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FOnline Development => 3D Development => Topic started by: Karpov on February 17, 2011, 04:53:13 pm

Title: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 17, 2011, 04:53:13 pm
Here is the animation list:
(http://www.imagepost.eu/images/2/anim10052010.png)

It is up to date at revision 79 of 3D repository.

I found that dodge animations need to be done too  :( But it is almost complete.


 New Video , Minigun: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjBu4RHNaYY

I had to change the holster animation, what do you think?
I used Harald's model, with new texturing.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Izual on February 17, 2011, 05:08:22 pm
It looks great (holstering, bullets falling on the ground, weapon in the back of the character..!). However, I think the firing animation needs to last a bit longer and also to be a bit more "moving", if you know what I mean. It's hard, from a safe distance, to see the difference with the normal idle minigun animation (I think :P).
Great work as always.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: JovankaB on February 17, 2011, 05:25:10 pm
Maybe you could add muzzle flash when firing. Just some yellow-orange "triangles"...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 17, 2011, 05:31:24 pm
Heh, the model just looks frickin epic in-game. Great work on the texture and the animation, but I think it just needs more sway - a real minigun has more recoil. You can also take a look at Fallout 3 minigun, each shot actually makes the character "jump" a bit.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 17, 2011, 05:37:20 pm
Ok, I see what you mean, I will repeat some frames an the end. The arms move up and down very fast while firing, along with the back and the legs a bit. I could make that motion to be more evident without zoom, but I would not want to exaggerate it.
 The guy in the original sprites holstered the weapon to the left, and then it suddenly disappeared , like if he put it into some kind of magical pocket. So I had to change it, but I could not make it holster to the left,  so I made it to the right and from there to the back. Maybe it should have some kind of harness when the minigun is equiped or in the back.

I sure could add some muzzle flash, but It would not look very good if it is just geometry, also it would not be lit in the dark. If I had alpha and luminance map support in the engine it would be great, but I would need to compile a shader and I don't know how to do that  :-\ .
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 17, 2011, 06:19:49 pm
I always thought the player is holding the minigun more on his right leg, to kind of stabilize it. In the video it looks like his groin are the stabilizer now. :p
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: kttdestroyer on February 17, 2011, 06:29:21 pm
I think he could be a bit more bend backwords overally, too keep the balance. I dont know how the model looks on the side, but in old sprites you can see that very well on when char is placed sideways. Very nice details btw  8)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 17, 2011, 06:47:25 pm
I always thought the player is holding the minigun more on his right leg, to kind of stabilize it. In the video it looks like his groin are the stabilizer now. :p
Groin massage  ;D ;D ;D Sorry for the off-topic, but just couldn't resist!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 17, 2011, 06:55:03 pm
I always thought the player is holding the minigun more on his right leg, to kind of stabilize it. In the video it looks like his groin are the stabilizer now. :p

It is the left leg actually, I placed it right on front of it, perhaps you just can't see that in the video.

I think he could be a bit more bend backwords overally, too keep the balance. I dont know how the model looks on the side, but in old sprites you can see that very well on when char is placed sideways. Very nice details btw  8)

The guy leans back, but I don't know if it is the right angle.

(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2537/minigunshoot.jpg)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Crazy on February 17, 2011, 08:17:07 pm
Btw, does Gray or any other modder could help you with shader? I think the animation really miss it to be more "alive"
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 17, 2011, 08:20:15 pm
All weapons are missing particle effects right now. :p Muzzleflash, flameburn, plasmacast, etc. still needs to be done for the weapons.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 17, 2011, 08:21:26 pm
All weapons are missing particle effects right now. :p Muzzleflash, flameburn, plasmacast, etc. still needs to be done for the weapons.
Will the flamer effect be a particle effect too?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 17, 2011, 08:22:12 pm
It has to be. Right now, it's includet in the 2d critter animation. I think it will be hard to recreate it's look, if not impossible.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: TheGreenHand on February 17, 2011, 08:26:05 pm
It has to be. Right now, it's includet in the 2d critter animation. I think it will be hard to recreate it's look, if not impossible.

Couldn't it remain 2D, like firing a rocket?  I could be completely wrong.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Solar on February 17, 2011, 08:54:44 pm
Would it be possible to make Aiming/Bursting/Normal single shots have different animations for the small guns? A problem I have making Fast Shot work is that whatever I do with the stats, the animation speed is the factor which controls how many shots you can get off.

If single shot was a faster animation it would be a great help to the char type.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 17, 2011, 09:04:01 pm
The guy leans back, but I don't know if it is the right angle.

(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2537/minigunshoot.jpg)
I think, original "gun on the groin" pose is somehow... ridiculous. Maybe it will be better to make it Arnie-style?
(http://www.arms-magazin.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/510.jpg)
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
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Crazy on February 17, 2011, 09:19:22 pm
I think you're right, Arnie definitely know how to handle a minigun and look badass.
Hey, if we have new animations for flamers, we will be able to increase the range, hurray!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 17, 2011, 09:27:35 pm
What do you mean with Fast Shot, Solar? Do you want a faster animation so that you can consume 9 APs and fire 3 shots just doing some "triple click"? If you can make the engine use a specific animation for those shots then yes, it could be done, maybe something like Clint Eastwood fast draw, firing almost from the hip.

The minigun is placed over the left leg, but well, it is the "Fallout way" to hold it. Everywhere else, Terminator, Predator, and many videogames use the minigun on the side.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Solar on February 17, 2011, 09:37:49 pm
Thats right. Right now if you take 2 AP to fire a pistol and the animation takes twice as long as a 4 AP shot then you lose the advantage of the lower AP
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Floodnik on February 17, 2011, 09:45:17 pm
But remember that the lag wouldn't let you do it. Latency with this server isn't good enough. Though why wouldn't you make the thing scripted on the server side, like a "shot X singles" mode. You could predefine X with a hotkey or something.  That would make you do some kind of a triple(in example)-click. The option would work only for Fast Shot characters.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 17, 2011, 10:01:26 pm
I think you're right, Arnie definitely know how to handle a minigun and look badass.
Hey, if we have new animations for flamers, we will be able to increase the range, hurray!

His minigun is at least half the size than the one in Fallout.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 18, 2011, 08:36:16 am
His minigun is at least half the size than the one in Fallout.
Yeah, at the start I thought it's somekind of Future version of M24 SAW, but then I found out it actually has more than 1 barrel. No to Arnie style!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 18, 2011, 09:45:37 am
His minigun is at least half the size than the one in Fallout.
(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2537/minigunshoot.jpg)
This minigun seems to shoot 12,7 instead of 5 mm ;D
It's half bigger then the sprite one.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 18, 2011, 10:12:02 am
(http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2537/minigunshoot.jpg)
This minigun seems to shoot 12,7 instead of 5 mm ;D
It's half bigger then the sprite one.

For mass blue suit destruction ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Izual on February 18, 2011, 10:24:28 am
Would it be possible to make Aiming/Bursting/Normal single shots have different animations for the small guns?

That would look great. Just like Denergar's avatar: (http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7654/hmcmbtjj4.gif) (link (http://www.fonline.ru/forum/showthread.php?t=15361).)
Making aiming animations last 0.5 seconds longer could also be good regarding the balance.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 18, 2011, 12:46:38 pm
Well, longer aiming time is already due to the high ap use. You can't fire the next bullet until your ap are at least x high again.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: avv on February 18, 2011, 03:11:36 pm
Well, longer aiming time is already due to the high ap use. You can't fire the next bullet until your ap are at least x high again.

But when you fire the first shot, aiming is done after the shot  ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on February 18, 2011, 03:21:05 pm
(http://img199.imageshack.us/img199/7654/hmcmbtjj4.gif)
It's good for aimed shot.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on February 18, 2011, 08:11:48 pm
well, i was thinking a few days about this, but i think that the weapon models have a small problem:
The ammo mag is welded to the gun
that means that it will be a problem to take it off and put other one instead, i think we need to make separate meshes for the magazines, so we can make reload animations

i do not think is a big problem: we must just separate the cartrige and then fill the holes, how?

we move the mag's points and delete the supraface that are holding with the gun
we unite the points that where separated=>we got a separate mag
now we create a small box and delete a face(but keep the points)
now we put the box in the open space and we unite the coresponding points.

in theory this will only add only 12-20 pollys to the gun(the new made magazine) and we can move it where we whant, probably clone it for an reloading animation

i think i can do this in images, but i will need 3 models please: gauss pistol, FN FALL and 10 mm pistol(for tutorials, i got in mind 3 modes to make mags)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 18, 2011, 08:21:52 pm
Yeah... You are quite much right LagMaster. But... it won't add any polys. If the model already has the mag, we just divide it from the gun, ending in maximum of 2-4 polys... Need someone smarter than me to confirm this tho.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 18, 2011, 08:37:36 pm
Another question: is it really necessary to move the magazine during the animation? I don't know any non-shooter game doing so.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 18, 2011, 08:44:41 pm
Another question: is it really necessary to move the magazine during the animation? I don't know any non-shooter game doing so.
FOnline not a shooter? ;D Gray, you made a great joke! PK, Grid camping, TC and hunting is done by shooting...

Back to topic: I think some modern (REALLY modern) games have it. Some of them are strategy games (I think Dawn of War 2: Warhammer 40k had this feature, however, I'm not sure)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on February 18, 2011, 08:45:53 pm
Another question: is it really necessary to move the magazine during the animation? I don't know any non-shooter game doing so.

we need to ad some level of realism, Gray, so i think it is a yes, but is not that hard

i am thinking for an animation for rifles:
1.PC relases the old mag (0.2seconds)
2.mag falls all over the ground and PC takes new mag from pocket(0.3-0.4seconds)
3.old mag bounces a bit from the ground and the PC introduces the new mag in the gun(0.3-0.4seconds)
4.PC loads manualy the first bullet(0.2 seconds)

so the animation will be of maximum 1.5 seconds long, we can do some versions for miniguns(pulls a box and introduces other one(like in FNV)) flamers.Laser rifles(pulls out the flfuel canister and inserts other one) and even pistols(something like the 9mm pistol reload animation from FNV)
so we will have 1.5 seconds reload times. (and why not a perk that reduces it with 1 second(nah))
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 18, 2011, 08:47:54 pm
The mag is so small, you will hardly ever see it.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 18, 2011, 08:51:28 pm
(and why not a perk that reduces it with 1 second(nah))
Quick pockets anyone?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on February 18, 2011, 09:01:48 pm
The mag is so small, you will hardly ever see it.
Lexx, some "idle" animations(for unarmed is head scrach) have a reloading animation(like male-SMG) where you can SEE the mag flying, so why can't we have 3D animations for reloading

and for some guns(like flamer of minigun) the mag will actualy be seen

but as Haraldx said:
Back to topic: I think some modern (REALLY modern) games have it. Some of them are strategy games (I think Dawn of War 2: Warhammer 40k had this feature, however, I'm not sure)
so this will be a nice feature, also current reload is not that good(semi-shot)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 18, 2011, 10:17:52 pm
FOnline not a shooter? ;D Gray, you made a great joke! PK, Grid camping, TC and hunting is done by shooting...
Humor, I hope? I was talking about first-person shooters. Even "7.62" - the most detailed squad combat simulator I ever saw - do not have such a feature.
Back to topic: I think some modern (REALLY modern) games have it. Some of them are strategy games (I think Dawn of War 2: Warhammer 40k had this feature, however, I'm not sure)
Definitely not.

I just want you to comprehend the scale of work. Almost each type of weapon has at least three different clip types.
Rifles: classic (assault, FAL, etc), bull-pup (XL70E3, all shotguns), front loading (G11)
SMGs: classic (M3A1, tommy, 10 mm) and bull-pup (P90)
Pistols: drum (all revolvers, 10 mm, .223), rifle-type (mauser, gauss, 14mm), handle clip (eagle), upside loading (needler)
Heavy: valving tank (flamers), ammo box (M60), rifle-type (bozar), bull-pup (LSW), backside loading (RL), cartridge belt (miniguns), unknown!!! (vindicator)

Each type has unique holstering pose => different animation. It's 16 different animations just for 2-sec action.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on February 18, 2011, 10:24:03 pm
Humor, I hope? I was talking about first-person shooters. Even "7.62" - the most detailed squad combat simulator I ever saw - do not have such a feature.Definitely not.

I just want you to comprehend the scale of work. Almost each type of weapon has at least three different clip types.
Rifles: classic (assault, FAL, etc), bull-pup (XL70E3, all shotguns), front loading (G11)
SMGs: classic (M3A1, tommy, 10 mm) and bull-pup (P90)
Pistols: drum (all revolvers, 10 mm, .223), rifle-type (mauser, gauss, 14mm), handle clip (eagle), upside loading (needler)
Heavy: valving tank (flamers), ammo box (M60), rifle-type (bozar), bull-pup (LSW), backside loading (RL), cartridge belt (miniguns), unknown!!! (vindicator)

Each type has unique holstering pose => different animation. It's 16 different animations just for 2-sec action.
in this case, let's start working!!!!!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 18, 2011, 10:32:40 pm
in this case, let's start working!!!!!
Just one problem: we have the only good animator. And he is busy with more important things.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on February 18, 2011, 10:34:27 pm
Just one problem: we have the only good animator. And he is busy with more important things.
waiting, waiting never changes

allright then, let's first focus on teh important stuff and then with this
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Reiniat on February 19, 2011, 05:38:42 am
FOnline not a shooter? ;D Gray, you made a great joke! PK, Grid camping, TC and hunting is done by shooting...

Back to topic: I think some modern (REALLY modern) games have it. Some of them are strategy games (I think Dawn of War 2: Warhammer 40k had this feature, however, I'm not sure)

man youre talking about some MMORPGS now i will talk about FPS:
THere is not a game with this feature exept Gears Of War 2
All the call of duty saga, even the las Black Ops have this feature
Farcry, Crysis, Halo, no one have it
Gearsofwar havee it, but the game is really detailistic and less combative, in only holds 10 IA in game so is shit
also games in 3 person view dont have it, like GTA

No matter with reloading, just do the correct animations
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 19, 2011, 07:48:00 pm
I was a bit worried about special death animations, after spending so much time thinking how to achieve these , and test over and over, I came to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Lc81Fb_ZU

It is not the best way though, but the only one I can think about  :-\ 
You have to set up the critter before you blow him into pieces. First you make him invisible and then you attach an alternative body which is dismembered as if it were an armor. Then the "armor" plays an animation along with the character (which is invisible) and there you go.
It is not an easy thing to do.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on February 19, 2011, 08:28:27 pm
Looking good. But... isn't it easier to separate the model itself in different parts? Also, you might need to make limbs covered in blood (not the blood on ground or anything, but blood on the body).

Also, rocket explosion effect: Can you make the body parts fly higher? For now it seems the smoke ate the human.
laser effect: Bit slower please?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 19, 2011, 10:32:08 pm
I was a bit worried about special death animations, after spending so much time thinking how to achieve these , and test over and over, I came to this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Lc81Fb_ZU
Great. Just slow them down a little and all will be OK.
Somebody should think how to add some blood effects.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 19, 2011, 11:50:44 pm
Yeah, it's just a test. I needed to find a way to create those animations. But I still need to make them use the character custom values. I managed to make it use the skin tone - if you look at the top right corner there is another body sliced in two- , now I will try with the attachments. It can be very difficult. If everything goes right, I can make better animations.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on February 20, 2011, 12:00:14 am
Specially prepared character models should solve most of problems. It's better to spent some some minutes to make partitioned body, then hours to force it partitioning in real-time.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on February 20, 2011, 07:55:34 am
I was a bit worried about special death animations, after spending so much time thinking how to achieve these , and test over and over, I came to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-Lc81Fb_ZU
Great video, but we need blood and hardcore :D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: bikkebakke on February 21, 2011, 10:39:59 am
nice, but first one is too fast, should slow it down a bit.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Solar on February 23, 2011, 01:16:36 pm
Any chance of a unique stealing animation? Something to stop people using science on people and causing them to attack someone who is under protection.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on February 23, 2011, 03:30:54 pm
Well...if we do that, it would have to be very disimulated, so it is harder to detect, after all, you are stealing.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: TommyTheGun on February 23, 2011, 04:30:10 pm
It could differ just a bit from normal "use" animation. That way, if you really pay attention on whats going on, you know theres a thief around, hmm?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on February 23, 2011, 04:31:08 pm
You would only see the animation if the steal-check fails.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 10, 2011, 03:20:19 pm
I completed the dodge animations for all weapons, but that does not mean they are finished. Check them out, and we'll discuss what needs to be fixed. I'll do the same thing with all of the animations, so we can spot problems and fix them. Also, they have been uploaded to the repository.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oL82Ozgs5R4

At the end of the video I test a motion capture file I downloaded, just to check if I can add animations that were not made specifically for this character. However, motion capture does not seem to fit the fallout style, I believe Van Buren animations were made with that technique  ::).
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: pistacja on March 10, 2011, 03:26:05 pm
The mocap is great ;D

In the spear-dodge the char makes a move with his left hand to his forehead (brushing his hair), that's not part of the dodge it's part of the "idle" animation, right?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on March 10, 2011, 03:29:01 pm
At the end of the video I test a motion capture file I downloaded, just to check if I can add animations that were not made specifically for this character. However, motion capture does not seem to fit the fallout style, I believe Van Buren animations were made with that technique  ::).

