non-working tags

[manganiac]

EDIT.: supposed to be new model, new skeleton, new animations etc...

Hi there, I've been working on a model with new animations for a while, long story short I'm doing the whole rigging & animating part on XSI Mod Tools 6.0 (started on 3ds MAX, but his exporter never worked fine, and I learned that new animations would not work with max 7 (file reaches compilation but the mesh becomes a huge pile of stretching junk)), so far it's been fairly easy with xsi, the model works (to it's 90%), shows ingame (alright), with animations and all but odd enough, the tags just won't work for him.

 

(when I say tags I mean bolts, like in bolt_r_hand etc...)

 

I've tried doing the tags myself, importing tags from a working model, exporting my model to a *.exp scene that works, changing the hierarchy of my tags, linking all tags to hips, on another time to stupidtriangle_off, on another time to their closest objects, tryed removing the mesh_root from my scene (as Psyk0's tutorial says), I've tryed replacing wampas' gla with my model's (thought it could be coded, and maybe it'd only accepted original game files), checked the name of my tags over and over again, slapped animevent and animation.cfg files on my model's path, perhapes something else I can't remember...

 

I've come a long way now, having to relearn the whole rigging on XSI and figure out the solutions to my doubts (dont wanna be mean, but... people keep themselves from giviing me help) and to tell the truth, I wish I could figure this one on my own too. But I'm clueless, on modview I can see the tags (pivots) just like in any other model, within their correct hierarchy path, and carcass will even create the "Tag Surfaces" branch (wich is visible on modview with my tags in it) but ingame they mean nothing.

I beleave the basic structure is the glm, the new gla, animevents, animation.cfg.

 

don't think this could affect the lackof ingame tags but carcass never generates a animation.cfg file (couldn't anyway, I know no way to export animations with their labels, and framecount), so I just grab one from the game and slap on my model's folder, same for animevents.cfg the model also doesn't have reliable animations yet, not more than 100 frames, but I tested giving it +700 blank frames and exporting, than slapping wampa's animation.cfg and animevents.cfg (cuz wampa's tags work and it has less then 800 frames)

 

I know Lucasforums' JKA section isn't as active as it used to be but since I'm running out of options, maybe, going back to the source of all great JKA could help me I'll keep tryng whatever silly thought comes to mind, but I've pretty much run out of ideas already.

[Johnpp]

Didn't you get the answer on FileFront forums?

[manganiac]

Didn't you get the answer on FileFront forums?

...

the help I've got this far was Eclypse's XSI weighting tutorial, and him pushing me to go for XSI mod tools (wich I'm thankfull), Lightninja and Psyk0 confirming that it could not be done with 3ds max 7.

the rest was me figuring out with a ridiculous number of tests (exports after exports) or by following tutorials and searching around the net (rigging tutorials).

 

by "rest" I mean, build my own skeleton, correctly redirect each bone so the model won't stare the player the wrong way, wich options to check when I'm about to export the model and the worst of all... rigging the model (preparing the model to be animated, with IK solvers, custom parameters, contraints etc..., (I beleave rigging is missunderstood by weighting on JK comunity)).

obs.: rigging doesn't interfere with the lack of tags (once a model is animated mod tools can keep the animation and export it without any data from the rigging), run enough tests to be sure of that (simply makes animating easier than moving the model bone-by-bone (forward kinematics)...

[Thor the Bassis]

I find max and the like are rubbish for animations as the export is just too complex.

 

Try Wudan's Dragon.

 

Also here's a tutorial I scratched together a while back for creating totally new unit types (I did a droideka this way which works well enough).

[manganiac]

I find max and the like are rubbish for animations as the export is just too complex.

 

Try Wudan's Dragon.

 

Also here's a tutorial I scratched together a while back for creating totally new unit types (I did a droideka this way which works well enough).

 

thanks much apreciate having someone willing to lend me a hand, specially the creator of the awesome droideka model

...but...

