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Springheel

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But I do have access to the development boards (info and discussion, texture and art/models and animation, beta testing, contributors) so if you want to make a thread in one of those forums for this project, let me know and I can move my questions there.

 

If he's never used our software before, then I think a good place to start would be to take existing anims that have already been done, and doing a straight port to other characters (without actually animating).

 

That's not a bad idea either. It was something I suggested AscottK could do, but he's going to work on some other stuff first.

 

It would be nice to get the current guard animations applied to both the regular city watch and elite guard models (and even the houseguard if we can get that rigged).

 

Domarius, what files would Solis need to do this?

 

Solis, which would you rather start with? Porting animations from one character to another, or creating the throwing animation for the Builder Guard?

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Personally, I'd like to create new animations on an already rigged character. A basic throwing animation would be a simple enough start, and should be a good place to get the hang of Motionbuilder (that way I can begin with the basics rather than having to worry about the character being repositioned during animations, since again I'm not sure how that aspect works in the MD5 format). Would the character start and return a generic standing pose (i.e. loop), or would it need to flow into another animation that would begin when this one ends.

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Personally, I'd like to create new animations on an already rigged character. A basic throwing animation would be a simple enough start, and should be a good place to get the hang of Motionbuilder (that way I can begin with the basics rather than having to worry about the character being repositioned during animations, since again I'm not sure how that aspect works in the MD5 format). Would the character start and return a generic standing pose (i.e. loop), or would it need to flow into another animation that would begin when this one ends.

He just returns to combat stance after throwing.

For the combat stance, look at the draw sword animation.

 

Solis needs Motion Builder, and the FBX files (native motion builder format) I made for the elite city watch. He can animate the elite city watch and we can port it to another mesh after that.

 

Motion Builder is on the FTP under TheDarkMod/Files/MotionBuilder 6.0.rar

You should watch oDDity's tutorial under TheDarkMod/Files/MB_tut_01.rar

 

The FBX files are on the FTP in TheDarkMod/Animations/Domarius

Open the search one, it has all the images in it. You can put them in another folder, and direct all the other files to those images.

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I would imagine throwing behaviour wouldn't kick in until a short time after an AI realizes they can't reach the player. At that point they would sheath their sword and go into 'missile' mode. That could mean pulling out a bow if they have one, or if not, hurling random objects. They would continue to throw objects every so often (and perhaps shake their fists) until the player moves or they lose track of them, at which point they would draw their sword and go into search mode again.

 

Do you have FTP access Solis? If not I can send you the necessary files.

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Yeah actually, going to missile mode sounds better. Well then if Archers will strike a shooting pose, then non-archers can take some other pose that we haven't thought of. Just something better than the idle standing pose. Maybe some angry position, ready to shake fist, ready to throw something.

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I don't think I have access to the FTP, so if you could send the FBX files to my Gmail it would be appreciated (I picked up a copy of 7.0 Motionbuilder so it should work for what I need). I also took a look at oDDitie's tutorial in the animation forum for Motionbuilder, I'll probably need to look at a few other ones along the way.

 

I'll just start the model in the combat stance (does an existing animation use that stance so I can just start from that point?), and then maybe try having it end in a couple different ways so we can figure out what looks best.

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Here, you can actually download from our FTP even though you don't have login access, because we have HTTP access.

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Files/Mot...ilder%206.0.rar

 

Anims

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...marius/draw.rar

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animations/Domarius/run.rar

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...rius/search.rar

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...marius/walk.rar

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Animation...rn_right_90.rar

 

Hm, those are my animations, and the only one that's in yet is (hopefully) the search.

Here are the ones that are currently in the game;

http://208.49.149.118/TheDarkMod/Files/FBX_citywatch.rar

You can use that combat stance, in the one where he draws the sword.

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OK, I've been looking over the model for a bit and it looks like it'll be about as easy to animate as I thought it would be. It helps that I can keep the pose and delete all the animation frames with a single command. I should have a few animations and variants done in the next few days. Quick question though: in Motion Builder, how do you set it to smooth between keyframes (so that it doesn't have that robotic look where it moves one direction and then directly moves the other direction without any smoothing).

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Oh... the easier way is this interface somewhere at the top right, where if the current frame is a keyframe, there are "left hand" and "right hand" buttons, that you click to set if the animation smooths in or moves sharply for the left, and the same again for the right. (Entering and exiting the keyframe). If you click and fiddle with it, you should work it out...

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Hi again. Sorry for the long period of silence, I've been working with the model and program for the last few days trying to get the hang of animating again (oh, and thanks for that info, Domarius). I'll admit...it's harder than I remember, although it was a bit simpler back when I last did it since I didn't have very complex movements to animate. So you'll have to forgive that I'm still a bit rusty at the moment.