Hahahaha  ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on March 10, 2011, 03:50:36 pm
Hehe @ the end. :P

It looks very good, the dodging with minigun and other heavy weaponry looks a bit stiffy though. It's a bit cheesy how easily the character lifts up the heavy weapon. ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 10, 2011, 04:01:36 pm
Hehe @ the end. :P

It looks very good, the dodging with minigun and other heavy weaponry looks a bit stiffy though. It's a bit cheesy how easily the character lifts up the heavy weapon. ;)

Yes, I noticed that too, it should look like it is heavy, and not made from recicled paperboard  :).

The mocap is great ;D

In the spear-dodge the char makes a move with his left hand to his forehead (brushing his hair), that's not part of the dodge it's part of the "idle" animation, right?

Yes, it's part of the idle anim, but one of the reasons i did not make those for all weapons is because the character plays it right after every other animation, like walking, and it looks bad scratching his head all the time.

PS :I missed the Rocket launcher animation in the video.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on March 10, 2011, 05:31:07 pm
This video is... hilarious, Karpov :D It has revived my belief to mocap in Fonline.

So, maybe some motion capture still could be used?

A few month ago, I've got an idea to buy 6 web cams and special software, which is all together allows user to make a motion capture even at home, but then you've shown your amazing animations and I desided to not to use that trick.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on March 10, 2011, 05:36:02 pm
Beautiful thing. End of the video made me laugh, hahaha. And I agree with Graf - we could use that motion capture thing for some tricks and new animations like sitting/lying/whateva :D
You sure we can't use that dance?  ;D It looks amazing and could be nice easter egg :D

Oh, and about minigun animation: IMNSHO it looks good as it is. After all he's dodging and using force of all body to move, so it's not only based on his arms strenght. Second thing is that barrel isn't the heaviest thing in the minigun, so it looks pretty balanced actually.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on March 11, 2011, 10:16:33 am
Real awesome anims the ending of the video has made my day. About the heavy weapon dodge I dunno if it possible to move them like that but I definitely like the motion there so for me its more then ok.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on March 11, 2011, 03:04:43 pm
Hmmm... How about we actually use the dancing animation for people in places like Maltese Falcon, Malamut saloon and that kind of stuff? Just a random idea.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on March 11, 2011, 03:15:16 pm
I'd appreciate it, but not if it looks like some Micheal Jackson wannabe like in above video. :P ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: TommyTheGun on March 11, 2011, 03:32:20 pm
IMO some drunk-junk-lazy moves with the head down would fit :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 19, 2011, 07:56:59 pm
Hello, I made the walking animation for the female character. The idle for unarmed and spear are also different from the male, the others can be converted easily when they are ready.

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmGGg2hPHuY



PS: please excuse if I don't use the work that many of you made, I've seen a lot of good stuff these days. I'll try to add some when I can.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on March 20, 2011, 06:37:37 am
Hello, I made the walking animation for the female character. The idle for unarmed and spear are also different from the male, the others can be converted easily when they are ready.

Video : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmGGg2hPHuY
Very good animation, but too fast. Her feet slides.
80% speed should be OK.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on March 20, 2011, 07:18:31 am
Nice the animation looks real smooth only a bit fast as Gray said
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on March 20, 2011, 08:11:46 pm
Great stuff man, as always!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on March 20, 2011, 09:38:59 pm
Nice work, Karpov, what should i say? I appreciate your work a lot, it gives me the hope that someday we'll have these in-game.
For that, i'll even donate money.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 21, 2011, 03:52:36 pm
Thanks. I wanted to keep the exact frame count from the male walk, but somehow it seems to go faster  ??? . Anyway, I tested it on 0.85 speed, and goes fine, maybe I'll stretch it to that proportion.

Also I wanted to say that if someone , while playing with the SDK, notices something that can be fixed about the animations or that does not look right, please let me know. At this point I don't know what to do, but I would not want to convert all animations to the female figure until I make sure all anims look right. I think I'll give it some time, and then convert them so that we have finally both characters fully playable.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Reiniat on April 10, 2011, 08:51:30 am
i see the minigun animation and i think its kinda weird, initially it looks very nice with the bullets falling,etc.
but the recoil of the guns is not only vertical they retreat back to the user also like a non easy to control weapon every bulletshould move the gun to right or left, randomly, i personallythink that a uncontrolable and exagerated movement should look better because the weapon itself look like this. even if it dont fits with the original animation
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on April 10, 2011, 02:57:04 pm
i belive that the miniguns spin so the vertical and back recoil to be reduced by the angular velocity(or something, idk, to lazy to google)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Leon.PL on April 10, 2011, 03:51:04 pm
    This weapon is very easy to control because of barrel small caliber.
U.S use it on blackhawk helicopter to support both sides, and they need to be very static  in one  place, not trowing on left and right side.
This weapon has only two defects. 8) Very heavy, terrible to monitor on decreasing amount of ammunition because, of fireing speed   :o   Perfect animation gratz ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Reiniat on April 10, 2011, 05:40:41 pm
yep in real life miniguns are very stable
but this is fonline, so i think they need to look very uncontrolable and psicho weapons, and that fits also with way of playing of most people,who use it for pking
 
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Ghosthack on April 11, 2011, 04:23:40 am
yep in real life miniguns are very stable
but this is fonline, so i think they need to look very uncontrolable and psicho weapons, and that fits also with way of playing of most people,who use it for pking

In real life, you also don't shoot miniguns from your hip. Not even an M60, because of the weight and insane recoil.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Alvarez on April 11, 2011, 09:07:44 am
Not even an M60, because of the weight and insane recoil.

This.
Even in Terminator 2 Arnie needed a tripod in his pants and he was shooting blanks. What would you expect from a weapon meant to be mounted on a vehicle? ST15?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Handyman on April 11, 2011, 07:49:42 pm
This.
Even in Terminator 2 Arnie needed a tripod in his pants and he was shooting blanks. What would you expect from a weapon meant to be mounted on a vehicle? ST15?


Arnie is vehicle !
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on April 11, 2011, 09:28:38 pm
do you espect normal humans to use gatling guns?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: lithiumfury on April 19, 2011, 08:06:22 pm
So I read around this topic and i have my own suggestion to make about animations , So entering the 3d era isn't just about image! 3d give a hole new set of tools to play! (but what I'm going to suggest could also be made with sprites in 2d) Stances , like in tactics... so I'm going to  quote wiki.
Quote
There are three different stances: stand, crouch and prone.

Characters in lower stance shoot more accurate, are harder to hit and sneak more effectively. They can also use low objects as cover. Crouching sniper can be almost invulnerable when using a high ground.

On the other hand, characters in lower stance move slowly than those in higher stance. Melee and unarmed attacks can't be done in prone stance. Characters that attacking from a very close range against a prone target, are more likely to do critical hits.

(http://images3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20101005095810/fallout/images/2/24/FOT_Different_Stances.png) (http://fallout.wikia.com/index.php?title=Fallout_Tactics_combat&image=FOT_Different_Stances-png)

In this post I will just suggest this but its a thing to think about , why not rethink the combat system? The only way to the future is forward ! Fallout tactics maybe a "crime" in fallout classic point of view but it has lot of interesting stuff ! this is just one of many contributions that tactics has to offer! before I post  this i will also reference : "Vehicle combat" . But like I said Tactics is full of good content ...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on April 19, 2011, 08:14:09 pm
lithiumfury, what you've just said (stances, vehicle combat) is my dream... this is so amazing... all these combined with the "open world map" makes the game very close to the perfection.

I'm also curious, what our dear developers think of implementing of the moving vehicles? I mean, these that can really ride the normal map, not the global map.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: lithiumfury on April 19, 2011, 08:36:08 pm
Yes I didn't mention , the map having more than one floor , like in tactics but it would be could again , having more tactical combat upon a situation , for example you are outnumbered but you have higher ground ... well stances , multiple floors on a map are all improvements to combat and realism. but I did mention that tactics has a lot to offer so I guess this is included. Because every stance , every map positioning has its own skill modifiers. that would be a hell of new combat system.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Crazy on April 19, 2011, 08:49:04 pm
I heard that Cvet was working on crouching feature for the engine, maybe different floor levels and RT vehicles will come next :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on April 19, 2011, 09:15:21 pm
Unfortunately, Cvet will not be working on it, at least until this autumn, coz he said, that he will stop development for a while because of the real life problems with caps. To deal with it, he wants to start a commercial project based on the Fonline engine, but there will no connection to Fallout or even postapocalypse.

Anyway, these features are already implemented in the Fonline project called Fonline Kawaii (it's a working title). Here's (http://www.fonline.su/!files/video/Kawai_03042011.wmv) some WIP video of that project.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on April 19, 2011, 10:07:56 pm
To deal with it, he wants to start a commercial project based on the Fonline engine, but there will no connection to Fallout or even postapocalypse.

Not interested in this crouching or car.. uh, stuff, but the bold part got my attention. Could you elaborate on that?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on April 19, 2011, 10:56:31 pm
I always wanted to see something like fallout tactics in online enviroments ;] That would be plain awesome! Maybe not that atmospheric like original fallouts but still fun to play and pvp ^^"
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: skejwen on April 20, 2011, 07:31:32 am
I always wanted to see something like fallout tactics in online enviroments ;] That would be plain awesome! Maybe not that atmospheric like original fallouts but still fun to play and pvp ^^"

Didnt FoT itself have such feature? ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on April 20, 2011, 09:48:13 am
Could you elaborate on that?
Here's a part of an interview with Cvet.

[19:00] <Sidle_Jinks> Is that project was the reason why you have to come to Moscow?
[19:00] <Cracker> Is it about post-apocalypse?
[19:01] <~ cvet> For me, this this step is forced. It is natural and more interesting for me, to keep the engine in general, but circumstances has forced me to do such step.
[19:01] <~ cvet> No, the project was frozen.
[19:01] <~ cvet> Yes.

[18:59] <Sidle_Jinks> Can you explain what this project is about?
[18:59] <~ cvet> Not now.
[19:00] <~ cvet> It is in the stage of writing of a concept documents, so I could lie, if I'll say anything.

[19:05] <Krizalis> 2d/3d?
[19:06] <~ cvet> Only 3D, because it could be done quickly and also it's very flexible.

[19:02] <Cracker> What about graphics? Do you plan to draw it by yourselves?
[19:02] <~ cvet> Yes, of course, in terms of copyright - we are clean.

[19:07] <Sidle_Jinks> Is is going to be an MMO?
[19:07] <~ cvet> Yes, free to play MMO.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on April 20, 2011, 10:07:08 am
Unfortunately, Cvet will not be working on it, at least until this autumn, coz he said, that he will stop development for a while because of the real life problems with caps. To deal with it, he wants to start a commercial project based on the Fonline engine, but there will no connection to Fallout or even postapocalypse.

Anyway, these features are already implemented in the Fonline project called Fonline Kawaii (it's a working title). Here's (http://www.fonline.su/!files/video/Kawai_03042011.wmv) some WIP video of that project.


Nice but is it Fallout Tactics engine?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on April 20, 2011, 10:11:25 am
Nice but is it Fallout Tactics engine?

Quote
these features are already implemented in the Fonline project called Fonline Kawaii

Reading, it's hard sometimes.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on April 20, 2011, 11:33:37 am
Nice but is it Fallout Tactics engine?
As Lexx said, it's Fonline engine. A while ago, support for Fallout Tactics, Arcanum, Baldur's Gate graphics was added, which means that resources of these games could be used for creation of the game on the Fonline engine.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on April 20, 2011, 11:47:08 am
Reading, it's hard sometimes.

So why there are buildings from Tactics? I prefer FO2 buildings and graphics than Tactics but option for crough is very interesting.

Sounds good. Can he do it with 3D if animations for crough will available?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on April 20, 2011, 11:48:57 am
Because - as Graf wrote above - the FOnline engine supports tiles, critters, etc. from Tactics.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on April 20, 2011, 06:01:41 pm
Didnt FoT itself have such feature? ;)

It has, but very, very, very poor in term of possible options :/ I was thinking about mode more similiar to Persistent Worlds. You know - lvling up, fighting and stuff (not using premade characters)

But enough of this offtopic.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Crazy on April 20, 2011, 06:16:14 pm
Because - as Graf wrote above - the FOnline engine supports tiles, critters, etc. from Tactics.

It support tiles etc, but does it support the different heights/levels?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on April 20, 2011, 07:08:01 pm
It support tiles etc, but does it support the different heights/levels?
Take a closer look at the video (http://www.fonline.su/!files/video/Kawai_03042011.wmv) again. The player is moving to the place, which is over the ground level. So I assume, that the engine itself (by default) can't do it, but this feature could be implemented.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on April 20, 2011, 07:34:39 pm
Take a closer look at the video (http://www.fonline.su/!files/video/Kawai_03042011.wmv) again. The player is moving to the place, which is over the ground level. So I assume, that the engine itself (by default) can't do it, but this feature could be implemented.

These are "just" fake multilevel maps, done via some graphical tricks and illusions, not a real native tactics multilayer map.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on April 21, 2011, 10:11:47 am
These are "just" fake multilevel maps, done via some graphical tricks and illusions, not a real native tactics multilayer map.
probably like the plank at the ship in san fran, it looks like is going up, but is actualy an optical ilusion
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on April 21, 2011, 01:11:08 pm
Yes, indeed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on April 21, 2011, 01:25:02 pm
Take a closer look at the video (http://www.fonline.su/!files/video/Kawai_03042011.wmv) again. The player is moving to the place, which is over the ground level. So I assume, that the engine itself (by default) can't do it, but this feature could be implemented.

Can it be implemented for 2D characters from Fallout 1/2 and 3D characters?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on April 21, 2011, 01:26:08 pm
There is no need to "implement" anything, it just needs a good mapper guy/gal.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on May 11, 2011, 12:25:38 pm
I've spotted a small bug. Though I'm not sure if it's an animation issue or bug in the engine itself.

(http://www.imagepost.eu/images/2/bug.png)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 11, 2011, 12:48:28 pm
In knocked-out state, the player shouldn't have any weapon in the hand anyway. :p

(Same with running, picking stuff up, using something, etc)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on May 11, 2011, 12:54:22 pm
In knocked-out state, the player shouldn't have any weapon in the hand anyway. :p

Why not? In my opinion it looks very nice. It just needs some little tweaks.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Izual on May 11, 2011, 01:17:03 pm
Why not? In my opinion it looks very nice. It just needs some little tweaks.

I think it might cause clipping problems, particularly with walls.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 11, 2011, 01:49:38 pm
Not just that. Having weapons visible in the hands in every pose also requires lots of new animations for these cases and this really has no priority none whatsoever, as not even the really needed animations are done.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on May 11, 2011, 01:50:17 pm
It looks rather silly too, especially in the example you provided, holding a big gun in only one hand as if it's made out of paperwork.
I'm with Lexx, I don't think that we need that.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on May 11, 2011, 04:30:10 pm
Having weapons visible in the hands in every pose also requires lots of new animations for these cases
Only in 2D. 3D animation with weapon and without it has no difference.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on May 11, 2011, 04:46:03 pm
It looks rather silly too, especially in the example you provided, holding a big gun in only one hand as if it's made out of paperwork.
I'm with Lexx, I don't think that we need that.

Not just that. Having weapons visible in the hands in every pose also requires lots of new animations for these cases and this really has no priority none whatsoever, as not even the really needed animations are done.

Ok, ok you're the bosses here. But anyway, in my opinion it's even more silly to have a gun in a hands, but when you fall down and it magically disappears. And when you wake up... PUFF... and you have a gun back in your hands. Pure magic as it is. Why to spoil a good feature, which is already done and just waiting for a few clicks to be implemented into the game? No need to answer, it's just a rhetorical question...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on May 11, 2011, 04:53:05 pm
Ok, ok you're the bosses here.

That's entirely Lexx' decission, I am just expressing my opinion here. ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 11, 2011, 05:39:14 pm
Not my decission. Just pointing out the obvious. There is no need to talk about lots of "if then..", "in future.." stuff, if not even the basics are finished.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: DocAN. on May 11, 2011, 05:47:32 pm
Not my decission. Just pointing out the obvious. There is no need to talk about lots of "if then..", "in future.." stuff, if not even the basics are finished.

So how long this basic stuff will take,  when the wipe will be and please dont tell me Soon (http://www.fo2238.fodev.net/wiki/Soon)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on May 11, 2011, 05:48:30 pm
So how long this basic stuff will take,  when the wipe will be and please dont tell me Soon (http://www.fo2238.fodev.net/wiki/Soon)

The 3d stuff has nothing to do with the wipe, and no, you won't hear anything other then "soon".
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: DocAN. on May 11, 2011, 05:52:49 pm
I asked Lexx not You, are you his slave or what?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 11, 2011, 05:56:46 pm
It's not connected in any kind of way to the next wipe. Also keep in mind that nobody from the 2238 dev team is working on the 3d models and animations. It's 100% community based.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on May 11, 2011, 05:57:43 pm
Depends on which stuff you're talking about. I can say for what I know:

1. 3D weapons - 100% done. Though, it may need a slight improvements in the future.
2. 3D armors - about 70% done. Basic armors are ready, so the game without of 3D NPC's is possible already.
3. 3D misc. stuff - about 60% done.
4. Animations. Basic animations for characters are 85% done. But the game still require a specific animations, like holding stuff (with 1 and 2 hands), sitting, laying etc. The problem is that Karpov are absent for a month already, so nobody is making new animations.