I'm not exactaly having problems with the animations, but the tags, the tags are not been used by the engine, such as beams not coming out from where I want them to (they do come out, but not from my tags), no sabers been displayed, no "hot breath" coming out of the character's mouth when he's in hoth, engine ignores all the tags placed around my model

 

I beleave the problem can be resumed to JKA's engine does not give support to tags on new skeletons/gla files unless they're vehicles (I know it sounds weird, but I've run a number of tests, exchanged bolt_r_hand tags by muzzle1 tags and vice-versa), basically, the muzzle/driver/exhaust tags work if the model is set as a vehicle, but bolt_r_hand, bolt_r_foot, bolt_face etc do not if the model is simply a model (without vehicle support)

if I have the original version of your model, the droideka is a vehicle.

 

sure tags are meshes/polies/triangles, therefor they should have nothing to do with gla files, only their glms but... all my attempts to create a new skeleton with working tags failed miserably.

if you recompile a new gla from the very same humanoid skeleton and slap it ingame whatever model uses that gla, its tags wont work, unless that new gla is or course merged with the original one from the game (or a copy of that, or merged with a copy of it).

 

unless I'm doing everything VERY wrong, this is the conclusion I'm getting for the last half week. And I really WANT it to be wrong, otherwise my model will never work as I want it to.

(whole idea is get the tags to work, so that I can properly work his damage), like claw-attacks, wich would be actually sabers modeled as some fancy claw trail & splash dmg (the motion would do the rest), and some other fancy magic stuff, wich would be just some new weapons that look like magic xP (but first need the tags to work).

[manganiac]

if you're making something that doesn't use the humanoid skeleton but could use the tags used in the humanoid skeleton, you have to insert "models/players/_humanoid" inside the path of your gla, wich can be something like:

models/players/_humanoid/yourmodel

OR models/players/_humanoidYourModel

and your tags will work just like they would on a model that uses the humanoid skeleton.

 

tags are meshes, therefor have only to do with the glms, but the engine will only let your model use bolt_r_hand bolt_l_hand etc... tags if they come from the humanoid skeleton, but again, to test that the engines looks for the string "models/players/_humanoid" , if your path is longer that that (beyond humanoid), that's ok. (i think it's writen somewhere inside the cg_players.c on the game's SDK files, can be cg_ents.c (no longer remember))

 

ps.: first put the root.xsi file inside the desired long-path and THEN compile it (the string the engine looks for is actually inside the gla files), the glm point to it's own gla, and the gla points to itself (glm must have path to gla to itself (writen inside it during compilation), and gla must have path to itself)

[Thor the Bassis]

That is seriously cool thanks.

 

EDIT

Also I didn't do the released droideka mod i haven't released mine.

[Wudan]

Tags are, by themselves, just surfaces with some bone weights. They have a special naming convention, this is true, but the GLA itself does not contain tags, only animations and bone info. It *should* work, unless there's something entirely wrong with the engine, which I think would have been documented by now by many people.

[manganiac]

Tags are, by themselves, just surfaces with some bone weights. They have a special naming convention, this is true, but the GLA itself does not contain tags, only animations and bone info. It *should* work, unless there's something entirely wrong with the engine, which I think would have been documented by now by many people.

 

yes, surfaces, that's all, only so the game has a way to direct it's own functions/gfx/etc... now, what the game is going to do with them, is simply a matter of purpose, it wont give a rancor a working lightsaber just cuz he has a bolt_r_hand (gives a lightsaber, but doesnt turn on), what the game is going to do with it's tags, depends on what the code want it to, and the code requires the current working model to be a humanoid in other to use tags that are of importance only to the humanoid models/npc,classes etc... it's not something "wrong" with the engine, it's a error prevention feature (words from the author of the game's multiplayer's source code, writen on cg_players.c or cg_ents.c one of these).

 

here's the simplest test to prove just that, take a custom playermodel (by preferense one with npc support to spawn ingame, or you can use /playermodel command), create a new folder in it (models/players/whateverUWant) copy the _humanoid.gla and animations.cfg from your assets and slap it inside this folder, now you'll need to change a specific line inside the glm (otherwise copyng the gla is useless) and gla (othewise the game will redirect to it's own gla from the new one), to do that, you need a binary editor http://www.chmaas.handshake.de/delphi/freeware/xvi32/xvi32.htm (thanks to THor_the_Bassis who originally gave me the link on his mini-tutorial http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?t=179791 )

you'll see a line that leades to the game's gla on the begining of both files (glm and gla), you need to change it to your own in both files), save, pk3, singleplayer, and see what happens with the model (if it's a spawned npc you need to provoke him in other for him to try to draw a weapon).