 

Anyway, I've done a bit of experimentation when trying to come up with a good throw animation. To be honest I couldn't quite get it to look "right" and I'm still trying to tweak it to look more realistic, but I thought I'd show you what I have so far and you can decide for yourself. I've made a few different animations for it, so I'll just post them here and you can judge them yourself. I've tried to position the camera at an angle that you'd probably see them do the animation from (since they'd be throwing it at you from a lower area). Also since someone mentioned something about head tilting back and forth being handled by a code variable, I didn't bother having them looking upwards for the animations.

 

Throw 1

Here's the first throw animation I did for it. I think it's the best looking, although the arm movements still seem a little off. This should work for pretty much any object since the "force" he puts into the throw would be enough for mostly anything that would fit in his had. Unfortunately his throwing arm goes through his shoulder guards in this one, I'm not sure if they can really be moved out of the way of his arm moves (I noticed the thread mentioning how they'll be animated later).

 

Throw 2

A second version that's quicker and has less force in the throw, for smaller rocks and that sort of thing. Also his hand goes up to his belt before he throws, so it can look like he's taking something he has on him to throw it at the player. Again the arm goes through the shoulder pad a bit.

 

Throw 3

A slight variant on the Throw 2, not sure which looks better so I'll put it here so you can decide for yourself.

 

Pick Up and Throw

Another throwing animation where he bends down to the ground before throwing. There isn't much force behind the throw and the angle is a bit low, but the arm doesn't go through the shoulder guard much at least.

 

Girly Throw

A bit of an "accidental" animation when I was making the first throw. I thought the way he moved his hand was a bit too feminine, but I guess this could work as a civilian animation if we want to port it.

 

Russian

Uhh...yeah...this isn't a throw animation, but rather the product of when animators have too much time on their hands. I just did this as a quick side thing to figure out how some of the constraints and smoothing options work and as practice for body movements. Yeah, it's silly, but eh, maybe someone can make an avatar out of it or something :P

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Some immediate feedback:

 

#1 looks pretty good to me. If the pauldrons clip the arm it isn't that noticeable--at least from that angle.

 

#2/3/pickup -- I don't think it looks like he has enough force to throw something hard enough to hurt the player.

 

girlythrow -- actually I don't mind this one. It's almost like a sideways chuck that you might use for small rocks or something.

 

russian-- :laugh:

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Thanks for the feedback everyone (although could you be a liiiiittle more specific about what's wrong with them Domarius, obviously I'm trying to use reference footage to base my animations off of, but turning that into animation isn't quite as easy as matching up the poses ;)). I've been thinking of how to make it look better, so I started a new one from scratch with a few tweaks that I thought of.

 

Throw 5

I'm not sure why I named it Throw 5 instead of Throw 4, I guess I was thinking it was such an improvement that I could skip a number. But I'm still having trouble getting it to not go through the pauldrons (how do you move them in Motion Builder btw? Do they not have bones assigned to them?), and I found another issue where the model slowly slides to the side for some odd reason, making it seem like it springs back when the animation repeats. I noticed it in my other animations but was able to fix it somehow, but I can't figure out what's causing it this time. Also, copy and pasting poses sometimes seems to not work and moves the body part to an entirely different location (I'm guessing this is because it's pasting it's relative position and not it's global one, which isn't quite what I want sometimes). Oh, and I also noticed that the R/T pinning only works if you're in full keyframe mode, is there a way to set it so that you don't have to set a keyframe for EVERY piece when you want to pin a section?

 

But anyway, aside from the issues I'm having from learning the program, I think I'm getting the hang of animating again. I think Throw 5 looks much more realistic than the other ones, so I'll probably just stick to tweaking it from now on rather than starting from scratch like I did with most of the others. Oh, and this animation is a bit longer than the other ones at 100 frames, if it needs to be shortened that shouldn't be a problem.

 

Oh, and the videos use the Divx 5.05 codec, any codec that plays above Divx 5 should work with it.

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I like this one about equally with #1. The clipping of the pauldrons is more obvious, so we'll have to figure out how you move those. I think Odd posted something about that.

 

I think it could be improved a bit if the throwing part was just a touch faster. Also, the torso could twist a bit more--both of these would give the impression of a little more force behind the throw.

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For Throw 6, it looks the best of the bunch so far, but two things jump out at me: he doesn't pull his shoulder back very much, or twist his torso behind the throw, so there would be very little force behind it. Also, it looks a bit in slow motion; a throw is really a fast snap.

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Tweaked, how's this one?

 

Throw 7

 

It's a little hard increasing torso movement since it changes the alignment of the upper body quite a bit, too much and I have to change the throw alignment, and if it's too far out it can look a little odd throwing at that angle away from the body. I'm trying to find a good balance between mid-body and upper body swivel. Changing the throw speed is ridiculously easy though, the way Motion Builder lets you drag keyframes around almost makes the process TOO simple...

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Yep, if we could get those pauldrons moving, I think that one would be great.

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