Can't say for sure when all together will be ready to use, it's completely depends on people's free time and their will to do something.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: DocAN. on May 11, 2011, 06:11:16 pm
Double thx for answears.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on May 11, 2011, 06:25:56 pm
how about you fall on the weapon or it falls over you?(when in KD)
you can add this in the KO animations
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 11, 2011, 09:02:48 pm
I think 85% for basic animations is a bit too high. Also death animations need to be done as well.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on May 11, 2011, 09:11:04 pm
I think 85% for basic animations is a bit too high. Also death animations need to be done as well.
(http://www.imagepost.eu/images/2/anim10052010.png)

I've checked it yesterday on the latest repository revision. Though I didn't count death and gore animations.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on May 11, 2011, 09:19:52 pm
I have recently watched some animating and rigging tutorials and I'm thinking about making animations, however, I'll have to finish my models first.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on May 24, 2011, 08:24:35 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on May 24, 2011, 09:00:26 pm
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
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on May 25, 2011, 05:20:34 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 25, 2011, 05:35:31 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on May 26, 2011, 11:57:17 am
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).
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on May 26, 2011, 06:17:32 pm
Quote
[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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on July 06, 2011, 10:39:27 am
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?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on July 06, 2011, 04:25:27 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on July 13, 2011, 09:05:48 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on July 13, 2011, 09:11:51 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Cryptopsy on July 15, 2011, 05:03:35 pm
I think, original "gun on the groin" pose is somehow... ridiculous. Maybe it will be better to make it Arnie-style?
(http://www.arms-magazin.ru/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/510.jpg)
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: spears on July 15, 2011, 11:42:25 pm
Im fairly certain thats not true, do you have a source?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Cryptopsy on July 16, 2011, 04:49:27 am
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: spears on July 16, 2011, 02:40:06 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: avv on July 16, 2011, 07:50:46 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on July 16, 2011, 10:24:10 pm
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on July 21, 2011, 09:26:57 am
The animation should look like the original one. Remember that we try to hit the original style and not invent something new now.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on July 27, 2011, 12:55:45 am
Updated: added arm constraints => you can move around the arms.

If someone wants to play around with posing or something like that, here's the rigged model with leg constraints.
Install Blender 2.49 and Python for opening it.
Switching views around: 1,3,7 on numpad
Switching between object mode and posing mode with Ctrl+Tab
rightclick+R for rotating appendage joints from your view, rightclick+R+X,Y or Z to rotate the joint on certain axis.
rightclick+G for grabbing joints and move them. Rightclick+G+X,Y or Z to move it on certain axis.
Alt+R for resetting rotation, Alt+G to reset the position.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=8FUJIX5C
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on August 07, 2011, 04:30:50 pm
Lizard - did you have a chance to look at the bits I'd posted here (http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=13894.msg147749#msg147749)? May not be of any use - but if we can get the rigs to match closely enough, we can reuse a lot of the existing human animations and reshape them to the other body types according to the sprites. Notably, as well as the bodies themselves, parts of the skeleton are also attached to every single armour, clothing, hat etc - so if these can be made compatible, it will save a lot of time and work.

I'm not sure if the animations link to the rigs by name / position / linkage of bones or by some other means i.e. are the existing animation compatible with your new rig, or would they each need remaking? Basically, it's an area I have little to no experience in, so we'd pretty much need your knowledge, advice and ideas on this one.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on August 09, 2011, 08:22:21 pm
Thanks for the files, Luther! Most interesting...

So far, i failed to import .X skeleton to Blender, i'm just trying a different approach with another software to export...

If the port fails, there's a possible solution for importing animations on another rig - the original animation on Skeleton A is imported and appropriately scaled to the new rig (Skeleton B), then, the bones from NEW Skeleton B should copy the location and rotation of OLD Skeleton A in the same scene, then, both skeletons mustn't exactly copy each other, only joints must be in same positions.

So, one of skeletons will be probably just a provisional solution for easier posing/animating and another one will actually be the official skeleton which moves the models in-game.


For me, i'm no expert either and i'm waiting for Karpov to appear, too.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on August 09, 2011, 10:29:39 pm
Sounds good :)

From what I can gather, if the bones have the same name and same hierarchy, it should work - and it will work much better if they're in the same place. You should be able to add additional "moving sticks" and constraints to make the animation process easier without it affecting the end result. I'm not 100% on this yet, but I'll study what I've got and see what I can get working on it. Graf's got a few extra files which you might want to look at as well.

I'm under the impression the skeleton bits I had exported previously have picked up a few "glitches" and extra bits on the way - there's a lot of "no_name_xx" bones, which I think were created from import / export rather than actually needing to be there - certainly, it appears that it's only the named bones that should be rigged to the model anyway.

I may be able to draw up a diagram - labelling each bone, its name and how it's linked together and how it's rigged to the model, get something of the correct shape into blender, then you might be able to build the new skeleton around this... which SHOULD be completely compatible... I think.

Anyway, theoretically (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem) : An infinite amount of non-experts, working on an infinite amount of 3d programs, will eventually produce the works of Karpov :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on August 10, 2011, 09:55:27 am
Nah, because 'non-experts' don't have time to learn everything just from trial-and-error, what also would frustrate them. We need a simplified tutorial without much going into detail, something that doesn't really explain HOW it works, but allow a satisfying, motivating result, e.g., you don't need to explain the electricity to explain how to turn on the heatplate.

I think, every user on this forums can arrange a good pose to start with, if instructed which buttons are to push.
THEN we have a army of non-experts able to produce a mass of results AND if the user starts to ask WHY "this thing works this way", then we have a good start for a new 'expert'
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on August 10, 2011, 11:24:54 am
Thankfully I'm quite slow to get frustrated (even when this stuff isn't working right at all, it's less frustrating than my 'real work'), so I'm trying to learn what I can when I have time. Despite it all being trial and error, I successfully managed to get a fully working replacement animation in last night (I swapped the walk cycle for a 'silly walk') - and though my recent rigging model attempt wasn't 100% successful, I'm a lot closer to understanding how it works.

Anyway, I pretty much agree with what you're saying there, particularly regarding the 'simplified tutorial' and electricity example etc - I'd mentioned this in a message to Graf the other day :

"Ideally, we want an accurate and compatible skeleton and animations in as many 'open' or widely compatible formats as possible - so people with blender / maya / max / milkshape / gmax / mod tool / poser or whatever can all contribute something - ideally with a bit of guidance on files and formats, "best methods" and to set a few "good examples" first, so we don't end up with too many "the model is rigged, except for its left arm which sticks out" (as I had managed so far) :) "
If between a few of us we can set up working skeletons, and converted animations in a number of programs / formats, with basic instructions on what formats to export in etc, it's a lot closer to the state which you describe, where we can give some good instructions to any new volunteers.

Obviously, if I have any great successes with getting things working, I'll send you the files across. I'm also looking at trying to put together a few diagrams of the bone structure and rigging etc - so if we can't find a way to import into Blender properly, we can probably recreate an accurate enough skeleton which is 100% compatible.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on August 17, 2011, 10:34:42 am
http://www.nma-fallout.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=55655&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=160
Maybe Rain man can do special death animations for Karpov models?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on August 17, 2011, 11:15:01 am
Well found. Certainly worth asking, though I expect he's busy with the Olympus stuff at the moment. I think they're rendered to sprites, then drawn on pixel by pixel, but I'm not sure. Would be very interested to know his process with those. Even if he can't help himself, if we know how it's been done, we can consider it as an option.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on September 12, 2011, 08:22:03 pm
Okay, good news. My research on death anims finally gave me something that works  ;D. The previous test on these anims, was not good enough, so I had to change the whole Idea.
 Added as a new character type, this new model can be sliced in half, have a severed head, arm, forearm, a hole in his chest, and a big hole in right torso.
Standard animations still work for this one, so adding new animations over it would not be a problem. However, I had to use a different bone system for creating this one, which is not what I prefer, but it works.

Check the video. There is no animation yet in this one, but I had to test how it worked.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FI2WfsZbKAA

I hope I can add the inside of the body and some extra bloody parts blowing up. Along with the animation it could look good.


Another thing, the female animations not as easy to convert as I expected. There is one in the repository, for pistol shot. command is "run debug anim 1 8 29".
I had to blend the male shoot anim with the female idle pose, which was not easy , and that's how it will be for the rest  :(
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on September 12, 2011, 08:59:49 pm
awesome, so when you take lethal damage, you change the body skin with the "killed" one, and play the animation
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on September 12, 2011, 09:45:23 pm
Lag : That should be the plan, yes - switching the body model to play the killed animation... unless the "killed" model can be used throughout...

Karpov : Good work. When you say "Standard animations still work for this one", do you mean that the normal walk, run, idle etc works with it? If so, is it easier to use the "killed" model in place of the existing model - so instead of switching the model upon death, it stays as the "killed" one throughout?

Also, are there any thoughts or ideas on a way of running 2D effects on top of the 3D ones? (i.e. a 2D animation of blood splatter, with a transparent background could be placed on top). Thinking particularly about the flame and plasma deaths, which would be very difficult to do otherwise.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on September 12, 2011, 09:48:10 pm
Oh, that's a great news, Karpov! I hope there will be more news soon.

I only have a single question at the moment - do you plan to recreate original animations only, or there also will be some additional animations? Maybe you've mentioned that before, but I can't remember for sure.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on September 12, 2011, 11:29:32 pm
"Killed" one is pretty decent, but with a closer look you can see the cuts on his body, so let's just use it when needed. The only problem is that it takes a second to load the model if it is the first time you do it, like if it needed to load into memory, but it is not a big problem I guess.

I'm not planning on adding extra animations yet, because I am replacing the ones that are implemented. However, there are some extra animations that are actually implemented right now, like limping, VB critter limps when he is crippled. One thing I always wanted to change is the use animation for opening doors, it looks like " oh, where is the keyhole? ...ah there!". It is not a problem to add animations if they are needed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on September 13, 2011, 01:55:28 am
I remember there being a request for a failed steal animation - so successful steals wouldn't be noticeable - the character wouldn't move - but fails would be blatantly visible, and different from the other animations (to cut down on using the "milking a cow" animation for trolling). I'd love a crippled walk option, though obviously that's dependent on if the devs want to use this.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on September 13, 2011, 09:39:02 pm
 This is the first animation made with this new character. Cut in half, laser death, or whatever you want to call it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dj0rEUk1P_0

Came out pretty good, but this one is quite clean compared to the rest of them. Hope I can get that "bloody mess" touch in the other animations.

PS: that guy just wouldn't die!  ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on September 13, 2011, 09:47:28 pm
This is pure greatness.

I'll guess chunks of flesh will be one of the hardest death animations, except if we can make that flying stuff being a 2D animation that is shown while the character animation is played.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on September 14, 2011, 08:36:25 am
if you watch the vid in 240 it looks almoast like original 2D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Bartosz on September 14, 2011, 09:09:01 am
Quote
This is the first animation made with this new character. Cut in half, laser death, or whatever you want to call it.
bows

Showed that vid to a friend (knows Fallout a bit, and knows 3d as well):
- 'What do you mean new animations, there were such animations in original Fallouts!'
- 'But those are 3d'
- 'Wow'
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on September 14, 2011, 11:03:03 am
He means: http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=13929.msg153562#msg153562

Anyway, any reason why 3D disables sound (that cut+ouch/aaah when killed)? Probably quick to fix, just asking.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on September 14, 2011, 11:15:10 am
The sound is taken from the critter file name. The 3d models are named different, so no sound is played. If I remember correct, you can define the sound for the 3d models somewhere in the files. Haven't touched this since a long time, though.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on September 14, 2011, 07:39:00 pm
Does anyone have any idea how the timing of the animation is done? i.e. death before bullet / punch arrives? It's the same against sprite based enemies (if your player is 3D) - you shoot one, and it dies before the gun is raised.

Is this something controlled by the engine, or would animations need pauses putting in them or something? Did this happen with the Van Buren models as well?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on September 14, 2011, 08:45:29 pm
Yes, happened with the VB models as well. As far as I know, it's an engine thing-- the targets animation is played as soon as your action is started. You fire your attack right when you click with the mouse and not 1 or 2 seconds later, when the animation is ready.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on September 15, 2011, 03:56:58 pm
The best thing you can do is to make projectiles faster. Since the effect is instant it will not affect the gameplay, but will make a little more sense.
I think the good example is rocket launcher - things explodes before even rocket reaches it's destination.

Another option would be to track missiles even after they were launched, this would allow players to dodge rockets (probably not huge issue considering the power of rocket launcher), and do explosion when rocket reaches the place.
It would however be really useful then, if it was possible to attack empty space, and it would be all technically much more complicated.

One more off-topic - is it possible to replace missiles with models as well? It would be the place where improvement would be notable even when zoomed out, because projectile can be visible from more angles that it's sprites are able to cover.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on September 21, 2011, 05:45:13 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp9qXMvt3cc

Short clip, burst anim. It could still use some work, and some sound could help , graaaaaahhhwwww!!!  ;)

Gotta go, bye
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on September 21, 2011, 05:50:09 pm
Holy moly! Looks almost like the original. Very good job, again. :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Eternauta on September 21, 2011, 06:11:20 pm
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jp9qXMvt3cc

Lovely!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on September 21, 2011, 07:09:08 pm
Needs just some more shaking when getting shot, some more gore and it pretty much looks exactly like the original... just in 3D amazingness.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on September 21, 2011, 10:03:05 pm
I like it :D

Very impressed by the potential of this.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on September 21, 2011, 10:49:17 pm
Yes, it works quite well. I used an attachment for the blood and gore, over the only layer there was available (because I wouldn't know how to add a new one). So I don't have to attach all the stuff to the skeleton, and it is a lot easier. They are just 8 tris flying around along with three red spheres, I think I could add the blood puddle for standard death as well.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on September 21, 2011, 11:27:28 pm
I'm not 100% certain, but I think there's space available for up to 30 layers, based on these bits from _animations.fos, in the server/scripts :


It's also mentioned in a few other bits, which I cannot find at the moment. Anyway, I don't know how to add extra layers myself.

It's possible that there may be something amongst this tutorial from Fonline.ru -  Google Translate : adding 3d models (http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&sl=ru&tl=en&u=http%3A%2F%2Ffonline.ru%2Fforum%2Fshowthread.php%3Ft%3D20018), but with the combination of complexity and google translation, I've found it difficult to work out exactly what's going on there. Even if the tutorial itself is not relevant, the files it's pointing to probably contain the bits you'd need to change.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on October 01, 2011, 07:23:52 pm
Hey guys how is progress ?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on October 05, 2011, 10:17:58 pm
Hey guys how is progress ?

On these anims, stopped for now. I have the normal burst death animation ready, and I'm planning on duplicating the gore effects, but I've been quite busy lately so it might take a while... 

Bye

PS: In case you wondered, "a while" is like "soon" but a bit shorter  ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on October 06, 2011, 06:44:23 am
Btw. what was the status of the female animations again? Have the been done or is there still something missing?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on October 06, 2011, 04:53:44 pm
PS: In case you wondered, "a while" is like "soon" but a bit shorter  ;)
infinite-x is still infinite
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on October 06, 2011, 07:16:03 pm
Well animating would be sped up if it wouldn't be made by only one person (Karpov), and since I knew a bit of the process of trying to recreate fallout like animations I have to say he worked quite fast and accurate, if anyone remembers the ghoul gif I've posted and takes the walk cycles that Karpov made its clear that he spent more time on smoothing it out...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on October 08, 2011, 03:36:51 pm
If someone's willing to spend some money on 4 webcams and some time on recording motion capture, then you could check this here out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiSYCD6fUD0

Mocap could definitely get you a ton of animations in one evening, you could even pick out the best ones out.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on October 08, 2011, 04:22:34 pm
But the target is to get animations that look like the original ones, and not a ton of animations that do not look like the original.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on October 08, 2011, 05:00:13 pm
A ton of animation from what you're free to select the best or correct the animation really quick.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on October 21, 2011, 05:56:37 pm
Hi there, quick test on muzzle flashes.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o0dqSu5MS6Q

Added as a separate attachment, with a modified shader to avoid shadow being casted and also for self illumination.
Sorry for the bad quality video.

About the death anims: I still can't get the blood to be visible from the camera position.  :(
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on October 21, 2011, 07:40:02 pm
Yay! This muzzle flash looks just great!  :) Does it use the same technique, as blood does? Or maybe you've managed to make the particles work somehow? 
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on October 21, 2011, 07:50:15 pm
This looks cool was it done with particles? No matter how its done it looks good though.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on October 21, 2011, 08:21:05 pm
No, it's just geometry, 3 planes intersected that rotate very fast, a texture with transparency, and the shader modified to cast no shadow and to be illuminated at night. It's the same as blood, uses the same attachment layer.


