Differences between half-life and jkii

[VIO]

hey i usedto model, sort of for HL/TFC/CS, i want to for jkii, but wat are the differnces, if any. Do i have to make the animations for each gun and saber like i would in HL or is there another way?

[VIO]

hmm this isn't a hard question BUMP

[BobaFett7]

If you had to spend the time to make animations for the models you created in half-life - then you will love jkii! They don't give you access to the animation data unless you have softimage.

The only aspect of the player character that the typical fan has access to is the player model itself. All you have to do is create the model and set it up with the correct heirarchy and link it to the bones (provided in the sdk) and voila - instant player character!

Try downloading the sdk for jkii and there is even a decent tutorial provided with it by none other than our favorite spacermonkey himself!

[Major Clod]

Jedi Knight 2 modelling is quite a pain in the arse compared to HalfLife. Both use skeletal animation systems. The main difference is with the animations. Like Half-Life, the JK2 animations are stored in a seperate file before compiling. However, these animations are currently untouchable as there have been no plugins released to support the format. Also, the animations are in one large file, there are no seperate files for each animation.

 

Basically creating a model for JK2 is exactly the same as creating one for HL, you assign your mesh to the skeleton, this time using a plugin called Skin that comes with 3ds max, not character studio's Physique. Export the weighted mesh and you have your player model. Unfortunately we have no way to animate as yet, so all models are restricted to the skeleton size.

[VIO]

so every model has to fall into the same basic mold as the other in order to use the same animations....so no three armed ppl unless you own softimage which is like 1000$ or something like that, sneaky Raven, hmm in HL i have to asign vertex to a joint is that how it works, in jkii or do i just make it and it chooses? and wait to make a model i needto program!

[FeurGrissa]

VIO even with softimage u still cant edit animations, not till raven releases the plugins. and unfortunately i dont think there is any exporter to the format JK2 uses for mdoels either, so i think u have to export to .md3, then use anotehr proggy to convert it. that proccess kinda seems like a drag to me but i havnt done it yet, so i will see.

 

also u can get around the player size thing. like if u want a model that is only three feet tall, you can do it, then attach everything to the torso and up, then make like seperate appendages out to sides for legs and stuff, then make them invisable with a shader or something. i dunno im still kinda foggy on that, but it should be doable, but you wont be able to see leg animations or anything like that.... there would be a lot of things you would have to work around, but it should be doable....

[Major Clod]

Yes like Half-Life you assign each vertice to a joint/bone, except that a vertice can be assigned to up to four different bones with seperate weights to allow for smoother mesh deformation.

 

However, one thing of note is that weapon models do not have animations. They are simply static .MD3 files with tags, the animation is stored within the game code.