Drunk animations

[Noisycricket]

Should/Will the drunk animation use regular idle animations? Heres where im at. I made a drunk idle and have it 95% done, but its not generic enough and i'm going to make another one and use the current one as a possible idle anim for a possible drunk state. Not thinking of this problem when i started, i made my current drunk_idle in a different pose than the regular idle_pose as i assumed he wouldn't use any idle_anims. So if he goes into a regular idle animation, it will jump. Yet the regular idle_pose doesn't lend itself to a drunken look. Could we not use existing idle anims for the drunk guards and create their own set of idle animations (ive already got one ) and more to the point, would they even need any?

 

Or should the drunk_idle just start/end with the idle pose to keep things simple?

[greebo]

Could we not use existing idle anims for the drunk guards and create their own set of idle animations (ive already got one ) and more to the point, would they even need any?

We can do that, I suppose. We probably don't need any idles for the moment being, unless you already have one, which it seems like.

 

We'll have to see whether the transitions between walking and idle_drunk is looking awkward too.

 

Disclaimer: not sure if this will make it into 1.0.

[angua]

Personally I'd love to see a few drunken characters here and there, and we already have drunken vocals in the grumbler vocal set.

I can probably code the behaviour within a few hours if we get an idle_drunk anim. If we have a few idle anims too, that's fine, but we can also leave them out for now. Would you also like to do a walk_drunk anim?

[Noisycricket]

I'll finish the drunk_idle and upload it in m5danim format so we can all preview it and we'll go from there.

 

@Angua: Yes, im making a drunk_walk cycle too.

[Noisycricket]

Sorry this is taking so long, im very busy at the moment. I have decided to free myself up this weekend since i'm going to go watch the Blue Angels (Airshow) both days anyways. Since I am going so slow, im going to finish up the idle_drunk i have (the not-so-generic one) just to give angua or whomever something to work with. Should be done tonight or tomorrow morning possibly.

[Noisycricket]

I uploaded the drunk idle 5d5anim and the maya file. I didn't even bother finishing it since all the movements are so intertwined, making it painstaking to adjust anything, plus i came up with some good ideas for the more generic idle. As you may be able to tell from the already quite long idle_drunk, its hard to make any movements not stand out without making it extremely long. Im not sure more generic movements ( that i've come up with) with work without making it pretty long, like say 300-400 frames, mainly because theres lots of slow moving as the body changes direction when swaying.

 

I think the idle pose is doable too.

 

Any thoughts are welcome.

[angua]

This already works, place an AI somewhere in a map and set "drunk" "1" on him. He'll do the drunk anim and the drunk barks (only the grumbler vocal set has dedicated drunken barks so far). He also has reduced acuities.

 

I like the anim, although it looks a little bit funny sometimes (but maybe that's just the random head turning, I'm not sure).

[Noisycricket]

Yeah, the random head/torso movement may not work well with a drunk idle. I'm going to be pretty busy again, at least for awhile and im not quite done with the drunk idle so it may take another few days.

 

When i started the new, more generic drunk idle, i noticed a couple things. One, the new drunk movements I made aren't very subtle and i find them very hard to make look generic without looking underwhelming. Two, when i started the new drunk idle anim, i simply added time in front of the existing anim and animated there, rather than starting from the scratch and ended up with a really long animation which could be ideal. Since all the movements are pretty large (IMO) and the animation is much longer, the movements don't stand out from each other as much. Can the engine handle all these animations that are much more complex than those in Thief 3? I don't know. I'll just finish this animation and you all can review it and let me know what you think.

 

Edit: That animation is unfinished, only first first part was really worked with.

[Mortem Desino]

There's no reason a long animation shouldn't work. Just take a look at some of the long animations on the first level of Doom 3's in-game cinematics. (Dr. Betruger's "The board sent you? Hmph! The board doesn't know the first thing about science; all the want is to make more money, some...product. Don't worry. They'll get their product.")

[Noisycricket]

Ah yes, i remember that, good point. Did you remember those lines going by memory? I just saw that last month and I couldn't begin to remember that.

[Mortem Desino]

I remember that because right after St Lucia (before I became a contributor) I went through level 1.1 converting most of it to something TDM can compile and play. That whole line was a single animation.

[Noisycricket]

I uploaded long_drunk_idle.ma to my folder in model_src for people to hopefully view and give feedback as to whether this is what we want. Its less than half done, and parts in the middle have been stripped out pending changes and unfinished or no arm movement in most of it, so keep that in mind. Its just to give an idea of what i was thinking for a long idle animation without needing other idle animations. Its 520 frames long at the moment and exported at .001 precision to see it better.