Someone asked about the female animations. I have to convert them one by one and export them, but most of them need to be partially re-done so that they match the female idle position, that means the "idle to action" ,"action to idle" sections.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on October 21, 2011, 08:29:58 pm
That's awesome :)

How is it attached? Is it added as part of the animation of each weapon model, or added as some global effect, with parameters to say where the gun barrel is?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on October 21, 2011, 11:11:53 pm
Looks great at the moment :)
Looking for more different muzzles for Rocket Launcher and other big weapons too.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on October 22, 2011, 09:07:24 am
i whoud love to see a new devblog with the 3d progress
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on October 22, 2011, 01:37:39 pm
Well, in a sense the entire of this subforum is the 3D dev blog. I know it's not a proper separate blog, but other than a few PMs here and there, pretty much everything that anyone does gets posted on here as it's the only method of communication between the volunteers.

I've not put anything new up recently myself as I haven't actually done anything  :-[ Been too busy with "real life" and "real work" recently, but next on my list is to finish off some of the tutorial / info things. After that, it's probably back to testing, rigging, modelling, texturing etc.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on October 26, 2011, 09:36:43 pm
So I have this "normal" burst death anim, but I still don't get the blood to be enough to be seen.
Better video (that means not done with Windows Movie Maker...)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FuDTY_grsm0
It's quite hard to score one of these criticals with 70 percent critical chance, but I did it at the end of the video  ;D
Still in progress...

Luther, the flashes are related to the animation set and not to the weapon itself . I think I can deactivate that layer for plasma and laser weapons so that it does not appear.
Bye, good luck.  ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on October 27, 2011, 11:23:35 am
Looks great... but there's something wrong with it. The blood seems to disapear much faster than in the regular 2D animation...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on October 29, 2011, 10:57:15 am
Oh my god ! Karpov u r the best. Keep good work and best for u and rest artist  ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on October 31, 2011, 09:00:40 pm
Looks great... but there's something wrong with it. The blood seems to disapear much faster than in the regular 2D animation...

I've been watching the original sprites and I noticed the blood spreads everywhere, I could try adding some random chunks of flesh. I will need them for exploding death animation anyway. Also I will try to make it shake more , it is too smooth right now. 
  The single shot death is almost done , but I need to be accurate with the timing there, to avoid the issue with the sound delay that some npcs had in fallout 2.
After that one we only need the "explosive death" I think... pulse and flame can be used as sprite. But plasma... that's a tricky one.
 
Ok, bye.
Thank you barter1113  ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on October 31, 2011, 09:32:58 pm
Use sprites for plasma, liquid transformation always look bad in lowpoly environment and there is really no need to have it in 3D anyway, unless transition would look really crappy.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Josh on November 01, 2011, 12:20:32 am
lazy approach would be to have it move to electric death state where whole body is gray then have it turn into a puddle. this way you could use same animation for all ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 01, 2011, 12:23:35 pm
But plasma... that's a tricky one.

Subdivide/liquid simulation around a skeleton from a "shocked" stance? For low-poly, i'd imagine "stripping the skin downward" and scale the bottom up to puddle edges. But how would the textures behave?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on November 01, 2011, 12:27:06 pm
lazy approach would be to have it move to electric death state where whole body is gray then have it turn into a puddle. this way you could use same animation for all ;D

That's actually a very good point. Eventually we'll want everything as accurate as possible, but if there's a usable simple alternative, it could be done much quicker. The final versions can always be adjusted / tweaked and finished at a later date, of course.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on November 01, 2011, 03:06:54 pm
You cannot do 1 on 1 conversion of the particular animation when the character is burned and falls apart to pile of dust. The animation where person is just burned down or completely "eaten" can already be done.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on November 01, 2011, 06:56:05 pm
Will there eventually be a possibility to take 1,2 frames out of the animations to make them look a bit closer (=more choppy) looking to the original animations?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on November 01, 2011, 08:03:50 pm
Will there eventually be a possibility to take 1,2 frames out of the animations to make them look a bit closer (=more choppy) looking to the original animations?
In your fonline config, like 3D fps and the second option there.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on November 22, 2011, 04:06:45 pm
The only problem with lowering the fps is that the character still moves slowly when walking/running, the rest of the animations look great at 13-15 fps.

Ok, ugly video, not worth watching in fullscreen. Here is what I have so far, two of them are new. Still in progress.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sJ-uyAHgf8s

That's all.

I'll have more time to spend in december, right now I have some exams coming up, so I'll be mostly offline until then. Bye
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on November 22, 2011, 04:23:06 pm
Nice work, as usually, Karpov :) I liked almost all of them, maybe except the last one, which looks a little bit weird, but I can't explain why. It definitely missing something, or maybe, as you said, it's just too fast. Everything else is just great. Hope to see more coming from you in December.

By the way, maybe it's time to start building a working prototype of the game in 3D? So far we only missing a few (6 or 7, to be precise) NPC armors and clothes, while everything else seems to be done already. What do you think, guys?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on November 22, 2011, 04:24:26 pm
VERY nice Karpov, you're the man. :D It looks almost the same as the original. Well done.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah on November 22, 2011, 05:25:12 pm
Nice work, as usually, Karpov :) I liked almost all of them, maybe except the last one, which looks a little bit weird, but I can't explain why. It definitely missing something, or maybe, as you said, it's just too fast. Everything else is just great. Hope to see more coming from you in December.

By the way, maybe it's time to start building a working prototype of the game in 3D? So far we only missing a few (6 or 7, to be precise) NPC armors and clothes, while everything else seems to be done already. What do you think, guys?
That's a good idea. We should stress test it and check how it looks in action. It will be easier to find out bugs.

Anyway, Karpov - great work as always :D So little left to be done!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on November 22, 2011, 08:00:23 pm
Karpov - I can't believe how good those are looking now. Excellent.
Graf - Very good idea to test a prototype - though there's probably a bit more work to do that it looks like :
- Those death animations may need doing separately for each armour, so "sliced armours" might need preparing and rigging for several other models too.
- We'd also need to work on the game object / model object linking for it to be playable.
- Death animations may need remaking for female models too

There's enough stuff to test though, I think. Maybe we need to take a sort of "inventory" of what's done and to do, then set up a "1st milestone" to test these basic things?

Also, I'd like to apologise for my inactivity recently - the time off from work I was expecting never happened - I finished one project, then had another one thrown at me immediately afterwards along with some general "real life" things. I'm still about though, and still intend on being involved. My next thing to do is still to put the Fragmotion rigging tutorial together, though I haven't had time to even look at it for several weeks. I won't be this busy forever though. The free time will happen.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on November 22, 2011, 10:22:56 pm
Hello again, I just completed the plasma animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8uMzbZ4mPs

Yes, maybe it is too fast.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on November 22, 2011, 10:33:42 pm
Amazing again. !  :)

As to adjust the length, you could take the soundeffect for melting people as a reference..
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on November 22, 2011, 10:35:21 pm
Interesting, it does not even need to be detailed to look good (I thought it would look crap without looking liquid, but apparently it does not). What do you leave on ground? It should be fairly simple to change textured body mass to some meat/blood skin if you worry about it (probably linear fade or something).
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on November 23, 2011, 04:04:22 pm
@Karpov
You did an amazing work here. The animation simply looks good some minor adjustment to its length and its perfect I think.

@Graf
Building a working prototype for 3D could be a nice move would make testing things faster.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on November 23, 2011, 07:04:16 pm
Amazing job, Karpov! You deserve a medal! :3
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Solar on November 23, 2011, 08:00:56 pm
Really nice stuff :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on November 23, 2011, 08:58:21 pm
Had it already done? How many animations are still left to do?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 23, 2011, 09:57:54 pm
Nice desintegration and shot animation!  ;D

Did you used a static or a rigged model for this animation, Karpov?

Had it already done? How many animations are still left to do?

Seconded. I'd like to start animating, but doing animations that are done is a bit pointless.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 24, 2011, 06:05:51 pm
My very first animated kick in Blender. Any suggestions what to animate next?

http://hotfile.com/dl/135888241/a968757/anim.gif.html
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on November 25, 2011, 10:21:48 am
1. how about a preview of the animation?( not anione has Blender)

2. 2 handed misc items movement
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: skejwen on November 25, 2011, 12:25:15 pm
Its saved as gif you lazy ass... and it doesnt look good imho.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on November 25, 2011, 02:23:05 pm
My very first animated kick in Blender. Any suggestions what to animate next?

http://hotfile.com/dl/135888241/a968757/anim.gif.html
In my opinion very good for a first try!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 25, 2011, 08:12:36 pm
In my opinion very good for a first try!

Thanks, Haraldx! I appreciate it. :)
LagMaster, i could try that. Also, i think i post the animation as a spritesheet.

And oh, i could always improve it , Skejwen, so bear with me. I'm not as good as Karpov yet.  ;)

A little peek at my setup...

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on November 26, 2011, 02:21:33 am
What I do to get a more natural motion is to move the keys closer to each other when I need a faster movement, like a fast sweep, and specially for gravity effects.
 I see you have 5 keys between each frame, you can try moving the frame with the extended leg closer to the previous one, like 1 or 2 frames, so that she raises her leg and then "whoosh!". I think this is most common problem you will face, because the software automatically calculates the frames inbetween and it looks too smooth for human movement. Another thing is that you should be aware of the leg that is standing on the floor, always keep it in the same place, even if the sprites seem to slide a bit.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 26, 2011, 10:36:08 am
Karpov, thanks for your advice.

Yeah, i had reduced the resolution to increase the speed, so there's no frames between bent lower leg and extended one. The original kick animation has this "swinging-at-enemy with-lower-leg", what looks rather slow and theatral, than a explosive release of power in someone's teeth.

The feet can kept on the ground by location constraints, but what about the moving parts? Also, how do you parent the bone of a weapon to the hand and do you delete it in a keyframe when it should be holstered?

For now, the change of speed is my main issue, which i solved my copypasting the poses from frame to frame (deleting the original with Alt+I) but i did take a look at the IPO curves, which and which parts of could be scaled. This feature promises more comfortable speed control for parts of the animation, and movement changes would be less of a mess.
It looks rather complicated, i'll post a result when i'm home.

Edit: here, a improved kick. The gif is somewhat sluggish, the original is twice as fast.
 (http://www.tinygif.net/thumbnails/2387842094ed107ceee6b5.gif) (http://www.tinygif.net/image-18692242604ed107cf0f167.htm)

Also, a .3ds: http://www.mediafire.com/?aahocs7myb8p4u9
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on November 26, 2011, 04:33:15 pm
The Handle bones are not attached to the main skeleton, they need to be animated separately. In MAX there is something called Link Constraint, which allows me to make this bone "follow" another bone I select for the amount of frames I need. However, this is not related to the bone hierarchy, but to the Handle bone itself. If you can't link that bone to the hand without making it part of the main skeleton, I'm afraid you will have to animate it frame by frame and position it where it is suposed to go every time.

Good luck.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on November 26, 2011, 04:54:55 pm
Well in blender to carry stuff or give items to creatures I use empties. I'm parenting one to the hand and I parent the gun to an other empty these empties have a constraint that copies the location it works out well for animations also there is a way to link bones in a similar way.
Anyway whats the naming conversion of the bones I plan to make an armature for the mutie since he is more or less done.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on November 26, 2011, 07:17:45 pm
This is my bone setup.
But as the mutant is a separate critter, you can use any name or structure you want.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on November 26, 2011, 09:20:18 pm
Well in blender to carry stuff or give items to creatures I use empties. I'm parenting one to the hand and I parent the gun to an other empty these empties have a constraint that copies the location it works out well for animations also there is a way to link bones in a similar way.

That worked excellently for me, Jotisz, thanks! Made the empties copy location and rotation, but had to flip them somewhat, tho.
Also, thanks for the bonelist, Karpov, that's gonna come handy to me as well.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 03, 2011, 05:06:20 pm
look:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPt_944t9Lc
 8)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iRCszmNoDyM
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 03, 2011, 05:28:18 pm
Well, then it's pretty easy.

So, in order for our project, someone need to lend a Kinect with a X-Box, a trial copy of Brekel software and dance all the movements we need in one evening. And then, on the next day, read, that he moved not falloutish enough.

Impressive technology, btw.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 03, 2011, 05:42:12 pm
haha, yeah, but easier and faster than conventional method.

kinect or 2 kinects (or more) or ps eyes, and some motion capture software, soon there will be more and some free motion capture apps. I've found some experiments with blender too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tZ9LzKmhFrE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxIcwuo5Rts

(...) And then, on the next day, read, that he moved not falloutish enough. (...)


nobody said it would be easy ;) but easier, after 100 hours of dancing he will move like true choosen one in real life :D

keep in mind some apps are free for non commercial use
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 03, 2011, 06:21:15 pm
Hm, that may count for bipedal, humanoid models, yeah. But it would be awkward for a guy posing as a woman and this is only the beginning of difficulties. You could ask Pistacja, perhaps.

But what about when we start with critters? And i mean, floaters, centaurs, Masters on trikes? Sure, you could mime a supermutant, kinda moving gorillish somehow, but animating skill will be still required for making critters.
Yet, this method could save a lot of time and work with right opportunity. Is that Dr.Cox on your avatar?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 03, 2011, 07:04:50 pm
motion capture is helper only, ofcourse You need to tweak animations.

and You may to improvise  ;D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXJZVZFRFJc

brahmin:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeQaD3L9kpc

This is Wez http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=18164 (http://www.aveleyman.com/ActorCredit.aspx?ActorID=18164)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 03, 2011, 08:39:27 pm
Improvise you say...?
I don't think my girfriend will be fond of cameras, as...creative it might be looking.  ;D

Anyway, before we cast upon us the wrath of mods, i'd like to state that animating with mouse is still a virtue for itself and shall not be abandoned completely in favour of more sophisticated, albeit easier methods.

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 11, 2011, 08:06:12 pm
Well, standard animation methods are also more accurate when trying to reproduce the animations from Fallout, I'm almost sure they did not use motion capture.
  But sometimes it is hard to create one from scratch, so motion capture would be a good idea too.

Ok, so past week I finally passed my exams so I'l be free from now on  :D. I'll be still working on animations, I want to convert them for the female character, I have 1 so far, pistol shoot (I believe I uploaded it... ???). Anyway, some time ago I was working on special deaths, but what about standard death?
  I added the blood effect when you die. I had some trouble, as usual  ;D, but I believe it is fixed. The shadows would not cast over the blood, so I had to paint it over the texture  ::)  ...it's not that bad.
 
Here's a video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3klRalbnNNc

Technical info: It goes attached to the very first layer, the skin value, because it is not related to any armor or attachment you might have.  I plays only when animation 66 or 67 are called, which are "dead_prone_back" and "dead_prone_front". Somehow it also played when knocked down, but I fixed that by calling a new blank animation in that case. Weird anyway  :-\

  What I learnt from this is that I can attach two different objects into the same layer and value. So I tested something more. Remember long ago I made a test on bullet cases coming from the assault rifle? Well, that was made into the rifle model itself, and it would be hard to make it for every weapon. But now I can attach the bullets to any of the weapons, and even different kinds of bullet and/or muzzle flashes. I tested it, works fine, but it can barely be seen anyway  :(

Ok, that's it. I'll keep you updated.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 11, 2011, 10:34:27 pm
The grandmaster is back and he brought teh awesome!  8)
Congrats to passed exams, Karpov! By the way, do you need assistance with female animations?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on December 11, 2011, 10:38:28 pm
Good work Karpov :)
You always surprise people with some time passed from last posting.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on December 12, 2011, 12:21:45 am
Love it, fancy as always.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jimmy BoyX on December 12, 2011, 09:25:44 am
Long live Mr Karpov.
It is close to complete all animations....
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 12, 2011, 12:25:15 pm
Long live Mr Karpov.
It is close to complete all animations....

Did i missed something?
(http://img21.imageshack.us/img21/4797/hahaohwow.jpg) (http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/21/hahaohwow.jpg/)

Male, female, fatman, midget, child, supermutant, ghoul, hooker, junkie, mexican, Shi, doctor animations are almost done?

Holy shit.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on December 12, 2011, 01:53:52 pm
In the initial stages, we can likely get away with copying the animations from model to model. They'd look odd, but would be playable (as long as the skeletons match).

The fatman tests I did a while back were just using the basic hero human animations, and he worked to a degree - though there were glitches i.e. his fat belly and a rifle intersecting in the "rifle idle" pose. They'd be playable as a temporary fix, then the proper animations can be added at a later date - very much a case of just dropping new files over the old ones.

As you rightly point out, eventually there'll be a lot more to do - but I imagine adjusting existing animation sets to different models is likely going to be easier than having to make everything from scratch.

