MONSTERS by LEKI (CLOSED)

[LordGarth]

Hello,

What are you using for animation.

LordGarth

[Leki]

Hello,
What are you using for animation.
LordGarth

I'm not sure if I understand you
If you are asking about program, then I work with edu version of 3DMax and I use wallasaurus maxscript. If you use blender, there is possibility to ask some programmer for help to write maxscript into pythoon and then you can use it as blenderscript. If you are asking about animation methods, then I use nodes and skined mesh, which means it's all "by hand made animations" - because I have no idea how to connect biped to nodes (only export biped anim and then import to nodes with the same bone name worked, but its faster to do it in old way, than play with exports etc)...

[LordGarth]

K
Thanks

I am looking for a program that I can animate with.

LordGarth

[Drakkan]

How is the footman animation going ? I am planning to use it for last version of my dungeon

[wallasaurus]

Hello,
What are you using for animation.
LordGarth

I'm not sure if I understand you
If you are asking about program, then I work with edu version of 3DMax and I use wallasaurus maxscript. If you use blender, there is possibility to ask some programmer for help to write maxscript into pythoon and then you can use it as blenderscript. If you are asking about animation methods, then I use nodes and skined mesh, which means it's all "by hand made animations" - because I have no idea how to connect biped to nodes (only export biped anim and then import to nodes with the same bone name worked, but its faster to do it in old way, than play with exports etc)...

Hi leki,

the usual way to do this workflow is the have an 'export skeleton' of dummy objects/bones/meshes (in a hierarchy) and this is constrained to the biped/cat-rig/custom rig. In this way, you can use the benefits of the rig for speedier animation etc. and still have a simple export process.

I can create a script if you like which will create the export skeleton from a biped or cat rig? If you want to do t manually, you can try a number of ways. If using biped, you can copy the whole biped, collapse the biped nodes to meshes, and use those as your export skeleton. You should link them up into a hierarchy as required, and then set their position and rotation controllers to be constraints pointing to the biped nodes rather than bezier/euler or whatever. These export bones are what the mesh should be skinned to, and the ones which should be exported. They are driven by the control rig in the app for animation reasons but are just a simple set of objects - much cleaner to export.

any more questions feel free.

[Leki]

Hi CW,
thanks. I'm glad to see you back here.
Way how it works for me is simple (but little obscure...):

- I have "points" (nodes) in hierarchy (simple linked to each other). Each point represent important bone joint - for example toggle or arm and have the same name as "bone joint" - toggle_R, arm_L etc for easy identification. For spine or tails I have usually more of them and name is with number index (spine_1, spine_2 etc).
- linking means that if I rotate "shoulder", "arm", "hand" and "fingers" moves too. So I can say, that I have some kind of skeleton.
- Points have 0 size, so I can export them without problems directly with model.
- model mesh is skinned to these points (nodes). I do weight for each vertice (or selection of them) using weight tools in skin modifier.
- mesh can have more parts - head, body, legs and I can replace them easly. New part must be skined too, oc.
- detached "mesh_head_2" is linked to "head" and skined to "head", "neck" and "jaw", weapon "long_sword" or "axe" for example, is usually skined and linked to "hand_R", shield to "arm_L" or "forearm_L" (I still improve my "skeleton" so it changes).
- Doing animations by rotating nodes is easy
- Problematic is only human walking/atacking with step forward (to keep foot on position and move body forward). So I used biped walk as "shadow" reference (I made biped who fits to my model with joints in the same position as my mesh bones are and used default biped walk or fiooprints or whatever was that - I set parameters to get 4 steps on 3 meters). It works.
- For "human_bowman" I used "skeleton_archer" skeleton and adapted model of bowman to fit it. Then I improved imported animations of "skeleton_archer" to get it ok for "human_bowman" in all ways.
- I export animation using your script (only points (nodes) are selected).

Notes:
- I don't have constrains for points (nodes). Some time mesh is not ideal and it helps me when I can do it over limits
- I have file for each animation, so I don't have all animations in one file. It's easier to manage it for me (using proper file naming etc).
- what I really fight is human walking. I have no problem with shoulders or hands, I also can feel, how human mass works, but I cannot do it with my limited skills in animation tools. I don't have experience with polishing keys. I recognized that can edit keys on trayectory, so I can "scale noise" of foot node to one point, but because simple linking is not IK as biped is, it does "stretching" to mesh etc and in the end you can feel that "something is not good in animation". I can minimalize that effect with precise positioning of nodes, but it takes a lot of time and you have to work with minimum of 3 nodes.

So if you have method how to "interpolate" or clean up noising etc, it will be great.

[wallasaurus]

so it sounds as if you have everything there actually.

for the point helpers, if you go to the motion panel and change the rotation controller to rotation constraint, make the constraint point to the biped bone you are linking to - do that for all the joints, do the same for position constraint on position controller, make sure offset is ticked on all those constraints and it should work fine.

you will be able to move the biped and your point helpers should move also with it. This way you can use all the controls on biped and set keys on the biped rig for the animations, and the point helpers are the transforms which get exported to the game.

good luck!

[Leki]

Hmm... I tried few months ago something like that - but I just linked point helpers to biped bones (hand to hand etc).
It worked and model moved, but I was not able to export keys for point helpers - keys was empty - so I tried to select point helpers and did "Key" manualy for each frame. Point helpers had keys on timeline, but when I unlinked point helpers from biped bones, animation does not worked again - because biped is IK and you cannot get keys in this way for linked objects or something like that.
I tried to export biped animation (biped bones had the same names as my point helpers). It worked, but because I dont have experience with that, it takes hours to find how to do it right (export/import etc And it is not user friendly - you have to improve skin during animations etc, so mirroring, exporting, importing - the pipeline is to complicated.
I am not sure, what is rotation controller and constraint, but I will check it tonight. Animating by biped/cat and control model as puppet will work for sure better than manual animation of each point helper.

[LordGarth]

Hello I like your ghoul monster. I will be using it and others of yours in my sequel game. I plan on putting my own twist and taint to the ghoul by adding a particle system that will have yellowish green ooze dripping from its mouth. hahahahahhah

Also I wanted to ask if you are able and willing to animate some of the monsters I have made in blender.
I dont have any animation software that is compatible with LOG or John's Toolkit? I would really like to be able to use my Vingolev and Materializer monsters.

Thx,

Screenshots coming soon.

LordGarth

[Drakkan]

Hi Leki. Any news about human melee monster(s) ?