 

The question will be, is this what we want, or do we want subtler movements, with addition idle animations ( which i could cut out of this one when finished. Animations that could be used to other purposes ).

 

Another question i have: is the slow walk that is used for unarmed investigation and curiosity still needed and is that a priority over the drunk idle? How about the female walk, i stumbled onto a great way to make the female walk while making the walk_cycle, so that might only take a day or two.

 

 

Speaking of the xyzprecision setting, I recommend .0001 for the walk cycle, it seems to make a huge difference.

[squill]

i think a long animation would be around 8 or 9 seconds. It's better to have a bunch of short drunk idles which you can shuffle around then one long version. (It'll look odd when your animations suddenly gets cut off)

 

i've looked past the pops and movements because you said it's less then half done, but the main issue i have with this animation is his balance. Around frame 140 and 460 he's leaning too far and too long to make it look believable. I would expect he would take some a step or reposition his back earlier to find his balance again.

[Springheel]

Another question i have: is the slow walk that is used for unarmed investigation and curiosity still needed and is that a priority over the drunk idle? How about the female walk, i stumbled onto a great way to make the female walk while making the walk_cycle, so that might only take a day or two.

 

I thought we had the 'observant' walk already? If not, then sure. Female characters won't be included in the first release, but we're definitely going to need a female walk eventually.

[Noisycricket]

I thought we had the 'observant' walk already? If not, then sure. Female characters won't be included in the first release, but we're definitely going to need a female walk eventually.

 

What about the drunk idle, what does the team want? Do you want the idle to use the current idle_pose to start and end with? If we want a short idle + supplemental animations, can someone help me with with the basic movement? I've been drunk many, many, MANY times, yet the movements for a shorter drunk idle that don't stand out baffles me for some reason.

 

EDIT: I tested out what I guess is the observant walk in the training map and it seems to use the regular walk, and it doesn't look bad really, but I assume we'll still want one eventually.

[Noisycricket]

Ok, I *think* the subtler idle + supplemental animations is the way to go. I have an idea for a subtler idle now, but i am hoping to use a different idle pose. The transitions between any drunk movements and grabbing a weapon or starting to walk are going to create a jump no matter what pose is used, but am i missing anything? The random head/torso movements should be able to be used with this idle and might even add a lot to it. Any objections?

 

EDIT:

 

I appear to have accidentally reset the extensive changes to the tangents i made, that is why the drunk idle i uploaded looks so bad. They all reset to plateau except for the last part where it leans forward. I did this 4 iterations ago, thus I have to go back four files to get a correct version, luckily all my changes in those 4 versions were in only one small section. I'll upload the correct one once I attach the fixed section, so people can use it as a placeholder.

[Domarius]

i think a long animation would be around 8 or 9 seconds. It's better to have a bunch of short drunk idles which you can shuffle around then one long version. (It'll look odd when your animations suddenly gets cut off)

 

Actually they're going to get cut off anyway if you're playing them one after the other, so may as well make long continuous ones that look natural, rather than standing up straight into the idle pose every few seconds... which will definitely look wierd.

 

Having them cut off due to being alerted or whatever is a much less frequent occourance, and aleviated somewhat by Doom 3's animation blending as well.

[Noisycricket]

Ok, one subtle drunk idle uploaded as idle_drunk.md4anim. Its just simple a side to side sway. To examine it, i'd recommend renaming it to idle.md5anim and load up test/walk, unless you know something i don't, which is likely.

 

So the tentative plan is to add more supplemental drunk idle animations, like the regular ones.

 

Here my own critique of it after seeing it in-game:

 

-I notice TDM still doesn't wait for the currently playing idle animation to end before it switches to the next one, missing an opportunity for a seamless transition.

 

-Its a little more repetitive than i'd like, but it is already 320 frames. With these slow movements adding a little movement creates a lot of frames. I assume each frame requires the same amount of processing power regardless of the amount of movement. Unfortunately, faster, more interesting movements easily create noticeable repetition.

 

-It certainly won't work with normal idle_animations and probably won't work with the coded bodily movements very well, but neither would the super long version.

 

-The stance of the body might not jive with all of the transitions its going to be making as well as if i compromised and didn't have the model so hunched over.

 

-I think a super long idle alone, with no coded movements might be better.