Additionally, there may have to be death animation things set up for every armour (sliced up armour models) as well as every body type. Regardless, this is excellent progress and proving that the death animations are possible is very good for morale, and very good for showing people what is possible :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 12, 2011, 08:47:48 pm
I think there is so much variety already in one body type, and we dont need that amount of character models.
The main difference between the hero sprite and the peasant NPCs is the animation, not the body itself.
  I guess that Strong, Thin and Standard bodytypes would be enough. In that case you can use thin model for peasants, with a different walk/run animation, and it would look totally different.
  I would also discard Fat, because I don't think many people could be fat in the wasteland, just rich people like Mordino.
Don't forget, that animations hold skeleton proportions, so I could create a new animation for the standard character that makes his shoulders thinner, or his head twice as big, like some kind of FEV mutation, only by changing the animation. In fact, what I am doing with female animations is quite similar. If I use one of the converted animations into the male model, he would become smaller, even if the model is still the same.
 
 About these female animation conversion, for those who are curious, here's what I have to do:
First, load the file for the male animation. Then select the skeleton and load the female structure into it. And finally play the animation to see what I have to correct. Normally it is keeping her feet on the ground, because they are misplaced after the conversion. And also manually create a transition between the action and the female pose, so that she begins and ends in the idle position, which differs from the original male animation. After that exporting is very easy.
  It's not difficult, just requires some time to fix those things I mentioned. So far I have 4 of 19  ;D But I'll be working on them this week.
Thanks for your support.

Edit: a small comparison of animation FPS. First 13FPS ,then 30FPS
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIE09v1Dg
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 12, 2011, 10:54:37 pm
incredible!  :o

at this 13fps and 30fps, somehow 13fps looks more natural :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on December 12, 2011, 11:03:37 pm
Indeed, it could even be a bit less fps for my taste. :P I am in love with the female "use on" animation!

Is it just me or is the female body "sliding" for a wee bit when standing up from ground, right before switching to normal character stance? It looks a wee bit off. Other than that, great work as per usual Karpov. :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 12, 2011, 11:16:17 pm
yeah I seen it too, little slide and lack of one or two frames when hands come to standard pose. BTW Karpov rulez!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 13, 2011, 02:11:12 am
I can see it now. I just fixed it. It was set 2 frames shorter in the exporter, probably the same for male, I have to check. Also fixed the sliding.
 Thanks for pointing me that, I often miss that kind of things.

I think low fps look much better, but it does not seem to affect the translation of the character in space, so walking and running look silly.

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 13, 2011, 09:27:36 am
Nice!  8) I can now sit back and watch.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 13, 2011, 11:33:48 pm
(http://m.uploadedit.com/baa/4434621.gif)
No need to explain that one


I converted the pickup animation, but also made an alternate version. There was nothing wrong with the original animation, I just wanted to see if I could make it a bit more femminile.

First the original animation three times, then the new animation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VrNub_RRXOc

I had to eliminate the idle animation because it was playing every time after the other animation stopped, so I could not see the transition.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on December 13, 2011, 11:42:43 pm
Legendary! "Dat ass". :D

It looks really good! And I'm glad I could point out some bug in the previous one. :p It really makes me want to learn more about modelling new armors, I am pretty good (I think) at 2d stuff, but 3d stuff is so confusing to make. :<
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: avv on December 14, 2011, 03:44:52 pm
It's baffling how It looks so much like the original.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on December 14, 2011, 04:27:04 pm
@Surf. It's not as hard as it may look like sometimes. If you know how drawing (in mathematical/geometric) way works, it's nothing that hard.

@Karpov. Tell me, what kind of magic are you using?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on December 14, 2011, 07:29:08 pm
Nice job on jacket skin, ponytail looks ugly with those hair tho :d.
Quote
I had to eliminate the idle animation because it was playing every time after the other animation stopped, so I could not see the transition.
Are there any idle animations on hero sprites? Don't even remember there ever being any.
Quote
I am pretty good (I think) at 2d stuff
Most of skins out there are hurting :d. It's often reason why some 3D counterparts look so bad.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on December 14, 2011, 07:49:27 pm
Most of skins out there are hurting :d. It's often reason why some 3D counterparts look so bad.

Uh? Could you elaborate on that, especially in combination with what you quoted?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 14, 2011, 08:22:01 pm
I mean those random animations that play when you are not moving; scratching his head , checking the weapon, etc. Well... there is nothing random about them in the 3d critters, they seem to play every time, so I just leave the static pose for every animation set, maybe there could be added as different animation some time.
  The jacket skin is mostly your work Johnnybravo, I applied your shader to the jacket and the pants, and created a specular map from the diffuse map. The idea is to have haircuts with ponytail, and not a separate layer for them. But for testing purposes, everything counts. It is useless layer, and it could be used for more interesting things.

I think 3d is hard at the beginning mostly because you have to understand you are working with an additional dimension in space, but you can't actually see it. It's like sculpting but with only one eye  ;D You can't see the depth, so that could be confusing. Once you know where you are, and how to move around the workspace, learning the software is just a matter of time.

I finished the rifle animation set. The only problem is that the male character has a bigger body, so the holstered rifle looks a little bit off when it's on the woman's back, but its not that bad.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIt8oExGFDE
Let me know if you see something wrong. Sometimes it is easy for me to fix but hard to spot.
These animation sets take some more time, because they have 2 holster, 2 or 1 shoot and dodge all in the same file, so its 5 animations to be fixed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on December 14, 2011, 11:40:34 pm
Quote
I mean those random animations that play when you are not moving; scratching his head , checking the weapon, etc. Well... there is nothing random about them in the 3d critters, they seem to play every time, so I just leave the static pose for every animation set, maybe there could be added as different animation some time.

Talking to Cvet about it might help something. If he can do something engine-wise, evil hax0ry isn't needed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on December 15, 2011, 12:08:36 am
Uh? Could you elaborate on that, especially in combination with what you quoted?
If you are good in 2d or painting, you can greatly contribute to 3D depository by improving skins for existing models. Some guys did really great jobs on their models and on diffuse layers for those as well, however others did do nice models but left skin part on others - and unfortunately result is not always optimal. There are also plenty of models which need specular reflection painted to look any good.


Also Karpov should know more, as he was adding some of the stuff recently and showcased it as well.
EDIT:
@Karpov: watching that onslaught twice gave me an idea how to implement flash. Need to check out how to get muzzle coordinates (or at least model rotation, that should be much easier) in shader and build dynamic lighting using some already existing variables given by engine. Will just have to setup everything after being busy quite a lot with college issues :d.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on December 15, 2011, 12:31:57 am
If you are good in 2d or painting, you can greatly contribute to 3D depository by improving skins for existing models. Some guys did really great jobs on their models and on diffuse layers for those as well, however others did do nice models but left skin part on others - and unfortunately result is not always optimal. There are also plenty of models which need specular reflection painted to look any good.



Ah, now I know what you mean. The problem with this is, kinda like Karpov said - it requires the user to think in an additional dimension - editing a 2d texture is no problem, but imaging it later to be stretched/wrapped around the model and how to draw over it is kind of weird for me. :P But the leather armor you showed should be pretty straightforward, hm. I'll give it a try. :p

Karpov - once again very good looking. Got nothing to complain there - other than that I'd like to have them all NOW! ;P
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on December 15, 2011, 12:42:40 am
I suggest you check out how karpov did leather jacket (you'll need to paint reflection as additional file to get it right in all possible angles), just copycat stuff in fo3d files (they are text files not binary data so it's fairly easy to edit them) and ask if there is anything that is not clear.
And, well... thanks for giving it a try :d.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 15, 2011, 01:52:36 am
Offtopic for 2 previous posts: I've just played with textures for fun, what I noticed, to see pixels it has to be 4096x4096 !!! otherwise it is smoothed somehow. At 8192x8192, FOnline 3d engine gave me what I wanted - texture with cutted palette was similar to 2d background and sprites. Am I missing something?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 15, 2011, 03:40:34 am
@baaelSiljan: I think that's the engine's texture filter. Maybe you could try to force Anisotropic filter from your video card control panel.

@Johnnybravo: do you mean a light effect inside the shader for weapons fire? Sounds nice.

About the textures: Now that we have those shaders, the idea is to make a flat texture and use specular maps for highlights.
 Specular maps are simple: black sections are 0% shiny, and white are 100% shiny. If you have a very dark grey it will have some specularity too.
 However, the specular map determines the intensity of the highlights, and not the surface smoothness. The surface smoothness is set on the fo3d file as "Specular_Power", higher values give smoother surfaces, like car paint or ceramic; while lower values give a less smooth specularity, like brushed metal, rubber, or skin.

PS: I had some trouble with the rifle position in her hands, so I have to fix that before I can upload it.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 15, 2011, 11:18:22 am
@baaelSiljan: I think that's the engine's texture filter. Maybe you could try to force Anisotropic filter from your video card control panel.

it gives me nothing, turned anything off and still same, I guess it some kind of mip mapping or similar in game's engine, nvm end of offtopic ;)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on December 15, 2011, 01:27:26 pm
512x512 is all you need, anything else is a waste.
Specular maps in current shader apply whole RBG spectrum, however you can use black/white if you want reflection to look so (as it is on sprites I guess)

Quote
do you mean a light effect inside the shader for weapons fire? Sounds nice.
Yeah, the shadow beneath person do not move, nor the light itself cast any, so it takes just point light to reproduce.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on December 15, 2011, 03:01:14 pm
epic Karpov, just epic
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 17, 2011, 10:20:39 pm
Just converted the minigun animation, but somehow the animation for the female character in the original sprites holsters the weapon to the other side, so I might have to do that one again. Also the "punch" animation is converted, which was also slightly different. There was going to be a third animation set, but I had some trouble with that one, so I went like    >:(   and could not finish it.

Here's the video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lhG6qDLmapc
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 17, 2011, 11:35:53 pm
What's that, Rocky or a one million dollar baby?  ;D

Now that's showcasing!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on December 25, 2011, 08:40:43 pm
A little show off from the mutie he is doing some idling stuff. Don't mind the look of the char just concentrate on the animation...
(https://i.imgur.com/s9Avd.gif)(https://i.imgur.com/RXlnX.gif)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on December 25, 2011, 08:51:51 pm
Looks pretty darn good, Jotisz!
What about that idle animation of, er...snooting tobacco?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on December 26, 2011, 12:22:48 pm
wooooow nice
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on December 26, 2011, 01:33:03 pm
Great animation for mutant :)
Next idling animations for weapons :D I really wait to see mutant animation with rocket launcher.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 26, 2011, 06:45:56 pm
Nice work Jotisz. Have you exported those to .x? I could not do it on blender. Do that if you can , it helps a lot when you test them in the game. Good luck.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 27, 2011, 12:01:31 am
great work !  :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on December 27, 2011, 03:18:07 pm
Thanks guys. About x format I think it works as I remember I made a simple test with Graf helps though it may have been the fbx format I'm not sure. However I'm confident that there is way to do it.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 27, 2011, 07:13:36 pm
Ok then, fxb holds the bone hierarchy and animations, so it might be an alternative if you can't convert directly to x. I think I was not using the right script... anyway, good luck with that.

   So... I have this new video.

First, it shows 4 animations made for random idle actions. I found how to make it work right, it turns out that it was my mistake from the beginning. There are 2 for pistol, and 2 for unarmed. I'll work on the rest of them. If you have any suggestion, please tell me.
 The second thing I show here is the flame for the flamethrower, as an example of specific weapon flashes instead of the generic one, which I uploaded last time by the way.
 At the end, there is some kind of stress test I tried to do. Some 3d characters with armors and weapons, worked fine. Then I load a high poly (68.700 tris) model to my character, this takes me down to around 55 fps. Then I add a second model that takes me to a bit less than 30 fps.
  Considering that a character model is 1300 tris, plus 2 weapons around 400, armor around 800, we get 2500 triangles in 1 character.  I do the math and I get that 55 fully loaded characters would run at 30 fps in my pc (Phenom II 3.10Ghz and Radeon 6800). It's not very good for a MMO. If I do the math again but this time I use bluesuits with mauser, around 1500 tris, I get 91 people in my screen running at 30 fps. Better...
:-\ I don't know.

 Enough words:
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eErgzd9kIU

Bye
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on December 27, 2011, 07:24:41 pm
Really good looking Karpov! I like that second new idle animation, fits really good! :) Not sure about the new Flameburst though, it looks a bit odd to be honest. :/ Also, I don't know if it's just me, but "carry weapon on back" is really cool for smaller rifles and such, but looks a bit weird for heavy weaponry as seen in the video. :P

And yeah, I'm a bit worried too about the performance of the game. People with older hardware will most probably not be able to play the game at this rate...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 27, 2011, 07:58:12 pm
Great anims :) as always.

how many people were on sieges in l2? models here were very advanced, mobs, effects, environment... I think optimalisation is important but it should not be such problem. and it was almost 10 years from now (in my case) on some old athlon and old radeon.

other case: when in 2d i got much lower performance than in 3d on gf gts450 and gf gt8600, 2D: 60 and lower, 3D: 300 - 500

we need to test it, find weak points and optimize, at this stage I think we may make more problems trying to solve it parallel to development, or we need some people who will optimise it continuously. First option should be to lower textures much more, it should be as small as possible, so no need to load and keep big files in memory. Second thing, some model should be integrated with armor, I mean not only helmet on head, but whole head with helmet should be one model - in any place where it is possible (i've looked into some games like l2 or similar and it is solved like this).

I almost finished tutorials documentation viewer, object viewer and working on tickets solution for repository, so we may be able to use some tracker.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on December 27, 2011, 09:25:21 pm
As always, it looks fantastic. Guitar is fancy too- such stuff will be cool in far future as well. Playing instruments, sitting on chairs, etc. all that would be possible.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: pistacja on December 27, 2011, 10:09:49 pm
Don't cut the textures, that would give you 0.000001 fps. They could be 6-8x bigger if dds (dxt) was used anyway.
The number of objects (meshes/batches) is the key. If every player is 4 objects (body, armour, gun, helm) then having more then ~75 players will be a big hit for the framerate. How often do you get more then 20-30 players on one screen?

Instancing could help with a lot of players. If there are 10 players that look the same and play the same anim, then telling the gpu to render one player 10x and offset his position in a vertex shader will not only save the gpu 9 state changes but will also save the cpu the need to animate 9 more characters. 

500 000 more or less verts/polys is all the same for a 'modern' gpu, but the cpu has to animate them first... giving that task to the graphic hardwere can also give a big boost.

The problem with these is that it gives a boost on a powerfull gpu, for an old card it will have a negative impact.   

If it runs at 30fps with 90 players then it's really ok.

Anyhow, nice job on the anims ;)

A
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on December 27, 2011, 10:46:37 pm
Hmm...I was not thinking about textures. That may be an important factor. I wil try dds. That format uses MIP maps , doesn't it? It could be good for this game. I know you said this a long time ago pistacja, now that I see your point.

The flame looks weird because it is based on real flamethrowers. I could try to make the flame spread a bit more. Also, I think the sprite character waves the flamethrower a bit to the sides.

I might have to change the SMG random anim. It looks like the sprite changes the clip on the 9mmSMG, but I can't do that because we have different weapons now.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: pistacja on December 27, 2011, 11:58:04 pm
Dds uses (or can use) mip maps. But mip mapping uses +50% more ram (if the texture has 256x256, then there's a extra 128x128 and a 64x64 and a 32x32 and a 16x16 and a 8x8 version). The benefit from dds is that it's compressed (the image is cut into 4x4 px fragments and only 2 'edge' colors are  saved for each fragment- the rest are lerped) and stored compressed in ram. The gpu can decompress the texture on the fly in virtualy no time.
 
It's a bit like jpeg - you can have a sharp pixel-perfect 128x128 bmp or a fuzzy 512x512 jpg that use the same amount of memory.

I'm not saying dds is a must have and bigger textures are needed, just saying that making them smaller is not the way to go if you want more free video ram.

A 512x512 texture takes ~1MB RAM, so lets say we have 100 players with a different body, armor and weapon each. Thats 3x100x1=300 MB. Textures are half that size or less, there aren't 100 types of armor nor body textures, even old cards have 512 or more vram. This is the last thing to think about. 

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan on December 28, 2011, 12:14:11 am
but dont You need to recalculate this texture on every single triangle? when You do it with image 64x64 and 1024x1024 performance hit may be worth changing? And don't such texture is multiplied and projected on this triangles one by one? I need to read about it cause I dont have idea if it works that way. Pistacja, I see You are good in this topic :)

other thing:

simple retopology - really fast only few artifacts removed, little optimalision with points, some triangles removed and bigger one maked instead (but may be not good for animations):

(http://rudo-brody.pl/uploads/2011-12-28_0008.png)

red is original, green is optimised, torso and face after retopology

ok tested one thing: only optimized points from ~3700 to ~640 gives me 10 fps more (from ~354 to ~365) with not rigged dummy object CR_HumanMaleStrong.x.
model optimised with small retopology more fps (now tested in different location - desert only) original: ~573 optimised: ~629 (average values) and little later in barter zone difference is: original: ~520 optimized: ~613

sample optimization:
(http://rudo-brody.pl/uploads/2011-12-28_0249.png)

I care too much :D instead of sleep...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: pistacja on December 28, 2011, 12:47:55 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?

