Author Topic: Character Animations  (Read 145947 times)

Offline Johnnybravo

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #270 on: December 28, 2011, 01:51:17 pm »
It can be done with no visual cost...
But you can guess what it takes when you rape normals.

Well, if it has no impact on animations (which it really shouldn't) and there are normal maps done for these models, then it definitely should be done even for slight gain. You can guess that some might be getting over 60FPS so they don't care, but for others it might be gain from 50 to 60 for example, and that is considerable amount.
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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #271 on: December 28, 2011, 02:14:54 pm »
From 3700 to 640 vertex is a 570% improvement but 10 fps when the game runs at 300 fps is a 3% speed improvement.  Is it worth?

i got jump from 10fps up to 80fps (what is ~ 18%, from 520fps to 613fps) and even normals aren't needed, some tricky painted shadows on textures may be enough, we got one light point for shadow, and one for camera (specular)
« Last Edit: December 28, 2011, 02:19:59 pm by baaelSiljan »
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Offline lisac2k

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #272 on: December 28, 2011, 02:30:23 pm »
While I admire simplicity, there's no need to go overboard with vertex/poly reduction. Baael's work is excellent, I have no idea how he managed to reduce the vertex amount for almost 600% (was the model bloated with unwelded vertices or something?), but I personally would leave some parts excluded from this "optimisation". Especially abdomen/torso/back may show a bad reaction to skinning or strange artifacts during animations. If I learned anything from modeling and animating low poly stuff, it's better to have sufficient polys in some critical areas than try to optimise the poly count to infinity and back. And since all of the models shown here have no more than 1.5k polys, hence not a problem for in-game rendering even on some older video cards, I would drop out unnecessary reductions. Remember, vertex optimisation is still needed (and this is where baaelSiljan did great work).

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #273 on: December 28, 2011, 02:37:51 pm »
thanks :)

I have no idea how he managed to reduce the vertex amount for almost 600%

(C4D but I cannot save this model cause it is trial)

functions -> optimize -> remove unused points, remove double points, snap to 0.01

all triangles got its own points, while points may be shared, it is visible when You use hypernurbs for example:


(left is optimized, right is original)

also there are some artifacts inside model, and some doubled polygons
« Last Edit: December 28, 2011, 02:48:02 pm by baaelSiljan »
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Offline Graf

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #274 on: December 28, 2011, 04:55:39 pm »
I'm not too much involved in such details of the optimization, as you do, guys, but I think, that there might be something, that could optimize the game performance further - along with the vertex optimization. FYI: It wasn't my own idea originally, it was said in some PM conversation between me and IvanSyomin a while ago. Back then he said, that it might be a good idea to make a texture atlases. I'll quote the description of that feature from some game-dev site, instead of trying to explain it on my own:

Why use a texture atlas?

There are two main reasons to use a texture atlas. First, it can increase rendering speed by allowing you to batch more objects into a single draw call. For example, if all the plants in the game use just one texture atlas, then you can draw them all at the same time. Otherwise you would have to draw one group of plants, switch texture state, draw another group of plants, and so on.

Second, it allows you to use unusually-shaped textures. Most graphics cards are designed to use textures that are square and have dimensions that are powers of two, such as 256x256, 512x512, and so on. But what if you have a graphic that is 550x130? You would have to put it in the middle of a 1024x1024 texture, and waste all the extra space. Alternately, you could pack a lot of unusually-shaped textures into one square texture atlas, and hardly waste any space at all!

I think, that it perfectly fits our case, where we have a lot of models that doesn't even need a 128x128 texture, not even saying of the bigger one (this mostly applies to the items, not characters), and it could probably increase the performance only because the none of the CPU or GPU shouldn't load a bunch of small files in their memory. Of course, it would require quite a job to be redone, but I think it worth it. What do you think about it?

P.S. Great work on the optimization and animations, guys :) It really makes my day each time I see something from your recent progress.

Re: Character Animations
« Reply #275 on: December 28, 2011, 05:02:30 pm »
Graf as You are moderator, may I ask You to move last topics to some separate thread? :)

Such atlases may be done automatically with some kind of "build" command or something.

http://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools
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Offline Graf

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #276 on: December 28, 2011, 05:38:41 pm »
Graf as You are moderator, may I ask You to move last topics to some separate thread? :)

Uh, I don't see much sense in it. I could do it later, when the discussion is finished and moving some posts to the separate thread won't interrupt it.

Such atlases may be done automatically with some kind of "build" command or something.

It would be nice, if someone more experienced on that field than me, will try to deal with it. Just want to check out, if it actually gives any significant performance increase.

