Solis' animation thread (new and improved)

[Solis]

Hello! Not much to say here except hello, glad to be back, and suggestions and animations I'm doing will be posted here

 

From the sound of it, there's still a few walking/running/searching animations that might need to be done. Is the google spreadsheet for animation assignments up to date? I'm open to suggestions on what to work on for now, so let me know if you have any preferences, otherwise I can just pick some unassigned ones off the list and start working on them once I have access to the model/rig files.

[Noisycricket]

We might need Squill, Greebo and Springheel's input to answer this, but Sitting animations might be needed. Some were requested, Squill mentioned he might have time for them a few days ago, then a programmer(Greebo?) worked their magic and some of the regular idle animations started playing for the sitting A.I. Im sure some reading loops or eating or drinking animations will still be requested, but im not sure what the priorities are. We also need female walk cycle, but i kind of had one almost made.

[Springheel]

then a programmer(Greebo?) worked their magic and some of the regular idle animations started playing for the sitting A.I.

 

That's not new...they've done that ever since sitting behaviour was first introduced.

 

The sitting animations I mentioned before were for *activities* an AI might do while sitting, like writing in a book, eating, etc. They would not be idle, but would be called specifically by mappers who want their AI to be doing something specific.

[Noisycricket]

That's not new...they've done that ever since sitting behaviour was first introduced.

 

Really, i must have went past that guard in the training map 50 times and never noticed.

[Springheel]

Solis, we currently have pretty much everything that we need for the 1.0 release, but here are future projects that we could start on:

 

1. Some "sitting" animations. Currently, AI can sit, and look great doing it, but they don't actually look like they're *doing* anything while sitting. Animations that simulate the character doing something a sitting person might do, like "eat", "drink", "write in a book" or "turn page" would be useful. http://forums.thedarkmod.com/index.php?showtopic=9763

 

2. Female animations. Right now, we cannot have any female characters in a mission because we are lacking animations for them. Female characters will use the same default humanoid skeleton as males, apparently.

 

3. Creature animations. We have a few creatures right now with limited animations-- the spider, the revenant, and the steam-beast. All could use their own set of animations. We may also want a couple new idle animations for rats.

[Solis]

Well, it's been some time since I've chimed back in, but I've definitely not forgotten about The Dark Mod. I've been working on some sitting animations in the meantime, although unfortunately after having some setbacks in the form of needing to get the right version of Motionbuilder (apparently the newer versions aren't backwards compatible with the older version's files) and realizing that I was really, really rusty from not animating so long, I wasn't able to do these as fast as I hoped. But still, hopefully these will be of use once I get some feedback and finish tweaking them, although admittedly I'm not all that happy with them right now but figured I should at least show what I have so far. Oh and in a few of them the fingers aren't animated yet (mostly the yawning animation).

 

I based these animations off of a citywatch model that was on the FTP which should be using the modern/current skeleton (at least, I hope so!). I noticed that there seems to be a few issues with some of the angles of the arms and such when I bend them in certain ways (especially noticable in the reading-in-hand animation), but I'm hoping it will look fine when the skeleton is applied to the normal models that are used in-game. Here's a list of all the individual animation files that are included:

 

Eating

Reading book held in hand

Reading book on table

Relaxing start

Relaxing loop

Writing in book on table

Yawning/napping start

Yawning/napping loop

 

I've uploaded the video file and the animation archive to sendspace (animation archive password is darkmod) since I can't access the FTP for some reason since it's telling me the password is incorrect. Here's the compiled video of the animations so you can get a general idea of what they look like:

 

http://www.sendspace.com/file/8cby3s

 

And the archive file is uploading now so I'll edit this post with the link to it once its done.

[greebo]

Good to hear you're still around. The animation department has become very quiet recently.

 

I have the uneasy feeling you've been animating with the old citywatch skeleton, looking at those mitten hands? Don't you have access to the model_src repository? We've been using the proguard skeleton in there for almost a year now.

[Solis]

Hmm, I'll have to double-check that, but it's possible I grabbed the wrong model by mistake. Well I think that the old model can be converted to the proguard skeleton if needed, but I'll have to see what the process for that is if this one isn't compatible with the current skeleton (and honestly I think some of the animations would be better off just being remade since I'm seeing a lot of other issues with the way I did the animations I didn't notice the first time around, but I wanted to hear what others thought of them before that anyway). Edit: Hm, going to check the SVN for the more recent animation skeleton.

[greebo]

It's in the model_src repository here:

 

https://darkmod.homelinux.com/svn/model_src/proguard_mb/proguardmesh_rev2.mb

 

Although it's not a Motionbuilder file anymore, we are using Maya to animate the characters now.

[Solis]

Ahh thanks, that explains it since I had grabbed the most recent .fbx file there was. Hmm, that might cause some difficulty for me, but I'll see what I can do (always had trouble animating in Maya).

[greebo]

I'm not an expert in animation at all, but I tried both MotionBuilder and Maya in the past. My impression is: Motionbuilder seems to be a tad more userfriendly, but Maya gives you quite a bit of control via the Curves Editor. I'm sure you can wrap your hand around Maya, as you're more experienced in the animation realm anyway.

 

And I'm pretty sure that the animation you created with the old rig is not applicable to our (new) proguard animation rig.

[Springheel]

And I'm pretty sure that the animation you created with the old rig is not applicable to our (new) proguard animation rig.

 

Sadly (cause those animations are awesome), no.

 

Glad you're back though, Solis. Let me know if I can help with anything.