Look at it this way - your monitor can only display 60 frames per second (if it runs at 60Hz, some run at 100 or even 120Hz), so anything above 60fps is wasted. If something makes the framerate drop from 300 fps to 61fps then that's a big impact but still for the player it give no visual change at all. The other critical number of fps is 24, this is the minimal comfortable framerate, lower then that means pretty much unplayable.   

As long as the game runs between 24 and 60 fps there's nothing to worry about.

I'd be very much against any and all optymalizations if there is no proof of a bottleneck first.

anyway.. maybe this should get moved to a different topic?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan 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)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: lisac2k 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).

@Karpov: dude, your dude is dudesome! Great work, all of you 3D maniacs!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan 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:

(http://rudo-brody.pl/uploads/2011-12-28_1444.png)
(left is optimized, right is original)

also there are some artifacts inside model, and some doubled polygons
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf 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:

Quote from: http://blog.wolfire.com/2010/03/Using-texture-atlases
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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan 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 (http://developer.nvidia.com/legacy-texture-tools)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: SmartCheetah 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: baaelSiljan 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOdzw3lQxKw
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: EnclaveSniper on January 22, 2012, 07:47:33 am
Looks good, but it's hard to tell at that speed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx 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.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard 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?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on January 22, 2012, 05:00:03 pm
There's certainly no problem in people rendering the models / animations out for use in other projects, but as stated, the file space taken up by the 3d files is comparatively small, especially when considering that "adding a gun" involves merely adding an extra .x file and texture, rather than adding new frames of animation for all possible skin, gender, clothing and hair combinations.

By way of a very simplified diagram, if we think of :
Gender : male / female
Skin tone : black / white / brown
Clothing : red / yellow / green
Weapon : gun / knife / hammer

In 3d, that is seven models (body x2, clothing x2, weapon x3) and 12 textures. In sprites, it is a full set of all animations for 54 different character models. If we were to then add for example two different "hat" options, that'd be 9 models and 14 textures, or 162 full sets of sprite animations.

Then if we decide to add an alternate trouser colour (say blue for example), that's 9 models and 16 textures, or 324 full sets of sprite animations. Then we add another weapon, 10 models and 17 textures, or 648... you see how sooner or later it's going to go a bit mental - and looking at the file sizes of existing sprites, we're perhaps looking at 3GB of sprite files, or about 15MB of 3d stuff.

Of course, this only applies for "maximum customisation with all models, textures and objects interchangeable", where unless a "layered sprite" system (like FO tactics) is used, then 3D is the only option. However, for smaller projects which require a couple of extra human models (i.e. the little girl model for example) then rendering the sprites is definitely a good idea. If someone was able to set up some template files for all animations and all directions, I think it'd certainly be useful for the modding community as a whole.

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on January 28, 2012, 05:23:25 pm
Yeah, that makes sense, in a logarythmical scary way. Yet the animation export from Blender to .x remained unsolved, but recently i found this on YouTube, that looks pretty interesting so far. It seems that i have to write another tutorial...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujd2l9wVAsU
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on January 28, 2012, 07:03:53 pm
This does look quite promising - he's got it working in DX viewer, which as he says is a good indication that the mesh and animations are working properly.

Also - do you still have the files from here (http://fodev.net/forum/index.php?topic=2407.msg164289#msg164289)? They got "megauploaded". I don't think I managed to try them at the time. I certainly didn't respond past "I'll try and have a look tomorrow if I get a bit of free time" - I suspect the "free time" never happened :( Anyway, I'd like to have a look at these and see if I can get things working. The sooner we can get Blender into a working model>animation>game workflow, the better.

Also, I've been testing a lot of things with interpreting / adjusting / editing animations in Fragmotion and have had a small degree of success - there's some early draft versions of some stuff I was testing for Surf's What Remains mod here (http://oi39.tinypic.com/5oaumw.jpg) and here (http://oi39.tinypic.com/2gvin9w.jpg) - they're both technically a bit shit, but to be honest they're more testing "proof of concept" rather than intended to be used as shown. I've had the little crouched-over-monster guy running around in game and animating correctly. As I'm sure you can see, I need a little more practice with this, but if I can perfect it on a technical level, I can at least start putting a tutorial together so some slightly more skilled animators can have a go (though I'm still not sure if anyone understands the last one I tried to write - I find this stuff quite difficult to explain).
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on February 21, 2012, 07:06:54 pm
I know its fast still anyway I just wanted to show that its in the work and things are getting done slowly but surely. I concentrate on getting the poses that we can see in the frms later with scaling the lenght of the animation it can be made smother. I will use gif next time I think
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oaprOwOvN8
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Graf on February 21, 2012, 07:32:21 pm
Very nicely done, Jotisz! Keep up the great work.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 17, 2012, 06:34:17 pm
Hi, so I finished converting the animations to female. Now it's about spotting errors and make the corrections they need.
 But also special death anims. If I could make it work right, it would be great. I think it can be done with scripts, but I need people that knows what they're doing, and that's not me  ;).

I found this piece of code:

Code: [Select]
{
int anim1 = cr.GetAnim1();
int anim2 = ANIM2_3D_KNOCK_FRONT;
                               
switch(actionExt)
{
case COND_DEAD_FRONT:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_PRONE_FRONT;   break;
case COND_DEAD_BACK:          anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_PRONE_BACK;    break;
case COND_DEAD_BURST:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BURST;         break;
case COND_DEAD_BLOODY_SINGLE: anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BLOODY_SINGLE; break;
case COND_DEAD_BLOODY_BURST:  anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BLOODY_BURST;  break;
case COND_DEAD_PULSE:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_PULSE;         break;
case COND_DEAD_PULSE_DUST:    anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_PULSE_DUST;    break;
case COND_DEAD_LASER:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_LASER;         break;
case COND_DEAD_EXPLODE:       anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_EXPLODE;       break;
case COND_DEAD_FUSED:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_FUSED;         break;
case COND_DEAD_BURN:          anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BURN;          break;
case COND_DEAD_BURN2:         anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BURN;          break;
case COND_DEAD_BURN_RUN:      anim2 = ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BURN_RUN;      break;
default: break;
}

I don't understand much , and it does not matter what this says, but I believe there is a Condition for each type of death that triggers an action.
What I would need is ,for example: when COND_DEAD_BURST is called, it triggers some command that changes my character body, and after that play ANIM2_3D_DEAD_BURST.
But I doubt the game would understand that line  ;D    Is it possible to do so?

Of course, I'll work on the animations anyway. That's all, goodbye. I might post some vid later.

EDIT: I got it working!! :) not perfect but it works. Now I have to go, it's late.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on March 18, 2012, 09:56:19 am
*Waiting for new video*
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 18, 2012, 05:52:26 pm
There. It worked better than I expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6asBjSy5W8

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Perteks on March 18, 2012, 07:06:50 pm
Melting should be more bloody i think :P And first burst death uh missing red dots on him? But Overall very cool
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 18, 2012, 07:31:02 pm
Melting should be more bloody i think :P And first burst death uh missing red dots on him? But Overall very cool

Definately. Now that I made it work in the game, I'll start adding some blood and stuff, and making better animations.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on March 18, 2012, 08:43:11 pm
Definitely good work, Karpov. You have my applause.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on March 18, 2012, 08:45:48 pm
Good indeed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: chocolate_chip_cookies on March 18, 2012, 08:54:55 pm
Good job but I have objections to the minigun critical death animation.
The character doesn't move from side to side enough and it kinda looks plastic.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on March 18, 2012, 09:08:02 pm
Haha! Again awesome-great-super-cool-nice-very good progress and movie from game! I like it! And I like your mini roleplay messages in movie :D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 18, 2012, 11:30:48 pm
Thanks guys, I'm so happy for having this working properly after all this time. About the animations, I think that laser and single shot critical are the best, all of the rest need some work. I added the blood in the floor from the normal death to the plasma death, and it looks better now.
 Blood is not easy to do. I can't use alpha channels as I wanted to, because the target highlight does not care about them. So I have to do it manually. I'll try to add bigger chunks of flesh and more blood drops.
 I think we can use the same principle to turn the character into 2d for flame and pulse deaths, so, no need for them I guess. That leaves only one thing to solve...the explosion death.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Rascal on March 19, 2012, 12:02:28 pm
its really very close to original
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Crab_people on March 19, 2012, 03:40:33 pm
really good but walking and some of death should be 10% faster?
and can you work on runnking cause now he is running like on moon ;D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lexx on March 19, 2012, 05:48:27 pm
Very good shit, again. Pretty sure that nobody expect it to ever even look as good as it does right now. :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 21, 2012, 11:10:12 pm
Hi, I have some news. I managed to add the sounds for each death, so that helps a lot, and it's very nice. Specially when it comes to timing, it's easier to tell when the animation is slower or faster. I'm still improving the animations to be more aggresive.

 
Very good shit, again. Pretty sure that nobody expect it to ever even look as good as it does right now. :)

Absolutely. But I hope we can make it look even better with some minor changes here and there.

really good but walking and some of death should be 10% faster?
and can you work on runnking cause now he is running like on moon ;D

 ;D  I know running looks weird, but the original animation is not a good reference in this case. Check the video of the ending where the super mutants enter the Vault. There is one of them running towards the overseer, and he looks so weird too. I think I'm going to fix it with some other reference, though I don't want to change it too much.

I'll be back tomorrow, probably with something to show. Bye
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Here it is. Sorry for the bad quality video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3gNBq9QnmA
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on March 23, 2012, 05:54:08 pm
I'm not entirely sure, what makes it look better - the animation itself or the sounds that give it a nice spice? :D
Looks just great, you really deserve something!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Rascal on March 23, 2012, 06:05:45 pm
Karpov ur really talented!  very nice!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on March 29, 2012, 06:38:56 am
Well thanks guys  ;).
 I've been doing some experiments with the death animations, testing some ideas, tinkering with things I don't even understand, crazy stuff. But somehow it failed, and I ended up with the character going black and white... :P. Nevertheless, I have some more ideas to work with, and this time, as doc Brown used to say, "It might just work"  ;D

 Also, someone has mentioned that the running and walking animations needed some work. I recorded a video with the original 2d character at 30 fps and then moved forward frame by frame so I could see exactly where to put the frames I have in my animation. I guess this could help a lot with that.

Bye.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: barter1113 on April 12, 2012, 10:59:22 am
Anything new? Karpov, what is progress?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: ToxiCAVE on April 12, 2012, 11:32:26 am
can you make new death animations from gatling laser/laser rifle (cut in 3pieces, cuting head off, big smoking hole in the chest) or death from f1 when you killed overseer (blowing up half of man)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on April 12, 2012, 01:15:00 pm
can you make new death animations from gatling laser/laser rifle (cut in 3pieces, cuting head off, big smoking hole in the chest) or death from f1 when you killed overseer (blowing up half of man)

Could i request a simple head blown off animation? With falling to the knees and toppling over.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on April 12, 2012, 02:08:32 pm
Super mutie is still under work. I should serriously make a better texture for the poor guy. Unarmed attacks they may need some more work. I'm trying to make a good running animation for him.
(https://i.imgur.com/DcLmt.gif)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on April 12, 2012, 02:11:24 pm
can you make new death animations from gatling laser/laser rifle (cut in 3pieces, cuting head off, big smoking hole in the chest) or death from f1 when you killed overseer (blowing up half of man)
Regular animations are a priority now. Other optional animations can wait.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: ToxiCAVE on April 12, 2012, 02:11:44 pm
Could i request a simple head blown off animation? With falling to the knees and toppling over.

critical shoot to eyes/head ;D same head gfalling off (laser)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: chocolate_chip_cookies on April 12, 2012, 08:43:39 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/DcLmt.gif)
Your super mutant needs to learn to throw a punch.
Maybe he should learn a tip from Lesnar, since he's pretty much a super mutant. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=54Av5SkGoSg
But really something's not right with his animation. I think his right leg needs rework. His left one too.
When kicking you don't really bend down do you? You bend back or to the side. Once the foot is landing, the body moves foward.
And when punching, you don't hit with the side of your fist, right? It needs to be horizontal more
I think it would look cool if he bent his knees more when doing his attack
Keep in mind that looking at sprites isn't the best reference for 3D animations. 2D and 3D uses different effects to look real and have a smooth flow. And the 3D doesn't have to be identical to the original 2D sprites
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on April 22, 2012, 02:47:15 pm
Although the above ones are true I think the animation the devs looking for are the ones that are as close to the sprite ones as possible. Although I will try to make some along the vidoe you posted.
I gone around to make a simple run animation and since the normal walks for mutants are not agile but robust. I though his run would be something like that too. Slow and clumsy (probably not the best word) with rapid breathings
(https://i.imgur.com/KwqPp.gif)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: chocolate_chip_cookies on April 22, 2012, 04:50:38 pm
I like the running animation. Looks impressive.
Kind of scary, I wouldn't want a super mutant running at me like that.

The only thing you might want to change is his height changes. I can see small movements down and up but you might want to add more definition
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-STnJcYmKVfI/TaY8gnGixCI/AAAAAAAAA7k/1dAH63RqUvs/s1600/richard%2Bwilliams%2Brun%2Bcycle%2Bcopy.jpg)

But looks great already
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gob on April 22, 2012, 10:19:07 pm
Hey I was thinking with all this 3D thing when you have two weapons in your both hands for example a Rifle and a Pistol, and you hold the rifle in your hands so instead of the rifle to dissapear it could appear on the players back and its holestered so to say and when you swich back to the rifle the pistol could appear near his waist. That would be soo fucking awesome!!!!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Surf on April 22, 2012, 11:14:46 pm
Hey I was thinking with all this 3D thing when you have two weapons in your both hands for example a Rifle and a Pistol, and you hold the rifle in your hands so instead of the rifle to dissapear it could appear on the players back and its holestered so to say and when you swich back to the rifle the pistol could appear near his waist. That would be soo fucking awesome!!!!

Karpov already did this. :)


@Jostisz: The Mutie looks awesome!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 22, 2012, 11:35:58 pm
That running anim looks "just right" to me. It looks believable as an original. Excellent.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on April 23, 2012, 08:10:53 pm
What about FPS? I mean - original fallout animations seem to be less "smooth". (i think it can be easy checked how many frames goes for one second of it). Is there a way to make the new ones less smooth? Maybe some filters?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on April 23, 2012, 08:19:14 pm
Looks great, Jotisz! Could you add some slight sagging in his knee under his weight, when he lands on one foot? Would add "stomping" effect, i think.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 23, 2012, 08:27:01 pm
What about FPS? I mean - original fallout animations seem to be less "smooth".

Can easily be done with in-game settings, or by adjusting the animation. Can fine tune that sort of thing at a later date, so I wouldn't think of it as a worry for now.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on April 24, 2012, 08:32:10 pm
Thanks for feedback from everyone.
About the original animations they usually are limited in frames. Default run frm contains 10 frame its a bit similar to what chocolate_chip_cookies posted. The animation you seen contains 20 frame. From those there are about 8 keyframe.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on April 26, 2012, 06:19:50 pm
Hi guys. The original sprites have 10-15 fps, sometimes less, so it's hard to get the animation to look similar in higher fps. If we could see the original animation instead of the rendered sprites, it would be much easier to work with for sure. What I try to do is positioning manually those "new" frames that happen in the transition between the ones I had the sprite's reference for, using some real world references, to achieve a more natural motion.

I've been working on the walking cycle. It's by far the hardest animation to make, a true "critical to the groin"  ;D, and I still can't get it right after all this time. I'll keep on trying
Also added two idle anims for the rifles. And a lot more flesh for the burst death.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVyjOZf40xE

By the way, Luther's skin is used in this video, really nice.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 27, 2012, 02:54:05 am
This is again looking really nice - though I never spotted anything wrong with the previous walk :P
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Opera on April 27, 2012, 01:31:41 pm
It's looking very nice. Any chance to see it with the original FPS too?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on April 27, 2012, 07:14:45 pm
I dunno Karpov. Still too much FPS to me. I appreciate work already done, but it's still to smooth. Is there no way to just tick "set FPS: 8" somewhere in the software you're using? I know blender got that option. You know - the poses in frames don't have to be actually the same as poses in original sprite, you don't have to match that. But the total number of them counts.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on April 27, 2012, 07:27:03 pm
I think that looks good, as close as possible to original. You should stick to this one.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on April 27, 2012, 11:07:29 pm
You can set the fps from the config file, but it does not work for walking. The only way I can show you this animation with less fps is making my game run entirely at 10 fps.
 Cutting the fps when I export the animation would be exactly the same.
 The problem here is that the movement of the critter in the game is linear, and independent from any animation or model, so it does not change with the FPS cut parameter. If you set it to 10 fps, the character will move his feet at 10 fps, but the engine will drag him through the map at 30 fps or even more. For the rest of the animations, the FPS cut settings work perfectly fine.
 Again, the only thing that works is lagging your game on purpose, but of course, it becomes unplayable.

here is an old video where I compared 30 fps to 13 fps.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIE09v1Dg
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 27, 2012, 11:11:21 pm
[...]Is there no way to just tick "set FPS: 8" somewhere in the software you're using?[...]

