New Character Bones-Help Movement

Posted By: Chris3D

New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/26/05 17:23

Hi!

I am working on a new character movement, you can control the character via help objects. So that the model moves like the biped in 3dsmax! The tool will use animation with keyframes and save them...Here a very early version screen that shows that the help objects already move the model:

(maybe somebody wants to have his model in the final version, just say it, because I won't give my nice female model away... )
A lot of people make their animations in 3dsmax and don't need such a tool but I found out that sometimes it's better when you have realtime animation with bones, because you can give the animations other models too, you just have to copy the bone structure and attach the vertices to the bones.
Greetings
Chris
Posted By: Excessus

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/26/05 17:52

Hey really cool!

Does it work like inverse kinematics? And does it actually save the bones animations to the mdl file?
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/26/05 18:29

Yes, like inverse kinematics! But it is just a wdl code! It will save the animation to a extra text file...when the animation would be saved in the mdl, only the single mdl would have the animation... with the script every mdl which has the same bones can use the animation.
Posted By: Excessus

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/26/05 22:58

Ah, that's cool, but I suppose you can't use the engines' native animation instructions like ent_animate.
Wouldn't it be possible to throw away the mesh in med, leave the bones, copy/merge a new mesh and attach it to the bones. That way you can use the same bones + animation for multiple models, and still use the standard animation instructions. (if it's not to difficult to write to the mdl file)
Posted By: scary_man

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/29/05 09:22

Ah cool. controllers!
Still need to buy Comm or Pro for this

-Jeroen
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/29/05 14:44

Here is a screen of the rotation tool, you can see that the helper objects can change their forms and rotate the single bodyparts...

@Excessus: I will write my own "ent_animate" function, it should work like the real one, maybe I call it bone_animate or sth. else. The problem is, when I want to save it in the mdl, I need to write a dll plugin, but I am very uninformed in writing dlls. Furthermore, a lot of people will have problems, because the dll often doesn't work with different pc/windows settings.
Posted By: HeelX

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/29/05 15:10

This is something which is very very very interesting.
I thought about some kind of relative animation for multiple models a while ago.

Please do something and capture meanwhile so that you can show a video about it..

ciao
- Christian
Posted By: capanno

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 08/29/05 16:43

Yes yes looking good! When will it be finished?
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/01/05 16:30

I can upload a demo when you want to see the moving...but I need a ftp server, I didn't have one...
it will be finished when everything works like I want it
so...I still have to make controllers (sliders) for the hand and the face, that will be finished in one or two days. After that I write a code to save the single keyframes and the animation functions, so maybe in a week or a little bit earlier.I just keep on working...

Here a pic of the hslider-finger-action, works very well:

Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/01/05 19:06

I can host it for you on my server, email me at dniezgocki[at]11threvenant.com

-Rhuarc
Posted By: Rhuarc

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/02/05 15:36

Chris's comments:
Quote:

Hi, here is the little MOVING-TEST-DEMO!
I have packed it, so hopefully nobody steals my woman model
And don't be surprised about her, the skin is not really finished...she has
some ugly misstakes in the normal and color map.



Download Demo:
http://host.11threvenant.com/friendly_chris/demo.zip

-Rhuarc
Posted By: ello

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/02/05 17:54

and this tool works with every model?? or are there any requirements?
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/02/05 22:08

@ello: oh no, did I say that? For sure you have to change some things... if your model has not a normal human structure you must change some bones or some parts in the script! I will make an understandable tutorial for fitting the script to your models. And there will be also a tutorial that tells you how to change some little parts of your model to work better with the script.
For example: The finger movement looks better if your model has two subdivisions between the single finger parts. and than I show you how to make it with med or max...but I think almost every human model will work with the script, because it is very simple and depends on the bone-structure which you just copy to your model(or copy the model to the bones, don't give a damn about it)

Well, I make this tool to help the community, but I also make it for my games and I want to use it for every model I use...so maybe if it doesn't work with animal-models I will write a new script for me, and maybe you can also use it.

Sorry for the bad english, I am messed-up for today
good night, good fight!
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/03/05 13:31

Hi! I finished the Hand controllers so finally I come to the face controllers!
Here a new shot, my girl has a nice "Kill Bill" kungfu-tiger-technique, I think

Posted By: HeelX

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/03/05 16:17

Its amazing, nice implementation. Here are some good-meant critiques:

Please add..

