Questions and Answers 3D (read the first post before asking a question)

[Bones]

ok thank you

just out of curiosity: how are you planning on tackling the gore deaths? If the engine uses the 3D models in real time (which I suppose it does, since otherwise the polycount would be pointless), it will be quite difficult to animate a destruction of the armor/body without going crazy with the polycount.

Having said that, the only way I can currently think of is to have a higher polycount version of each armor/body in the client, with the gore death animations in them. Then, the engine would swap both versions of the model used for the character when dying. However, this means doubling the models in the client, and heavily increasing the polycounts for big battles (unless the engine itself could render the final frame of the death animation of the character, store it in the memory, then would destroy the model itself and replace it with the rendered sprite, but I don't know if this is possible with the current engine)

If only the 'normal' version of the model must be used at all times, there should always be present some inner polygons for chopping the arms and legs, and then separating them in the death animation. The same principle can be applied to the armors as well, but I don't know how well it will look

Just my two cents on the subject 

[LagMaster]

for burst death anim i think a step by step retexture is good, for where you die in case of explision or plasma or cutted by laset if we use some alpha chanel retexture

[Gray]

just out of curiosity: how are you planning on tackling the gore deaths? If the engine uses the 3D models in real time (which I suppose it does, since otherwise the polycount would be pointless), it will be quite difficult to animate a destruction of the armor/body without going crazy with the polycount.

OK. Gore deaths:
1. Hole in a chest. Models substitution. Just making a copy of every armor with a hole in a chest and exchange the actual model in the moment of death. Blood burst disguising the exchange moment.
2. Laser slice. The same thing.
3. Explosive blast. The same ting.
4. Plasma melt. Keep 2d Animation. What? It looks the same for all armors!
5. Burn. Keep 2D animation.
6. Pulse burn. Keep 2D animation.

So, where is the problem? All we need are particle effects. We can even add SOME NEW animations as head blast, limb cut, etc.

[Bones]

oh no problem at all!!, i was just curious if model substitution was possible 

great news

[Gray]

oh no problem at all!!, i was just curious if model substitution was possible 

great news

Every armor change is a model substitution

[Karpov]

Armors are models attached to the base model, the trick is to attach a new body as an "armor" and hide the original model, this alternative model is almost an exact copy of the character, except for the holes in his chest or whatever we need, and it can hold the base parameters of the player character, which is very important. Once the "armor", the alternative body, is attached , it can play the sequence of the specific death.
   However, this was barely tested, preparing the models by console commands before I blew them into pieces with a bazooka, I don't know if it can be done in real time  . I hope it will work fine.

[Bones]

and what about rendering a sprite for the final frame of the animation? and then using that sprite to maintain the dead body (in order to remove the 3D model?

Is it possible? Would it save memory cost?, my guess is that it would, so there would be fewer polygons to render on screen, but I am no coder 

[Gray]

and what about rendering a sprite for the final frame of the animation? and then using that sprite to maintain the dead body (in order to remove the 3D model?

Is it possible? Would it save memory cost?, my guess is that it would, so there would be fewer polygons to render on screen, but I am no coder 

It is possible, but it is a step back and an odd work. Models and animation should be prepared for the rendering anyway, so why not to use them for real-time 3D rendering?

[Izual]

4. Plasma melt. Keep 2d Animation. What? It looks the same for all armors!

But it doesn't



Unless I misunderstood you?

[Gray]

But it doesn't



Unless I misunderstood you?

Maybe I'm glitching, but I remember another more simple animation.

[Graf]

Can't. Stop. Watching 

On topic, this is some kind of modified death animation. Original one was the same for all armors, so Gray is right.

[Jotisz]

I don't think so as I remember when the npc armor mod was made there was a need to create this death anim for them too.

[Izual]

I'm pretty sure the .frm I placed in my last post was taken from my database of Fallout 2 .frms... Do you have a link to this global-melt-animation? (that would save a lot of work, for sure, even if I'm a bit scared by the 3D->2D transition during death sequence?)

[Graf]

My bad, I've checked, and it seems that the burning and pulse death animations are the same for everyone, while melting seems to be different for each character (or at least there's more than one type of such animation).

[Gray]

That changes nothing. The animation is quite simple: it's rescaling  body parts by 2 axises and dropping them down. The skeleton model is present in VB files, we need just to rescale it to Fallout human proportions.
Particle effects system is a bigger problem. We haven't it.