Yes - there's a config setting for it. Personally I think we should keep the animations at their full rate if possible, and use the config to lower them. It offers a lot more scope for adjusting and editing in future, and also will be useful for other future Fonline projects which may not wish to replicate the original sprite look so closely. There are however some problems with the frame skip, mentioned below.

These lines here will adjust the displayed frames:
Code: [Select]
# Simulation time-lapse graphic 3d models.
# Number of frames per second.
# If 0 - off, the animation will be played as smooth as possible
# When you turn on the optimal value - 10.
Animation3dFPS=0

# Smooth transitions in 3d graphics, the time in milliseconds.
# Applies only if Animation3dFPS = 0.
Animation3dSmoothTime =250

What I think Karpov has done is to use the sprites as reference frames for keyframes, divided across a higher framerate. The frames in between are generated by the software's own tweening (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tweening).

Little frame sequence example :
|R--R--R--R--R--R--R--R--]
R = Reference frame / Keyframe, where the model has been matched to the position of an existing sprite.
- = in-between frames, which move in a linear manner between the keyframes on either side. These are generated automatically. For example if R1 has the arm at 90º and R2 has the arm at 120º, the arm will be placed at 100º and 110º in the two in-between frames.

In the example above, there are 24 frames, of which 8 will correspond to existing Fallout sprites. A potential problem with using the "frame skip" option in the settings is that the frames it displays may not be the actual reference frames, but the ones inbetween.

If you think of this (24 frames) :
|R--R--R--R--R--R--R--R--]

We want it to skip like this :
|RxxRxxRxxRxxRxxRxxRxxRxx]
Then it would show almost exactly as the original sprites did.

A problem is if it skips like this :
|xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-xx-]
Then you end up with none of the original frames, but instead all the ones which are "not quite" the same. Additionally, because they're automatically generated, they probably look a bit weird.

If the total number of frames is not exactly divisible by the target frame number, things end up much worse. A target framerate of 8 or 12fps is likely to work much better with 24fps than with 25fps for example. It's a similar problem to what you get when trying to process video footage between PAL and NTSC, with the 25fps and 29.97fps.

I think what he's trying to do now is to manually correct the positions in the in-between frames. Due to the linear processing of the tweening (i.e. the "90º, 100º, 110º, 120º" example above) you will end up with quite an unnatural looking animation. It may be that something like "90º, 97º, 114º, 120º" (with an shallower ease-in and ease-out, and steep middle) would look much more effective. Of course, those adjustments are on every limb in 3 dimensions, so it's not quite as easy as I've described it.

Anyway, I'm actually happy with the animations as they are, at any fps they're shown at.

[edit] Karpov explained quicker and more concisely than me :P
Anyway, I see what the problem is that he's describing - that the position of the model will "slide" from hex to hex at full fps, regardless of what fps the legs are moving at.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on April 27, 2012, 11:11:37 pm
Cool rifle idle animations :)
Keep it good work.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on April 27, 2012, 11:38:38 pm
Thank you runboy. The first one is not exactly as the original. I made him pull and release a bolt on the rifle. I don't really know what was the original sprite doing.

You're right Luther, but even if the frames shown were not the same, it would still look less smooth I guess. The software I'm using also calculates gravity, acceleration and stuff like that, but it's not magic.
If the 3d models moved like the sprites, then it would be perfect. Sprites jump between hexes. You can see that when you get the "flame man" skin, or when you are using a weapon that your skin does not support. If 3d models moved this way too, then I would not have any trouble with fps and definately no sliding at all. But they don't  ;)
 Another solution would be changing the engine so that fps cut setting also affects the movement in space, which would be very difficult.

EDIT: check out this video where I take the game to run in 10 fps.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmWokKahLRM
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on April 28, 2012, 06:41:42 pm
Looks quite close to the original walk cycle. Lower fps sure makes it more sprite like.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on April 28, 2012, 06:59:10 pm
1. I understand the issue.
2. 10 FPS looks much better than 30 FPS.

Which means.. we got a problem :P


How about -xx-xx-xx-xx- case, as luther mentioned? As i said before i THINK 3d animations doesn't have to have exactly the same frames as original 2d anim. Maybe those "artificially generated" half-frames would be enough?

And about smoothness of repositioning itself: hmm.. hmmmm..
Quote
changing the engine so that fps cut setting also affects the movement in space
Yep. Fps'ing it would be best choice, regardless of how much work it needs.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 29, 2012, 02:06:56 pm
Changes to the engine itself can only be done by Cvet and a few others on Fonline.ru - so we can't do a lot more other than put a post on there asking for it to be looked at at some point (unless someone's got some clever tricks that might work)

The other problem we have (which I personally see as a more important one) is that the "action" is executed on the first frame of an animation i.e. the enemy is struck down before the gun animation is played - it's most noticeable in hand to hand combat, where the enemy falls to the floor, then you throw a punch in the air above them.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on April 29, 2012, 09:38:31 pm
The other problem we have (which I personally see as a more important one) is that the "action" is executed on the first frame of an animation

Yeah, noticed that. What about giving the first frame longer delay? I mean the "death" animation would have a first frame lasting let say 500 ms? (Or put there 50 empty frames if delay can't be changed) That could help. Maybe. I think.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on April 29, 2012, 09:52:57 pm
I'd wondered about that myself, but I'm not sure if it would result in problems with the following animations, for example if the player is knocked down, then stands up again, the following animations may start before the previous ones have finished - so you get a correctly timed punch and knockdown, but halfway through the knockdown, the player "magically" appears on the floor getting up again, then halfway through getting up suddenly jumps to the start of a punch animation etc. Not certain it would work like this though. It might be worth someone testing and seeing if this was possible.

Ideally of course, we need the ability to set this "action frame" to whichever point in the animation is appropriate. i.e. raises gun, shot is fired <this point is where the engine considers the shot to have been fired>, the gun is lowered.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 07, 2012, 09:03:38 pm
Supermutant bulletdeath animation.

(https://i.imgur.com/IWVPP.gif)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on May 07, 2012, 10:48:29 pm
Not too long?

Plus how about making his left leg "kick the air" and then crush the whole body to the ground.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 08, 2012, 10:08:35 am
Its a nice first try for the death animation. I have some suggestion though for that I have copied out a few frames and drawn them to show some motions that could help I hope.
(https://i.imgur.com/OuwRG.gif?1)
Its only 9 (there are 2 that are doubled) frames original animation contains 20. With these nine frames it could be possible to make a close enough look to the originals. To make it more believable you can exaggerate the motions when the body shake.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on May 08, 2012, 03:39:39 pm
Supermutant bulletdeath animation.
Looks like gypsy dance :)
Don't concentrate on shoulders, try to simulate several short strikes in a different points of torso.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on May 08, 2012, 05:09:24 pm
Could it be that the animation is so long, because it contains too much frames for a .GIF - the mutant also hovers a bit before landing on the ground.

I have a question to Blender specialists: could you make a texture invisible by flipping the normals on certain faces during the animation?
Would be handy to animate bullet holes, where separate chunks of flesh disappear.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: chocolate_chip_cookies on May 08, 2012, 09:41:05 pm
(https://i.imgur.com/OuwRG.gif?1)
That looks good!
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on May 09, 2012, 10:21:45 pm
Two anims I've been working on.

Pierce Death (Gauss, unarmed critical...) first. I can't make the hole as big as it is in the sprite, so I though I could compensate that with some more gore.
After that, a test for wakizashi blade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsRGpJEs44c
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: NastyKhan on May 09, 2012, 11:03:14 pm
Both look very good.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: LagMaster on May 09, 2012, 11:06:12 pm
nice, i like the small bit that is hanging there and then falls out

but what is the ideea with the samuray guard?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Xisingr Will on May 10, 2012, 03:24:46 am
Nice work so far......can't wait till these are implented into the game   :D
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 10, 2012, 12:14:45 pm
Looks real good as always Karpov.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 10, 2012, 08:38:23 pm
Japanese sword is drawn like this (http://aikidoshobukancork.com/pdf/Sword%20and%20Aikido.pdf)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: TommyTheGun on May 10, 2012, 09:35:10 pm
Yep. And all the people of the wastelands should know this.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 11, 2012, 12:11:15 pm
Yep. And all the people of the wastelands should know this.

Right. Because why not.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Pryszczu666 on May 11, 2012, 03:54:20 pm
You ain't got no chance to survive in wasteland, if You doesn't know how to hold a japaneese sword my friend...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 11, 2012, 06:55:55 pm
By the way it goet sheathed it might been also a machete on a magnetic clip.
A dirty machete, because noone bothers to wipe the blood off before sheathing. I have nothing more to add.

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on May 14, 2012, 06:56:41 am
I think some people in this thread should leave their animation attempts, when Karpov is already at it and while he doesn't tell anyone what he's doing, he's faring better than others.

Also, in my humble opinion, the community seems to not appreciate 3d that much as it was a time ago or am i in err?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on May 14, 2012, 09:36:59 am
There are many animations to do though - there's still a lot of extra female ones to do to even get to the equivalent of what we have in 2D - never mind any extra character models. In many elements of the 3D stuff, Karpov's work has generally been great across all fields, but we can all practice, learn and get better - and feedback through these forums is a great way of doing that. The modelling, rigging and texturing I've done more recently hasn't been brilliant, but compared to the stuff I was making prior to joining the forum (Only a little over a year ago) it's a massive improvement.

I think any work being done on other models and characters is essential, even if it's at very early stages. One of the great things about the 3D stuff is that we can import, adjust and re-export most things at any stage in the development, so we can put something together and it can be improved later, either by someone else, or ourselves as we get better.

You're probably right regarding appreciation - it's not so much a surprise though, as it's been in a "sort of nearly done" state for quite some time. There's plenty of background work being done, but on the surface it's much the same as it was half a year ago - obviously the initial excitement of such a thing diminishes over time, as people are simply waiting for the "it's done, you can play it now" :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: runboy93 on May 14, 2012, 10:05:15 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PsRGpJEs44c
Sword animation is good <3
But when shot another guy, his hand exploded and something gun was dropped (10mm smg don't know) and then just for second there was combat knife looking item :/
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 14, 2012, 08:12:19 pm
I think some people in this thread should leave their animation attempts, when Karpov is already at it and while he doesn't tell anyone what he's doing, he's faring better than others.


We were animators like Karpov, but then we got Horatio to the knee...

Impudence.
Who declared you as a speaker of the community that forbids everyone else to contribute? Did you contributed anything that could be considered relevant to 3d project to judge people who are contributing?

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 15, 2012, 05:01:24 pm
Personally I think the more animations are tried to be made its the better. It doesn't really matter if the one who tries it succeed at making a good one at the first time or only after a hundred tries. Seeing people to try to contribute is a nice and useful thing.
Although it would be nice if things were a bit coordinated so animations won't get too different from each other (in style and rhythm), but its a minor thing and if critters get their own rigged and animated body even if it differs a bit could be used to test things out in Fonline. And later smoothed out or changed in a way to blend in more.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on May 15, 2012, 05:55:34 pm
I think some people in this thread should leave their animation attempts, when Karpov is already at it and while he doesn't tell anyone what he's doing, he's faring better than others.

Also, in my humble opinion, the community seems to not appreciate 3d that much as it was a time ago or am i in err?
> Karpov was critically hit in the arms he uses for animation for 57129576125 damage and was killed.
> Karpov recieves a replication timer of 60 years.
> Progress towards 3D stops.

Don't believe me? It has happend for about 2 or 3 times now. Maybe once when Karpov gets killed by an APK and recieves his god knows how long replication timer, somebody will learn animating just as good and then we will have double or even more manpower.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Enzotainment on May 16, 2012, 01:01:43 pm
Sword animation is good <3
But when shot another guy, his hand exploded and something gun was dropped (10mm smg don't know) and then just for second there was combat knife looking item :/

That knife looking item looks like the SMG back in the hand of the guy getting killed. Or more precise: where the hand would have been, had he not been killed.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 22, 2012, 01:36:06 pm
The following animation is more like a placeholder I decided to go through on the main animations and have the basics laid out. So in case someone wish to do some testings in game with the mutant he/she has a chance to check out some stuffs.
Still even though its just a placeholder you are free and welcomed to comment on the (lack of) quality:)
(https://i.imgur.com/TFD7u.gif)
Its basically the BA and CJ animation.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: JovankaB on May 22, 2012, 02:03:56 pm
I love it! Although maybe because of the way the legs move a bit like sliding motion,
he looks a bit too much like he fell on ice :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 22, 2012, 04:31:19 pm
I like it, you do it much better than me, godspeed. :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 22, 2012, 06:46:06 pm
Thanks for the comments here are a few more.
(https://i.imgur.com/9J11B.gif)(https://i.imgur.com/Bc2KS.gif)
Falling is in a slow motion.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Gray on May 23, 2012, 04:54:45 pm
Thanks for the comments here are a few more.
(https://i.imgur.com/9J11B.gif)(https://i.imgur.com/Bc2KS.gif)
Falling is in a slow motion.
awesome
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: kttdestroyer on May 23, 2012, 08:20:18 pm
I feel it is too smooth =) He is moving a bit like if he was in water. But with some modifications it can be good i think =)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 24, 2012, 10:15:40 am
Thanks for the feedback. They mainly are placeholders, I wish I can go through with all anims so in game testing can be done. Though now I wondering how to make the cut in half, melting and blown to pieces animations.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on May 24, 2012, 10:34:05 am
Thanks for the feedback. They mainly are placeholders, I wish I can go through with all anims so in game testing can be done. Though now I wondering how to make the cut in half, melting and blown to pieces animations.

The animations look sweet!

For the new animations you'll probably need for each a separate model with new riggings. For cutting and half - two parts, the cut covered with bloody-textured face, the bottom perhaps with bone sticking out. It could be textured partly with projection painting and partly with UV for the bloody parts. No idea how you do it with melting, though.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on May 24, 2012, 02:18:44 pm
Yeah, there's a "man cut into bits" version of the character model, which I think contains little red chunks to splat all over the place. Beyond that, you'll have to check with Karpov.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Lizard on May 24, 2012, 11:48:06 pm
Could it be that Karpov declared the supermutant the separate creature? In this case Jotisz has more freedom for creating.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on May 25, 2012, 10:38:15 am
Well I think that going with different approaches could lead to some inconsistence thats why I dropped a PM to Karpov to verify a few things so I may have the animations made in a similar way.

Though I will do some tries in the mean just to see how things would go.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on June 01, 2012, 11:43:35 pm
Thanks for the samurai instructions. I though of the Samurai technique as an advanced melee level special training. If you are not trained, then you will hold the wakizashi as a regular knife. But yakuzas hold it ancient japanese style, and a player must have high melee skill to be trained. Just an idea anyway...

Someone asked about that smg going back to the main state. It's true, it happens because I have 1 animation after the other. It's just a matter of fixing the frames.
 
About animating process: I was never an animator. I had a little experience in 3dsmax, but I learnt most of it while working on this. I see Jotisz is making better animations every time and I'm sure he also learns in the process. None of us is a professional, but we are sure doing our best.

Jotisz, something I forgot to answer by PM: The gore is a different file, even though I animate all toghether of course, it is exported as _deathanimgore.x and it is animated as a weapon in vbweapons.fo3d    ...it works... that's what matters  :P
 Inside this file you have some chunks of flesh some blood and the skeleton that shows when the plasma death is called. This model is attached the same way the muzzle flashes are attached, even in the same layer value, and they play their animation along with the model.

About my respawn timer thing: I know I'm sometimes away for a week or more, I'm sorry about that. Some days I don't even turn on my PC.

About the good news

I'm planning on uploading those critical death animations. Right now I'm working on the female. Once I'm done I'll try to rename some stuff to make everything clear and upload. My coding is not brilliant , the anims work only for your player, so you can't kill another guy with a laser rifle critical, but for testing purposes it is enough.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on June 02, 2012, 12:45:18 am
Excellent. If you do anything complicated in the fo3d files, you can always stick some #comment lines in there to explain what things are.

Would the NPCs die without blood even, or is it just the criticals at the moment?
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on June 02, 2012, 11:45:23 pm
NPCs die twice...  ;D 
You see, in the script run the Change body command, and then play the animation. This is not right somehow, because the chacacter changes their body and appears dead on the floor without playing any animation. My solution was to play it twice. It may not be the right way to do it. Maybe some wait command , or flush, stop animation, or something similar would be better. It works perfectly anyway. The problem is that I couldn't make the critter to change its body, so I change the player's body directly. For testing, it works great, but killing an NPC would change my body instead, and the NPC would play the animation with the standard model...twice  ;D

So, basically, I have to get myself killed every time. Of course, if someone else knows about coding, it would be great to have it fixed.

I'll try to use comments, and erase useless lines. But basically, I'm going to change all of the "VB" named files, so nobody, including me, gets confused.


This is the converted animations for the female character. It came out better than I expected. Now I have to match the gore to this model. Right now it's using the gore from the male model.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0-6kZ2Rfb1E

I still have to correct some things like the weapons falling , and all of the gore for the female, including the skeleton.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on June 03, 2012, 02:06:51 am
Poor NPCs :(

Am I right in thinking that any armour on the model would add another level of complexity to this, i.e. you would also have to switch the armour to a "choppable" version and so on?

