animations, the merrier. Although there may be more important animations that need doing first...do we have an idle_sit and idle_sleep yet?

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