Noisycricket contributions

[Springheel]

Also, I may have to modify the animation to take into account the huge shoulder-guards the Hammerite guards wear.

 

All of our characters are going to share the same animations, so if you foresee problems for AI with pauldrons (there are several), it may be best to take a different approach to that one. Maybe a more subtle stretch, like just stretching his arms straight out in front or something.

[Noisycricket]

I don't forsee any problems, I'd just have to angle the forearms up a tad.

[Noisycricket]

Is using weighted tangents ok?

[squill]

Is using weighted tangents ok?

 

fine with me. i rarely use them because i think it's more a matter of shifting the right keys or in some cases you'll have to break tangents.

[Noisycricket]

Is the only point of the shoulder_rotate_ctrlR to weigh down spaulder (shoulder armor) models so they don't flip all over? Should i not mess with those?

[squill]

Is the only point of the shoulder_rotate_ctrlR to weigh down spaulder (shoulder armor) models so they don't flip all over? Should i not mess with those?

 

its just the shoulder ctrl. If you lift the arm you'll also want to use this ctrl to pose the arm and shoulder with or without armor.

[Noisycricket]

Thanks squill

[squill]

i checked on your idle animations. I like the sneeze but what is that last action he does with his arm going along his chest?

 

The spit idle doesn't really read that well. It's more like he's looking down. You could enlarge the spit movement by throwing his head back (anticipation) before he spits. Although it's kind of hard to visualize it without some kind of sound or supporting hand gesture like wiping his mouth after the spitting.

[Springheel]

I wouldn't have him wipe his hand...this is supposed to be someone who just horked up some phlegm. I'll find a nice, disgusting sound effect to go with it.

[Noisycricket]

I wouldn't have him wipe his hand...this is supposed to be someone who just horked up some phlegm. I'll find a nice, disgusting sound effect to go with it.

 

 

The sneeze has the quick wipe, not the spit. Have you seen them yet? I actually took your guidelines literally when you said: "Idle, spit (0/1) (turn head and spit on the floor)". I thought you wanted a quick spit and was thinking i almost overdid it. I think the head movement right when he spits is a little much, but i'd like to see it in the game at an average distance.

[Springheel]

The sneeze has the quick wipe, not the spit.

 

Yes, but I thought squill was suggesting adding a wipe to the spit.

I thought you wanted a quick spit and was thinking i almost overdid it. I think the head movement right when he spits is a little much, but i'd like to see it in the game at an average distance.

 

I haven't seen it yet, but that sounds about right. With the right sound effect, I don't think the motion needs to be that exaggerated.

[Noisycricket]

i checked on your idle animations. I like the sneeze but what is that last action he does with his arm going along his chest?

 

The spit idle doesn't really read that well. It's more like he's looking down. You could enlarge the spit movement by throwing his head back (anticipation) before he spits. Although it's kind of hard to visualize it without some kind of sound or supporting hand gesture like wiping his mouth after the spitting.

 

I like your anticipation suggestion, some hesitation at least while he gathers the saliva up.

 

(YUM! )

 

Edit: I don't think i like it anymore... Springheel, were you specifically wanting a quick spit to the right? If not, i'll build a little preperation into the anim.

[squill]

i noticed the frames in your last sneeze animation were placed on half frames. I rather recommend to place keyframes on whole frames. One it's easier to edit on the timeline, also when you think in terms of frames and seconds, and two it keeps your scene nice and clean if you need to retime/adjust your poses or someone else for some reason needs to use your scene.