- rotation marks at the shoulders (I cant get the girl her hand behind her head)

- a button to switch presntation rotation on/off (its now too hard to get in the right editing mode

- dont zoom in when moving the mouse up and down, use a shift+... combination

- add x/y/z axis camera constraints. sometimes its not very easy too find the right cam angle to edit. Perhaps you add a 4 window system (top/side/front/unlimited)

- do the planes have different meanings or not? I dont like truspace itself, but here it would be cool (as long as you have only one editing window that is unrestricted) to add a movement by plane selection (planes represting the xy/xz/yz planes, drag and drop to move the bipe).

- let the user select an editing node by option and let the camera circle around it (or add an offset feature)

- add a timeline feature to save poses and insert/delete/interpolate between them


ciao!
- Christian
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/04/05 15:07

Thanks for the good suggestions for improvement, Chris, I will deliberate about those.
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/07/05 10:41

I almost finished the facial movement...does anyone know a tool to get audio files into vars, I want to make a lip syncro. tool.

Posted By: fogman

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/07/05 11:37

Please finish that...
I´m glad that you´ll contribute that tool,
it´ll be very useful!
I´ve downloaded the demo and it´s real impressive!

[edit] I don´t know much about lip-sync technics, but you´ll
need to deal with phonemes.
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/09/05 18:14

Hi! Today I finished the basic animation and saving script!!! Now only some little thing must be fixed...it will be soon finished!
Posted By: Josh_Arldt

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/09/05 21:16

Could you please set the nexus to 255 or lower?
I am not able to even run the demo.
Thanks.
Posted By: Bopete

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/10/05 22:03

Quote:

I almost finished the facial movement...does anyone know a tool to get audio files into vars, I want to make a lip syncro. tool.



Try Microsoft's LISET:
The Linguistic Sound Editing Tool (LISET) enables you to generate phoneme and word-break information from spoken audio (.WAV) files to support improved lip-syncing character animation.
http://www.microsoft.com/MSAGENT/downloads/developer.asp

I've tried it, and it's pretty cool
Posted By: HeelX

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/10/05 23:24

This is very useful, you should add an entry in the sticky developers guide

thanks a lot for sharing this link
christian
Posted By: Bopete

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/11/05 03:39

Good thinking - I added it to the Starving Developer's Quickstart Guide thread
Posted By: nuclear_winter

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/11/05 09:18

WTF is this??????


Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/13/05 12:27

well I think it is a suspicious file for your realtimeprotector, because it is packed with nasci! The final version won't be packed!
I finished the important things, but I have some little problems with the keyframes. will be fixed soon!
cu chris
Posted By: nuclear_winter

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/13/05 19:48

Cool man, good that you're making progress
Posted By: Matt_Coles

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/15/05 11:24

cool, would there be any chance of getting your newton bones thing in there too? I've lost the old beta script
Posted By: Calined

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/15/05 11:38

wow that looks cool
but havent tested it =P

its a little problem that the animation isnt stored in the model..
but i dont think it will be so disturbing if you have some functions like ent_animate too^^

keep going!

*cheers friendly_chris on*
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/17/05 09:33

Hi and hello, the bad news I haven't finished the tool yet, but the good news, I will update a new demo, maybe Rhuarc can store it again on his server, i will send him an email, keep cool, greetings chris
Posted By: Going_Postal

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/18/05 14:31

hi will this tool work for people that don't have bones like in A6 Extra??
Posted By: Whisper

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/18/05 15:27

i just download the demo.zip, virus detected, please check file.
Posted By: jweb

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/18/05 18:08

hi
is the new version of the demo.zip the old link ?????
Posted By: Chris3D

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/18/05 19:14

@ Going_Postal: no, you need bones for the tool!

OK, I sent the demo file to Rhuarc, I hope he will upload it soon...
You will see that a lot of things are still missing, I am going to fix them the next days. CU chris


Posted By: jweb

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 09/22/05 18:05

hi chris
have you or Rhuarc Problems with the new Version ???

JWEB
Posted By: Thomas_Nitschke

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 10/19/05 12:13

This sounds absolutely great. Is the tool still in the works? I could really use something like that over here...

Please keep us posted
Posted By: TimeOut

Re: New Character Bones-Help Movement - 02/04/06 17:50

Any updates here?
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