KapnKeg Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 Has anybody successfully gotten a model into jk2 after they have deformed the skeleton to match their model? I've been doing some tests with a very a very basic preliminary model of my next project, but so far my results haven't been much to brag about. Say, for example , I wanted to make my model walk with his arms and fight with his legs using the humanoid animation set .... does anybody have any experience getting something like this to work? Once I put my test file in modview, the bodyparts mostly just flail around wildly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Loki Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 i take it you making a dug or a sebulba model? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KapnKeg Posted July 24, 2002 Author Share Posted July 24, 2002 If possible ... exactly. Although all of my experiments so far haven't been all that fruitful. I understand how the jk2 system works now .. I just need to find a reliable way to ... umm ... bend the rules a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darth Loki Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 hope so, that'd be awesome. i'd be looking forward to it more than yoda. but you'd have to make new animations, and that requires a program called softimage. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KapnKeg Posted July 24, 2002 Author Share Posted July 24, 2002 Yeah, a sebulba model would BEG for new animations, but even if I did have a copy of SoftImage XSI, I probably couldn't make new animations. We would need to find a way to edit or add to the humanoid.gla files and even if we could do that, I wouldn't want to include a new 10 meg animation file with my model. It's been said by Silent Modius, I believe, that all the bone positions are written into an array to make the humanoid.gla file. If this is the case, I don't see much hope in trying to reposition my bones in my max scene since this data would be ingnored by the game. As a matter of fact, I tried it anyway and it led me nowhere. Personally, I think it's a lost cause. But if anybody has any suggestions, I'd be thrilled to hear 'em. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oddjob: A-Team Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 What you are basically asking for is all new animations. That's the ONLY way to make a dug or similarly non-humanoid creature work right. Because the animation files are simply a bunch of numbers that represent the points in space that the 'bones' occupy at any given frame, changing the shape would change their position as well. Well, that's oversimplified but basically the truth. You would need animaiton files with a skeleton that matched your skeleton on your model and then animations specific to that new skeleton. With Half-Life models, if you changed the skeleton's shape and then used the canned animation files, it would just strech the bones out back to the standard skeleton's shape and size and the model along with it. I belive with JKII it won't even compile, but I could be wrong because I haven't experimented with it at all. It's a HUGE shame that Raven decided to use Softimage to do the animations. With Max, and the Character Studio plug-in they could have used all that mo-cap data just like Softimage, and had a format that other modelers like myself could manipulate as well. It's just a shame. Ah well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
delquar Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 i heard about someone trying to ghost off of it (the thing the 'arm' joint was attached to was invisable but linked lower) but i dunno how it turned out Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KapnKeg Posted July 24, 2002 Author Share Posted July 24, 2002 I agree. It's a shame. For the average user who buys the game off a shelf, plays it and loves it ... hey, you can't beat the beauty of Raven's motion capture animations. The reason I was thinking that this project might be worth a shot is that it's just a guy with two arms, two legs, a body, and a head. I know now that adjusting the bones in my maxscene or whatever is a waste of time. Hell, if I didn't need them there so I could weight vertices to them, I don't think I would need them at all ... no matter where they're positioned. Likewise, I don't think it matters where the bones are positioned ... if they're given a certain influence on a given vertex then it doesn't make a difference in you max scene if they're flipped upside down, rotated twice, and mirrored 5 times. I do have some ideas though. Will they work? Probably not. Are they worth trying out? You bet your poodoo!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anavel Gato Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 I can only imagine that the folks at Raven had some very good reasons for using Softimage instead of Max or Maya for the character animation And I'm pretty sure that in a couple of months there will be tools available for us to make new animations. If Raven won't develop and release them Í'm sure some coding genius will make a plugin for Max. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KapnKeg Posted July 24, 2002 Author Share Posted July 24, 2002 I'm with you on hoping for those new animation tools. I'd imagine that Raven chose to use SI.XSI because it has superior motion capture features or something very similar. For low-poly modeling, I can think of no other reason to spend the money on the expensive software, not to mention the folks who know how to use it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matariel Posted July 24, 2002 Share Posted July 24, 2002 sebulba just wouldnt be possible without modifying the animations sorry... softimage is your best bet, but i dont think you'll be able to get that, or even use it to make all of the animations for sebulba (there are heaps for every character, have you ever sat through the whole lot in the model viewer? it takes about 10 minutes!) and hand animation would be the bitchiest! in ep1, you only see subulba's whole body moving in about 2 shots, and these guys are professionals good luck anyways Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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