[Noisycricket]

I was thinking it was a good choice precisely because it seemed much easier to edit... You can shift+left_mouse and drag-select on the time slider and shrink or scale a section of the animation at will to adjust and play with timings without worring about key being on mathmatical whole unit having nothing to do with the animation. If you do that with the keys snapping to whole numbers, or the dope editor, it ruins your animation timing. To put your marker exactly on a key to overwrite it or copy/paste etc, simply use the < and > keys to position the marker on the closest adjacent key. You can still use the middle mouse button to re-position the marker and set a key without cycling the animation. How does one properly scale the 40 frames animation full of keys with keysnapping on? I really wanted to aim for high quality animations here squill. I don't know what you mean by "clean" or how that helps ( I can't imagine at the moment), but I don't want each of my animation keys off by a almost a full second, nor do i want to edit, minutely, the animated positions of joints for each key because i wanted to scale the animations, then had to use the snap function thereby shifting each key to it closest whole number. I plan on spending a lot of time on my animations, eventually re-doing my animations done for TDM 1.0, if that eases your mind. The only possible reason I can fathom in this universe for saying snapped animation is easier to edit (but not scale) is that when re-positioning the timeline marker with the middle mouse button, it doesn't automatically set itself to on top of an existing key thereby making it more difficult to overwrite it. I have gotten over that hurtle myself by lowering the dpi setting of my mouse and can place the marker over a key such as 82.35, but that was not actually needed as i'd already found that you could key next to key you wanted to overwrite, then delete the key you wanted to replace and move the replacement key over the deleted one. I really don't want to compromise the fineness of my animations for the sake of what sound like the visual "benefit" of keys on whole numbers having no real mathmatical relationship to the animation. Again, been wrong before on occasion... But please, unless im missing something, please afford me this "concession". Please keep in mind that trying to do high quality anims is the fun part for me.

 

Sorry if this seems too blunt, I didn't develope very good communication skills much as an only child of a non-talkative father who was my only parent, nor in later life...

[squill]

You don't need half frames to create "high quality" animation. Good animation comes from good timing, strong poses and knowing how to move in and out of those poses (animation principles). I take on the traditional way (2D) when it comes to 3D animation. A frame is basicly just like a drawing, only we don't have to draw 24 frames for 1 second of animation. The computer only just draws the frames for us between poses (keyframes) that you would normally have to draw in 2D animation.

 

If you place the keys on the right frames and control the curves in the graph editor you have enough control to edit your animation and create very subtle movements. Again i'm talking about the graph editor but it's an essential tool to refine your animation. It makes the scene very messy when you have keys all over the place and scaling or looping makes it even harder. For games it's also nicer to work with frames per second because coders usually think in seconds, minutes or hours

 

If i need to scale an animation, i could do this using the scale option in the graph editor(edit -> scale) or select all frames on the timeline between frame 0 and the last frame to scale it manually. There's an option called snap (RMB on timeline -> Snap) which snaps all keys back to whole frames between the first and last frame.

[Noisycricket]

You don't need half frames to create "high quality" animation. Good animation comes from good timing, strong poses and knowing how to move in and out of those poses (animation principles). I take on the traditional way (2D) when it comes to 3D animation. A frame is basicly just like a drawing, only we don't have to draw 24 frames for 1 second of animation. The computer only just draws the frames for us between poses (keyframes) that you would normally have to draw in 2D animation.

 

If you place the keys on the right frames and control the curves in the graph editor you have enough control to edit your animation and create very subtle movements. Again i'm talking about the graph editor but it's an essential tool to refine your animation. It makes the scene very messy when you have keys all over the place and scaling or looping makes it even harder. For games it's also nicer to work with frames per second because coders usually think in seconds, minutes or hours

 

If i need to scale an animation, i could do this using the scale option in the graph editor(edit -> scale) or select all frames on the timeline between frame 0 and the last frame to scale it manually. There's an option called snap (RMB on timeline -> Snap) which snaps all keys back to whole frames between the first and last frame.

