Character Animations

[LagMaster]

Holy shit, we have almost finished all animations. What do you think about adding new? There miss animations like smoke, unarmed hits, sitting and, and many other.

first we need to finish all and also we need death animations too

[SmartCheetah]

Well, and death animations will be a real pain in the ass. Especially now, when Karpov is not here :<

Anyone of you guys know how to animate things? Or started to learn it? I'm waiting with my retextures for some progress on this level.

[Jotisz]

With good IK solvers it shouldn't be that hard the main problem you can find is building a good skeleton and making the weight paints for the bones (also I'm not sure how the bones should be named I never made characters for game before). If someone could take the skeleton Karpov used for the models it could be reused for all with some tweaking then all char would have similar build up.

[Lexx]

It should be pretty much a must-have to keep the existing skeleton for every humanoid critter. That means, for every human looking model, the skeleton from Karpov's models should be used. This way, every two-leg critter can use the same animation set, if needed (normal human walking like a ghoul, ghouls being able to use all weapons, without the need to create totally new animations for them, etc).

[SmartCheetah]

[17:39] <@CaptainBinky> The res is quite small though, so wouldn't you get away with a sphere particle emitter and just throw a bunch of meaty sprites out that fall under gravity?
[17:41] <@CaptainBinky> I mean, a point emitter would probably do it too. Just spawn the particles at slightly random positions around the point, give them all random velocities and move them in world space under gravity so they can collide with the floor
[17:46] <@CaptainBinky> Trouble with that, is then the individual meat chunks all have the same depth, so you can't have some chunks going in front, some behind. The effect would have to be quite flat. If a guy explodes, you want chuns spreading out all around him..?
[17:47] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, then the chunks need to be individual sprites and moved in code
[17:48] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, if you render frames then you'd get the Doom-style explosion. It's just an anim that plays and leaves no remains
[17:49] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, Other way to do it is to to a gore floor overlay, and then mid-way through the animation, turn that overlay on to display meaty chunks around the guy who exploded
[17:51] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, if the characters are 3D and the scene is 3D, then a particle effect is the easiest way to do it, the quickest, the best-looking, and the most versatile.


[18:02] <SmartCheetah> CaptainBinky - Great thanks! One more thing - If we even manage to make particle effects (we need to do them for muzzle flash anyway)
[18:02] <SmartCheetah> rest of implementing it will depend on code, aye?
[18:04] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, yeah - once you have a particle system in place, stuff like this will be reletively easy to add and you'll have control over spread, blast radius, velocity, randomness, etc etc. Will allow you to implement a wide variety of effects
[18:05] <@CaptainBinky> Ah, if you're going to do pre-rendered particle effects, any software with particle functionality will do - or heck, you could just animate it by hand

[18:08] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, the best results would be from an entirely code-based solution where all the artist provides is a couple of sprites for chunks of meat and blood. But you could animate the effect and just play the animation (using any 3D program with particle support, or hand-drawn in a pixel animation package) although that would not be nearly as nice and wouldn't be versatile. A new animation would be needed for every type of gore explosion

[18:09] <@CaptainBinky> SmartCheetah, if the gore effect is a core aspect of the "look" then I can't advise a code-based solution highly enough

No idea if this will be any help for us, but Binky is definitely a person who have decent knowledge 'bout 3d graphics and animations. Question is: Which way we're gonna handle those special deaths?
I've shown him Karpov's first try on these, and thats what he told me.

[barter1113]

Are there any work on the death animation, because I do not see any news here for quite some time. What happen to Karpov? Karpov did not have time to finish the animation, or create them still? Do you know something about this?

[Graf]

barter1113, probably he's busy with some real life stuff. Everyone here's working in their spare time, so it's ok situation when someone falling out from the development for some time.

[Lizard]

I have a suggestion: how about making a specialized manual for animation?

It shouldn't be the complete how-to model/UV/rig/install, but some easy step-by-step buttonpushing with pre-made components, like a rigged human model and short explanation how-to moving the joints/capture the animation.

This way, it would be easier for everyone to partake at animating.

[Graf]

This kind of manual can write only mr. Karpov, if he wish do so. It doesn't mean, than we don't have anyone who can deal with animating (we have at least 2 more guys, or even more), but idk if there's some special software, that should be used, or some special techniques. So lets wait for Karpov reappear and ask him to write that kind of thing.

[Cryptopsy]

I think, original "gun on the groin" pose is somehow... ridiculous. Maybe it will be better to make it Arnie-style?

Slightly modified big gun animation should be good.

P.S. the minigun is really big, but not so much theese are about 150% of it's real size

To be honest, the bigger miniguns used by older war forces in the United States, as such, they actually did hold to the groin. They were held up with shoulder straps, though, for support. Also, it wouldn't hurt because the gun doesn't have recoil. It just has torque from the rotating barrels.

[spears]

Im fairly certain thats not true, do you have a source?

[Cryptopsy]

Im fairly certain thats not true, do you have a source?

I know I've seen it somewhere before. But either way, it isn't like the gun kicks like a rifle. Its focus is more rounds per minute. Not a single large blast. So the recoil won't be as large as a high caliber rifle. It will just (like mentioned before) want to rotate or as someone else put it, move side to side.

[spears]

The avenger fitted to the A-10 has a stated recoil of 45kn thats just over the 40kn power of one the planes engines. There is no way anybody is ever gonna fire this thing however they hold it.
I think it should just be held in the traditional way, changing the stance wouldnt make it more realistic.

[avv]

Nobody's gonna fire handheld bullet-shooting minigun, ever. The recoil is simply too massive.
But in fonline we can pretend the minigun has some kickass recoil-reducing system and make the animation just look the way we want: as cool as possible.

[Lizard]

Nobody's gonna fire handheld bullet-shooting minigun, ever. The recoil is simply too massive.
But in fonline we can pretend the minigun has some kickass recoil-reducing system and make the animation just look the way we want: as cool as possible.

Yeah, like twin jet exhaust to the back with 1113N thrust. Ah, and did someone mentioned the A-10? Please, don't mix up 'Nam UH-1 sidegunner XM134 and GAU-8A, the gun which was a plane built around it.