I think we're definitely getting to the stage where a coder is going to be pretty essential to finish this stuff off - I think the animations are looking great, but sooner or later, those NPCs are going to need to die once, and with blood and gore :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Johnnybravo on June 03, 2012, 01:56:30 pm
BTW:
Was there any progress on the timing of those animations? I know it's been here already, talked about.
It's pretty much the only real flaw now - seeing how you melt before the bolt of plasma hits you :d.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Karpov on June 04, 2012, 01:30:29 am
Poor NPCs :(

Am I right in thinking that any armour on the model would add another level of complexity to this, i.e. you would also have to switch the armour to a "choppable" version and so on?

I think we're definitely getting to the stage where a coder is going to be pretty essential to finish this stuff off - I think the animations are looking great, but sooner or later, those NPCs are going to need to die once, and with blood and gore :)

I think it's not so hard. I found the right command, but I just can't use it inside the script. Somehow it works in a different script, so I tell the game to run that one instead. The problem with this is that the external script is not related to the main script where the animations happen, so pointing to the right critter is impossible from there, so I use the player. I'm sure someone will know how to fix it once I upload the files.

BTW:
Was there any progress on the timing of those animations? I know it's been here already, talked about.
It's pretty much the only real flaw now - seeing how you melt before the bolt of plasma hits you :d.

Well, that's not a flaw with 3D models. In the original game there was no trouble, it seemed to make everything stop when a weapon was shot, the critter didn't even put the gun down until the animation had finished. In real time that is not possible.
 I can't delay the animation because you never know how far the attacker is, and how much is it going to take until the bolt hits you. Besides, laser and plasma effects are merely graphical. If the shot was actually that slow, then you could even dodge it when you see it coming.  Last but not least, even if you could correct that, the normal response times from the server, even the lowest ping, would make it look the same  ;D.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on July 21, 2012, 03:39:09 pm
  But sometimes it is hard to create one from scratch, so motion capture would be a good idea too.
Hey.
I use 3dmodels of Vanburen in my own game-project.
Now, I explore the possibility to create additional animations that were not in the files of Vanburen (such as emotions, gestures, interaction with objects: carrying heavy objects, opening doors, pressing buttons etc.)
I use the Xtion depth sensor and a special program to create animations of the human body.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=prueM6BlY24
Despite some technical limitations, you can get very nice results in a very short period of time.
Maybe I could do some animation for your project?
If you are interested please contact me.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on July 21, 2012, 03:59:12 pm
More muscle is always appreciated! ;)

The only problem I see is that you are using a kind of a motion capture which tends to get realistic motion, which isn't really the case with Fallout sprites. However, I cannot speak for all, feel free to give something a shot, after all, nothing bad can happen.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on July 21, 2012, 06:33:37 pm
If you are interested please contact me.

I'm helluva interested in what you're doing, because this way you can create A TON of human animations, if not EVERYTHING in short amount of time! Screw falloutishness for now. We need done animation sets or this will take forever! The animations can be adjusted later.

Go for it, xammurapi, imagine how many animations you can do during one evening and what a workout it will be! :D

Skill-based weapon animations, unarmed moves, crates carrying, shit showeling, pushing people away, injecting drugs, drinking beer, limping, nursing wounded arm, taking damage to limbs, repairing and crafting stuff... Just some suggestions for new animations.:)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on July 21, 2012, 09:26:27 pm
Skill-based weapon animations, unarmed moves, crates carrying, shit showeling, pushing people away, injecting drugs, drinking beer, limping, nursing wounded arm, taking damage to limbs, repairing and crafting stuff...
Yes, I also imagined WEALTH, similar to that described.

But we must realize that still, after the capture and digitization of the final animation will require treatment.

To get started, I need the following:

1) The decision of the project coordinator of the need to create animations of this kind.

2) Approval of technical aspects. IPISoft Studio can export animation in several formats: bhv(bip), fbx, smd, dae, and we need to decide in advance about your specific format. Animations can be saved for 3ds max biped or motion builder or iclone, or it will be the animation of bones (with a pre-import target model and configuration dependencies between the bones and animations). Also, consider the following points (technical limitations):
   a) The program does not record the movement of the head (not a problem, because in the modern game's head is usually animated procedurally, "tracking" objects of interest)
   b) the program does not record the movement of fingers (not a problem, because usually the hands clenched, or something like that)
   c) Now I have only one sensor depth and complexity of the animation in some way limited: for example, if the leg will be obscured at any time by scanning another part of the body, the position of the legs can not be recognized correctly.

3) Scenario animations. A text or graphic (in the form of sketches or diagrams) a description of movements, which should be digitized.
For example it should be a text in the form of:
sequence 1: unarmed idle - pick up item - unarmed idle - crates carrying - unarmed idle - injecting drugs ....
sequence 2: one-hand armed idle - shooting - one-hand armed idle - burst - one-hand armed idle - weapon maintenance - one-hand armed idle - nursing wounded arm ...
sequence 3: two-hand armed idle - sweep - two-hand armed idle - guns fell out of the hands - two-hand armed idle - reload weapon - two-hand armed idle - stunning
And all of the above examples in all possible combinations.
And each sequence must be described in the style in which the director explains the actor, that he should do.
Until it is all.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on July 22, 2012, 01:44:09 pm
1) The decision of the project coordinator of the need to create animations of this kind.

I don't know who is authorized as a project coordinator/leader. We have here several mods, but LutherBlissett is the most active recently. Karpov have done male/female animations, haven't updated his progress, though, he seem to work on death animations right now. Noone hears anything from him recently. I'd ask Mr. Blissett.

2) Approval of technical aspects. IPISoft Studio can export animation in several formats: bhv(bip), fbx, smd, dae, and we need to decide in advance about your specific format. Animations can be saved for 3ds max biped or motion builder or iclone, or it will be the animation of bones (with a pre-import target model and configuration dependencies between the bones and animations). Also, consider the following points (technical limitations):
   a) The program does not record the movement of the head (not a problem, because in the modern game's head is usually animated procedurally, "tracking" objects of interest)
   b) the program does not record the movement of fingers (not a problem, because usually the hands clenched, or something like that)
   c) Now I have only one sensor depth and complexity of the animation in some way limited: for example, if the leg will be obscured at any time by scanning another part of the body, the position of the legs can not be recognized correctly.

BVH or FBX seems fine to me as Blender user, i only need to weigh the bones in rest position (cross position) and edit the animation. We don't have fingers, too, we have mittens. As for leg positions, i could iron the glitches out, same with head.

3) Scenario animations. A text or graphic (in the form of sketches or diagrams) a description of movements, which should be digitized.
For example it should be a text in the form of:
sequence 1: unarmed idle - pick up item - unarmed idle - crates carrying - unarmed idle - injecting drugs ....
sequence 2: one-hand armed idle - shooting - one-hand armed idle - burst - one-hand armed idle - weapon maintenance - one-hand armed idle - nursing wounded arm ...
sequence 3: two-hand armed idle - sweep - two-hand armed idle - guns fell out of the hands - two-hand armed idle - reload weapon - two-hand armed idle - stunning
And all of the above examples in all possible combinations.
And each sequence must be described in the style in which the director explains the actor, that he should do.
Until it is all.

In this case we should know what's available, throw some ideas in, make ten basic, most necessary animations without guns as a pilot and adjust later positions for guns. You'll probably need some simple placeholder for items in your hands and then we can work on the animations. I could provide the animation list, unless someone else wants to be the director.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on July 24, 2012, 10:38:02 pm
And here I am.
I was hoping that stored in the repository model is suitable for the job. However, they are optimized to work in the game. I had to find a converter X-> FBX and work with the obtained models. With regard to generally accepted standards, they are rotated around a vertical axis through 180 degrees, have a lot of extra bone and have the incorrect naming of the parties (the right elements are labeled as left or vice versa) I do not know, this is a bug or error converting the original model? No idea whether the animation is now compatible with the models used.
Next.
as an actor (except for the animation of a tough guy), I used my 14-year-old nephew. It turns out that body composition has a significant impact on the mocap, despite its markerless. The next time I'll keep that in mind.
Next.
For the record mocap definitely need to work in the studio / room as the sun creates too much noise.
Next.
Without a list of required moves is impossible to work =)
Next.
Only one depth sensor is not enough for the job. I'll try to get another one.

I am open to access some of the mocap, which I digitized in the format "fbx" with a link to a modified model of man, which I downloaded from the repository. In the animation there is a certain amount of debris, but from what I understand, nothing irreparable. In addition, the program has options trajectory smoothing and removal of garbage, but I do not understand how they work =)
Waiting for reviews.
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/dedy2lxirgoqys1/fjjOpxaWrk?m
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on July 25, 2012, 04:33:01 pm
Hmm... Let me take a look into the bones and their naming. It seems that the Left and Right names are shown correctly only if viewed "head on" (Facing towards the human's face). I can't tell how intentional is it as I'm not the one who made the human skeleton/model. It has been some time since I last did something useful towards the 3D project and my memories are just about outdated already, so can't really help you much tho.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on July 25, 2012, 07:14:17 pm
Hmm... Let me take a look into the bones and their naming. It seems that the Left and Right names are shown correctly only if viewed "head on" (Facing towards the human's face). I can't tell how intentional is it as I'm not the one who made the human skeleton/model. It has been some time since I last did something useful towards the 3D project and my memories are just about outdated already, so can't really help you much tho.
http://svn3.xp-dev.com/svn/FOnline3d/trunk/data/art/critters/CR_HumanMaleStrong.X
I took this model from the repository and convert it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1f3ryep5dqczwf5/CR_HumanMaleStrong.fbx
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on July 28, 2012, 03:13:26 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vqeIOrqJA-M
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tTfuUYjAumI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WadywtHQDjs
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j7enJsUMYo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RrFSVB-G9J8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2YGuxgVD8U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ezX7aB0XSCg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kREijs_UVMI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PXizyoyVN6k
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Luther Blissett on July 28, 2012, 07:28:08 pm
A lot to look at! :)

I'll look in chronological order...

Firstly, in my opinion, yes please! More animators are definitely needed. For the style elements, it's certainly true that the Fallout animations are heavily stylised (especially the "run" one), but I would consider any animation to be better than none at all, especially if they can be produced simply and quickly - and as Horatio said, these can be adjusted later.

It's notable for example that the Van Buren ones "breathed" or "swayed" a little, compared to the completely static poses of the Fallout ones. However, the process of applying this simplicity and style to an existing animation is likely much easier than creating these from scratch. I'd assume these animations are keyframed throughout, but we can likely adapt these stylistically by importing the standard idle pose as the start and finish point, then picking 3 or 4 keyframes from the animation and deleting all other keyframes and letting it tween between those points, making it far less fluid and realistic. Once down to a smaller number of keyframes, they can be tweaked into a more Fallout-like exaggerated position (see the punch or run animations for good examples of exaggerated action).

The currently possible "animation slots" are in \Client\data\art\critters\_FOHuman.fo3d - you can run additional animations with a debug code, but otherwise they do need linking up in the main scripts. This is entirely possible, but I don't know how to do it personally. It should be fairly easy to understand for anyone with the slightest bit of scripting experience. It was previously suggested that we should add a lot of "flavour animations" for drinking, smoking, using things etc - predominantly replacements for the "milking an invisible cow" use animation - specifically those for doctor/first aid/failed steal (successful steal probably being invisible).

Regarding project coordination, I'd probably consider Karpov/Graf/Grey as the main coordinators of the 3D stuff, though the 2238 Devs themselves would be responsible for what was to be used in 2238 - though I do have a reasonable involvement in the 3D stuff I think. In the absence of a reply from any of those, I would personally say "yes, go for it". I can't see any reason why this work would cause any problem, and am fairly confident that they would also see the benefits of this - as mentioned before, things can be tweaked and refined in future.

Technically, Karpov's animation was based on a Max biped - I think I may have a source file for this if it's useful to you. Otherwise, the current skeleton is mapped out in one of the 3D tutorials, if you want to look at bone names etc. As said, it's mittens for hands and a single head bone, which I think is perfectly sufficient when you consider the in-game size of the models. For file formats, I've personally used .x through Fragmotion (it can import the native .x files seamlessly) - but pick whatever seems most cross-compatible - especially with Blender, as we've got a few good animators using this. The model orientation is flipped L-R when editing, but is then flipped or rotated in the game engine it seems - whatever you export must match this. The model may appear "face down" in some programs, due to the difference in Y/Z axis for up that some formats or programs use. Any "no_name" bones which appear can be safely deleted. You should have everything linked to the main skeleton, and an additional two hand bones, again there's a diagram in the tutorial section which should help.

[edit]
Looking through the little videos you've put up, it's all looking good. The bits that would need tweaking for "Falloutness" are likely the movement of hips, rotation of torso etc. If these animations had existed in the Fallout world, they'd likely have a completely static body, with just the movement of the arms. I'm pretty confident that it's doable, simply by positioning the body to the normal "idle pose", then using some of the keyframes from the arm movements, but deleting all the lower body movements. I'm almost certain I could do this with Fragmotion myself, but I'm a little short of time right now. I'll try and have a go at a couple quite soon, and see if it's as easy as I think it will be :)
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on August 01, 2012, 08:29:49 am
Xammurapi these animations are looking good. Especially since motion capture animations are easy to tweak and edit. A bit less of a work then creating an animation. I'm sure they will be useful.

Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: xammurapi on August 03, 2012, 08:57:16 pm
It would be nice to see a list of desired animation: text or video or links to animated models.
To create the current animation, so I did: downloaded the wow client and wow_model_viewer. In it, I looked at some of the characters and lists of animations that they use. I did own list, and then tried to reproduce what I saw (with amendments). This is a very good help.

I do not quite understand your reasoning about style. In the video test using 3D models in the game engine http://youtu.be/wpzC0lctAGE, everything looks great in my opinion.

My knowledge of 3D modeling are insufficient to handle the animation in the editor, but see the biped would be interested. Which modifier is used to snap the character?

In general, I am most interested in creating animations for the super mutant. Frankly, by coincidence, that I think about it for 15 years, starting with a Fallout1, when I saw the in-game-movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfyqlMBeQFU&feature=player_detailpage#t=60s Maybe it's a bit strange, but many times I imagined that it was me - super mutant, new warrior of the Master's army, who before diving into a vat of the virus was VaultDweller. And I imagined how I go through the corridors of the Vault13, shooting yesterday genetic cousins ​​...
It would be nice to implement impersonation in the actual animation, I'm glad that I now have the opportunity.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Haraldx on August 03, 2012, 11:50:06 pm
I do not quite understand your reasoning about style. In the video test using 3D models in the game engine http://youtu.be/wpzC0lctAGE, everything looks great in my opinion.
Those are Van Buren animations. What we are aiming for are almost (if not exactly) perfect copies of Fallout 1/2 sprite animations. The main problem is that the original Fallout animations aren't very realistic (take a look at the running cycle, it's ridiculous how at one point the legs make an almost perfect 180 degree angle) and rather choppy. Van Buren animations (which I actually have a feeling were motion capped too) are the exact opposite, but hey, I'm getting side tracked a bit here.


In general, I am most interested in creating animations for the super mutant. Frankly, by coincidence, that I think about it for 15 years, starting with a Fallout1, when I saw the in-game-movie http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfyqlMBeQFU&feature=player_detailpage#t=60s Maybe it's a bit strange, but many times I imagined that it was me - super mutant, new warrior of the Master's army, who before diving into a vat of the virus was VaultDweller. And I imagined how I go through the corridors of the Vault13, shooting yesterday genetic cousins ​​...
It would be nice to implement impersonation in the actual animation, I'm glad that I now have the opportunity.
Sounds nice. As far as I know, we need the whole set for muttie animations (that is - everything).
I do not know if this is the whole list of animations a character uses, but hey:
All the question marks show animations that I don't know if are really needed/going to be used.
I have a feeling I forgot some animations tho, not even talking about the optional ones we might need for more random diversity. May the light be with animators...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on September 29, 2012, 10:52:09 am
Well, xammurapi.
It seems that everything was empty talk, after all...
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on October 07, 2012, 02:22:37 pm
This took quite a time hope it gives some push to the 3D community and revive the progresses around here. These things are quite minor but I hope they will be useful.
Here is a small video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbkeRM_7mCI
A download link to all normal animations converted to bvh. I'm still tweaking around with the blend file containing all the model types so there is time till I share that too. Also its possible to use the old template for animation making.
http://db.tt/jsbs7JGs
The extra animations are not included. I still doing a few tweaks to make some gory anims but it may take quite a time till I show anything like getting blown to pieces and the likes of that.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on October 07, 2012, 03:15:47 pm
Good to know that you keep the project alive, Jotisz.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Jotisz on October 09, 2012, 02:24:28 pm
Good to know that you keep the project alive, Jotisz.
I think its a bit big to say. I merely just making animations... Karpov probably will pop out with finished human animations when we will least except and then they could be tweaked to fit the other humanoid models.
Title: Re: Character Animations
Post by: Horatio on October 12, 2012, 06:55:14 pm
Sometimes i have a bad feeling that Karpov might never release his animations for public.