Keshire's block animations

[keshire]

File Size:Dragon stores all rotations for every bone I beleive. 3D Studio Max only stored the rotations of the bones I moved. So my files will be smaller and more "optomized". I think glamerge has an option to optimize during merge.

 

Model Root Issue: If your using my anims as a base. You may need to clear the model root transforms and rotations in Dragon. Most of my old stuff doesn't have correct _Humanoid index's internally. I used an older version of carcass to compile them and used glamerge to correct the index's when merged.

 

Hope this clears up some stuff.

[razorace]

The ones I'm looking at are the originals, from your dev_gla.zip package, but you think they can be cleaned up in Dragon? That would be awesome.

 

As for the optimization, I'll have to some comparisions. This seems like this might be an issue if Dragon results in much larger filesizes after merges.

 

FYI, I've emailed you a copy of all the animation.cfg work that we've done for your dev_gla files. Hopefully you might be able to use them for something.

 

Finally, whatever happened to that new complete saber style that you were working on? Did that ever get finished?

 

Thanks for stopping in, Keshire. Your work is appreciated around here.

[keshire]

but you think they can be cleaned up in Dragon?

 

Finally, whatever happened to that new complete saber style that you were working on? Did that ever get finished?

 

Thanks for stopping in, Keshire. Your work is appreciated around here.

 

Well if they don't outright load up in dragon you can merge them to the main and then just rip the frames.

 

It's floating around the net labeled as BOTH_A8. I had a hardrive issue, so I lost all the source files.

 

No problem. I try and jump on any questions I see.

[JRHockney*]

Finally, whatever happened to that new complete saber style that you were working on? Did that ever get finished?

 

Last time I checked, that was an experiment that either didnt work, or he didn't have the time or desire to finish. I forget exactly we he said about that at the MB forums. If they are relatively complete, it might be cool to see it coded though.

[razorace]

So, is anyone other than Keshire capable of fixing the block animations?

 

Keshire, are you still counting yourself as retired? We might really need your help on this. As for things I can offer, I've recently learned a bunch about the saberlock system so I might be able to help MB2 figure out your mini-saberlock issues.

[Vruki Salet]

Can you restate exactly what's wrong with the ones I sent? Even if you don't want them I'd like to look into it for my own sake.

[razorace]

1. Most or all the dual blocks have bad model positions. It's obvious if you compare the position of animations vs the normal animations. This results in the player model magically teleporting up into the air during blocks. I suspect that the player model's center is just offset incorrectly.

2. The staff block animation set is incomplete.

3. Several of the back block positions have massive clipping issues. Right now, I don't think it's too much of an issue since the we probably only need one back block position.

 

If you're interested in fixing things, I don't think we need the block transition moves because I suspect that we can do the animations well enough without them. Plus, this dramatically simplifies the job.

[Vruki Salet]

Here is a link to a zip of the animations with problem #1 fixed for the duals:

 

http://www.taddia.com/vruki/keshire_single_dual_blocks.zip

 

It has been tested in-game and the model is on the floor for all the dual blocks. Let me know if singles have a problem like that. Also double check the animation.cfgs to make sure an odd frame didn't get stuck in or lost somewhere.

 

The clipping is severe sometimes but I think the animations are quick enough that you might be able to get away with ignoring it. How about trying it out and seeing what people here think? In any case the clipping is fixable.

 

The staff lack is fixable too, in theory, but a heck of a lot harder.

 

Edit: Let me know if you see freaky hand warping in the game with these. I didn't see it in the game but I did in Dragon and Modview. It could be that the glow of the saber obscured it so be on the lookout.

[keshire]

Nah. Anyone with Dragon can fix those issues. I'm sticking around for complicated stuff.

 

As for clipping. Any back blocks that go by the head will clip if not animated. Thats just the nature of them.

 

I'd recommend seperating them up though coding wise.

 

start->block (3 frames)

Block (held, 1 frame)

block->start (3 frames)

block->block (3 frames)

 

If the projectiles are coming faster than the transitions can handle skip them, else play them.

[Vruki Salet]

Thanks for the separation recommendation.

[razorace]

Nah. Anyone with Dragon can fix those issues. I'm sticking around for complicated stuff.

Fair enough. It looks like Vruki can handle this. But if you're interested, we could use some strafe animations or better "slow bounce" animations.

[razorace]

Edit: Let me know if you see freaky hand warping in the game with these. I didn't see it in the game but I did in Dragon and Modview. It could be that the glow of the saber obscured it so be on the lookout.

Yeah, I'm seeing the hand warpage in modview too. We're probably going to have to fix that. As for testing this stuff ingame, how are you going about it? It sounds like you're doing it some way more effective than I am.