Re: Character Animations
« Reply #277 on: December 28, 2011, 09:19:18 pm »
IMO we can use both versions (unoptimized and the new one) as people might want to change their detail level. Also, when zooming out, it should use less detailed models to take off some weight from your hardware. Take mount and blade as an example, where it uses different LoD for actors which are far far away, but still visible for you. You won't really notice that, while it helps in running game smoothly on older machines.
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Offline Lexx

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #278 on: December 29, 2011, 11:43:57 am »
But - as much as I know right now - the plan is to make the model act like the original sprites. This means, when you zoom in, they don't become smoother like they do right now, but more pixelated, etc... just like every 2d graphic does right now. Therefore, different LOD levels wouldn't make much sense.

Re: Character Animations
« Reply #279 on: December 29, 2011, 04:57:17 pm »
That's in my opinion why we dont need complicated polys on faces, shaped knuckles, so much contrasted muscles etc on models, those models are very good and very detailed, but they may be simpler in our case, so we may step by step simplify them and look how it would work. When animations are done, all we need to do is assign model to bones and texture them once again, then test against animations and fix joints. Same thing with textures, in many cases i really cant notice any ingame difference between 512x512 and 64x64. So why not to keep it small. One thing I noticed, fps impact of small improvements is bigger on older hardware than on newer.
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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #280 on: January 21, 2012, 07:41:00 pm »
This is a bit messed but I just got it up to youtube will change it to a better one as soon as I have more progress.
Animation list AA, AL, AK, AN. Speed is fast a bit.
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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #281 on: January 22, 2012, 07:47:33 am »
Looks good, but it's hard to tell at that speed.

in Requiem, there is enclave, player driven faction. They have to gather, craft.. like everybody else, but they have special base and rank before their names. Their roleplay is based on kill everyone.

Re: Character Animations
« Reply #282 on: January 22, 2012, 12:42:31 pm »
Jotisz, that look very good in my opinion.

You know, there's still a possibility to add very detailed models to the game, yet it will make the very idea of 3d as technology on FOnline engine obsolete.

1. Make a high-poly model and animate it.
2. Render the images from different perspectives with a shader and dithering you desire.
3. Create a batch (most simple method - autoclicker recording) for setting up the palette and alpha layer.
4. Create 6 batches for importing render images into Frame Animator and adjust the offsets for each direction.

From that point on, you'll have a automatic routine for rendering a certain type of 3d model into frames.
The drawbacks of this method is that it overthrows the work of some people here - first, second - it's a completely new approach and perhaps doesn't fit with the agenda of the developers according the introducion of 3d, tertiar - the whole process is very rigid and depends on every single process. (one must create new batches for different creatures and in case of autoclicker: position the windows accordingly)
And the final catch is - the creator of these frames will hold the absolute monopoly on his work, he won't be able to share work with the community just because of technological aspect of uniquity of his batch setup.
He will be only able to receive content, like weapons, skins, models from others, unless he share his batch file, positioning of windows on his workspace and all the other small adjustments of his 3d package and picture editor.

Yet, in my humble opinion, it IS in a farsight a more simpler approach for the "falloutish" looks of models and implementation in different revisions. Depends who's going to start it and how it will be received.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2012, 12:51:14 pm by Lizard »
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Offline Lexx

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Re: Character Animations
« Reply #283 on: January 22, 2012, 01:07:52 pm »
That's not what we want to do. It doesn't make it easier to add new armors and clothings, also it will make the client to grow bigger and bigger in size, due to the big amount of graphic frames needed. In the end, it will not make the models look much different if you pre-render new models or use the direct 3d models with shaders.

Also it's very inefficient if someone is holding the monopoly on a model and it's core files. Imagine we are going to add new weapon graphic-- all models need to be adjusted with the weapon and if now one of the people with their model-monopoly isn't going to do it, the whole thing is fucked and can't be done, exactly how it is right now with the original Fallout critter models and animations.
« Last Edit: January 22, 2012, 01:11:55 pm by Lexx »

Re: Character Animations
« Reply #284 on: January 22, 2012, 01:33:00 pm »
That was very insightful, i missed the client size btw, Lexx. Would it also affect the net perfomance?

I stated merely the possibly advantages and drawbacks of this method - honestly. Of course the monopoly will be not only a privilege but also a lot of additional stress on the holder and he will most probably not make it alone, so the process will hang for months in stage of vaporware without support of others.

So instead of making the player models, we could use this for creating particle and blood splatter effects, don't you think?
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