 

What boggles the mind is if you have 40 keys spread out over 30 frames and you shrink the time over which those keys occur, using either method you described, those keys will not act like breakdowns and retain their proportional spacing. If you had two keys, one at 25.48 and another at 25.51, those keys would then be at 25 and 26 when they used to be only .03 frames away from each other. Going from .0004 seconds to .04 seconds apart. All the others will be pulled apart or drawn nearer as well. With weighted tangents, you could work with the curves to bring the curve's path nearer to its original intended but you would have to do that for every single tangent of every single key. You can continually scale keys, making subtle changed when snapping disabled without worrying about proportional spacing between key being affected, with snapping enabled, you would not be able to do that without keys being potentially 2 or more keys apart from each other at the end of all the adjustments. I can see with proper planning, you could minimize the need for changes to begin by planning out the animation with reference footage. But i've already learned that reference footage is not %100 full proof, the reference video sometimes does not fit the in-game character body type.

 

When i have the arms swinging down and it reaches the end of its travel, i set the hips, spine and upper spine to sequentially move in order, one after the other. I would risk throwing off that timing every single time i scaled that section at a 1/24 resolution. For my arm scratch animation, i have each scratch gradually cover less distance as the AI hones in the the exact source of the itch. The timing for each scratch is also just slightly off. I like this effect and I feel at this stage would have to spend many extra hours in the graph editor to achieve it. It seems that my workload would increase and the time to make each animation would inrease, and the precision of the animations would go down slightly all in the name of....um...what exactly?

 

You do seem know your way around Maya really well from your postings, so I will try and do it your way and hopefully benefit from what i've been missing. (unless i've convinced you otherwise??? )

[Noisycricket]

I just realised today that the handle of the sword needs to be taken into account with my animations (duh... ) What is the quickest way to get a proguardv2 model with the sword doing the current idle animation?

 

Would using the draw sword animation be ok, just delete the keys and set the idle_pose?

[Noisycricket]

oops

[greebo]

I think we need some code to distinguish between idle animations suitable for guards with and without drawn weapons. The animations will then be set up on the AI in two groups so that they won't pull their eye out with their sword when scratching their left arm.

[Springheel]

Yes, I'm not sure how the code currently handles that, because AI who have been fully alerted and keep their weapon out are not really considered "idle" anymore. We certainly don't want them yawning or playing any other animations that make them look casual, but it also might be boring if they didn't play any random animations at all (though there's always head-turning). Actually, I don't know how I feel about the last thought. Maybe it's not necessary for them to play actual random animations if they have their weapon out and are on high alert.

 

(I think, actually, that cricket was talking about avoiding the handle of the sword *while sheathed* though, but your post got me thinking)

[greebo]

Guards with their weapon out are in "AlertIdle" state - I'll have to check the code whether this state does idle anims.

 

(I think, actually, that cricket was talking about avoiding the handle of the sword *while sheathed* though, but your post got me thinking)

Ah, yes, I seem to have misunderstood that one.

[Noisycricket]

Ah, yes, I seem to have misunderstood that one.

 

I wasn't sure I understood what you were saying.

[Noisycricket]

Well, first animation converted over to the newest idle_pose finally done. In fact, just renamed it from Fucking_finally_done!_god_damn_gimbal_lock!_what_the_fuck_is_wrong_with_Autodes

k!_DAMN!.bm to idle_scratch.mb. Yup.......should have it uploaded momentarily... Feel free to give feedback.

[greebo]

Looks good to me. I converted your anim file to .md5anim and added it to the proguard. It's available for use with "testanim" now.

[squill]

Well, first animation converted over to the newest idle_pose finally done. In fact, just renamed it from Fucking_finally_done!_god_damn_gimbal_lock!_what_the_fuck_is_wrong_with_Autodes

k!_DAMN!.bm to idle_scratch.mb. Yup.......should have it uploaded momentarily... Feel free to give feedback.

 

to avoid gimbal lock i always use gimbal mode for the rotation manipulator. This shows you exactly what every axis does when you use rotations. Also if you notice you need some different order for your rotations you can change the rotation order of the controller (open attribute editor -> Transform Attributes tab -> Rotate order)