[Vruki Salet]

The hand mutation does exist in-game. It's really bad, and with all those bones in each hand times 365 frames I think the only good solution is to figure out if there's a consistent offset every time and automate a fix.

 

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All I did was add an entry in animation.cfg that replaced the frames for the A3 T2B swing with all the new dual block frames. So I went to red stance and pressed attack and voila! watched all the blocks happen.

[razorace]

So did you check the size of the merged _humanoid.gla? Did it actually optimize the file size or did the bloated dragon file size pass into the main file?

 

Anyway, I suspect that the offset is constant for all of those animations. How would you automate the process?

[Vruki Salet]

The ojp gla with my dragon-made versions of keshire's single blocks and dual bocks added to it is only 181 K bigger than the original ojp gla. Also Wudan is working on compression in Dragon even now.

 

By offset I meant a regular constant amount that each finger bone might be off by. Like maybe each finger bone is -10 on the X axis from it's proper position in each end frame. (I just made that number up.) Then something could be written to put them back. i.e. find those frames and put the finger bones all up 10 on the X axis.

[razorace]

Well, that's great! I was worried that Dragon's output would be much larger than the stuff from xsi.

 

As for the offset stuff, is every single bone offset or is it the model_root in comparison to the floor? Does Keshire maybe know?

[Vruki Salet]

I looked at it closely and unfortunately it looks like there's not an across-the-board constant error. In every frame the knuckle bones are pulled into distortion along various axes in varying amounts. The distortion is in relation to each other or the hand bone, you know how it's heirarchical. There's no simple constant offset from the model root and especially not the world coordinates. Boohoo this makes it practically impossible to fix except by hand unless some mathematical genius takes a look and groks the relationship going on as some equation. That wouldn't be me .

 

When Wudan is back on I'll ask if he knows why this is happening. Or maybe it won't happen with the next build of Dragon.

[Cid88]

Which build are you using?

 

I use a slightly outdated one (didn't update after hearing some minor bugs with the current version), and I've poked around with all of kesh's anims just fine.

 

Then again, I may somehow have managed to counter-bug it out

 

Speaking of which, razor, do you ever want that saber throw anim? I might still have it

[razorace]

Well, that curtainly sounds odd. I'd think that group bone movements would be critical to a useable animation program. *Shrug*

 

Sure, Cid88, send it my way. I didnt think you had finished it.

[Vruki Salet]

Which build are you using?

 

This last was viewed in 0.7.0 though I opened and fooled with these block anims in 0.1.0, 0.2.5, 0.7.0, and a couple others too. I forget what I ended up using to get these files but I think it was 0.7.0.

 

Now that you mention it I'll open them up with the earlier versions and see what happens. It might be 0.7.0 that was buggy.

 

Edit: I'll try a couple edits in 0.2.5 later and see how it goes.

 

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I'd think that group bone movements would be critical ...

 

Huh? What are you referring to?

[Vruki Salet]

Hey Cid88 do you think I might have cause a problem because I used Hapslash's Dooku model as my working model in dragon? It was just on a lark I felt like looking at the Count instead of blobby default dragon man, but is there still a JO/JKA skeleton thing happening with that model? It opens OK in modview which usually complains about JO skeletons.

[Cid88]

Honestly, I don't know. Dragon can be a finicky program at times. Quite awesome, but slightly finicky.

 

I myself use one of the jedi skins. Jedi trainer maybe?

 

 

Razorace: Lemme check my backup server

[keshire]

Some deforming can easily be a weighting issue with the model. If your using my stuff it could just as easily be the skeleton. My skeleton isn't a 100 percent accurate. Some of the bones are off by 1/100th's of a unit. Just enough to squeak through without carcass bitching. So lots and lots of tranforms over the course of say 100 frames can add up to some massive deforming.

[JRHockney*]

Vruki oh Vruki. Where for art thou Vruki? Hast thou given up on thine back block animation project or on OJP? I haven't seen thy face on OJP in much time. If thou art lost to us, we shalt miss thee and fair thee well. If thou art near, would thou carest to send word of thine departure or thine place in life? We await word from thee. Let not my vile inaccurate attempt at old english be in vain!

[Maxstate]

Vruki oh Vruki. Where for art thou Vruki? Hast thou given up on thine back block animation project or on OJP? I haven't seen thy face on OJP in much time. If thou art lost to us, we shalt miss thee and fair thee well. If thou art near, would thou carest to send word of thine departure or thine place in life? We await word from thee. Let not my vile inaccurate attempt at old english be in vain!

Keshire's anims are the ones used in MB, I'll be damned if anyone actually notices a friggin' difference at all.

 

Vruki warned us (or me at least) that he had internet and financial trouble and that there might be a chance that he would go offline for a while. He hasn't been on MSN nor has he been on other forums he posts on.