Making Animations is easy!

[agentj64]

==

We can't have flipping a guy off:|

Not threw the code at least - maybe some ingenious person will ifnd a way, but I unbinded (meaning theyre all seperate) every bone in 3D Max and compiled it

 

It compield fine

 

that means Carcass, regardless of what you do, writes the bone hierachy each time (and positions too it seems etc) regardless of what you or me do:|

 

What does this mean? it means the hands will always be detached of the arms in animations etc.. so in code if you rotate your ankle

the whole leg wouldn't rotate, just that bone there, if you rotated your femur, IT would rotate, but not the knee, or rest of leg for that matter

 

==

 

me Dest123 had fun with this one:)

 

The test was

http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=72901&pagenumber=2

 

The programs:

 

JK2tools (ver1? the one by Raven)

:Carcass

:Assimilate

3D Studio Max R4.2

:XSI Exporter

 

I have extracted the XSI skeleton from the stormtrooper included in the SDK, cleaned it up a bit, and left the bones and hierachy in place

I set my frames to 0-50

then I had fun

I animated the legs moving and his arms waving, since all weightings hierachy etc was done already this was ok

 

2 things first:

Carcass wouldn't compile with missing tags

Carcass WOULD compile with more than the regular 43 (or so) some tags

 

I had now 50 frames of animation, exported to XSI

 

Problem: The XSI exporter does not let you specify which frames of animation! So we either assumed ALL frames or no frames were exported

 

open Assimilate:

 

$aseanimgrabinit

$aseanimgrab models/players/test/root.xsi -loop -1

$aseanimgrabfinalize

$aseanimconvertmdx_noask models/players/test/root -makeskel models/players/test/test

 

Take a magnifying glass:

 

 

In Assimilate choose

"makes its own skeleton"

and have fun with the scale

 

(COUGH COUGH YODA COUGH COUGH)

 

Animation compression wouldn't allow Carcass to run.

 

Now the problem

 

 

If you double click the actual entry (i had a red cross out, even though it still compiled and worked) there are Master, additional #1,2 3 and so on

 

Each realies on the root to begin animation (a quick check shows that root is the essential piece binded to)

 

I made only one animation, but nonetheless I compiled

I was unable to choose for the others what and hwo to handle animation.

 

 

Compiling took an instant, the GLA was written, along with glm

 

it relied on a "test.frames" file to handle animations (so in a sense you could get around the "Additional #1.." problem..)

 

The file came out as

 

 

c:/jk2edit/base/models/players/test/root.xsi

{

"startframe" "0"

"duration" "51"

"fps" "30"

"averagevec" "0.000 0.000 0.000"

}

 

 

much different then

 

"// w:/game/base/models/players/_humanoid/animation.cfg 17278 frames; 989 sequences; updated 12:32 Saturday, March 02, 2002

//

// Format: enum, targetFrame, frameCount, loopFrame, frameSpeed

//

BOTH_1CRUFTFORGIL 0 2 -1 29

BOTH_A1_BL_TR 2 6 -1 30

BOTH_B1_BL___ 2 1 -1 -10

BOTH_D1_TR___ 7 1 -1 30

BOTH_A1_BR_TL 8 6 -1 30

BOTH_B1_BR___ 8 1 -1 -10"

 

From animation.cfg

 

I opened the glm using modview and it worked fine

 

 

Modifying initial start positions worked well

 

I have yet to test it in game but believe it won't work sense all the animations in the "_humanoid.gla" are unaccounted for, Dest has yet to tell me if they have been coded into the code

 

 

but there you have it, animations are makeable, at least i've heard you could and tried it

 

 

Now problem 2

 

==

 

 

A GOOD look in 3d Max Track view *cough* will show you that the the path goes

 

Clavical>Humerus>HumerusX>radial>radialX>hand>l/r_dx_y

X being 1-5 for fingers, y being 1-3 for knucles, obviously l/r for the branch, going from parent>child

the clavical binds to thoraic

 

in MOD VIEW

the hiearchy ends:

(keep in mind this cannot be "hard coded" into the game engine, but possibly in carcass? there's a 2nd problem if so)

 

 

root>pelvis>lower_lumbar>upper_lumbar>thoraic>cervical

and everything there is listed

including fingers

not under hierachy

 

The problem: for those of you who want a flipping off motion in jedimod will be unable to have it, as me and Dest123 tried, the arm acts as if it was unattached to the the rest of the arm, now in 3d max i cannot reproduce this effect since the arm IS ATTACHED in the hiearchy, but in jk2 it is possible since the arm isn't under hierachy (as shown in modview) where its supposed to be

 

So if i rotate my eblow 360 degrees

the eblow rotates

the upper arm doesn't, of course, but everything under the elbow SHOULD but doesn't, like the hand is just stationary, so we have a rotating elbow and not hand, odd.

 

we could rotate each one seperately

but this shouldnt happen

since they should be under hiearchy like when we exported

 

but the problem is this

 

A) Cervical (when i checked) isnt the immediate parent of rclavical or lclavical, the throaic is

B) cervical goes to cranium, to eyes, and so on

 

what does this mean?

 

the hiearchy was built legs>pelvis

then head features (eyes etc)>cervical, throacic, upper, then lower, which connects to pelvis

 

the arms attached

and the legs too, notice how Tibia talus and femurs are all under pelvis and not: femurX,fermuryz,tibia,talus,tarsal, like in 3d max (sorry if i got that order wrong)

 

 

So this leaves me stumped

guessing and trying

 

what I did

 

rewrote the hiearchy in max

 

it compiled

and it cmae out the same

 

relinked it from fingers on up

 

same effect.

now im going to link it from should on down, and link the fingers to the thoriac

and see what effect that has, to see if it changes anything in hierachy

if it doesnt

 

then that means carcass builds the hiearchy itself

 

and that

 

is a problem

[SAIK HUAT]

Theres always a way to do something. Never blame the games companys unless you know what your talking about.

 

agentj64 has showed us that Raven has everything included in the tools and has also showed us he knows his stuff. Nice work indeed.

[agentj64]

I dont want to criticize them

I love them actually for forcing us to learn how to do this:) I love problems

 

But I find their lack of helping the community a bit abrasive

nonetheless we continue

 

 

I realize though that the only way to have extra animations is

A) Figure a way to compile model with extra .GLAs called (so model packs and maybe animation packs would be aviaible for download)

B) Figure a way in CODE to call these extra .GLAs

 

or

 

A) Figure a way in CODE to call both _humanoid and any other animations to be used by glms

 

 

REMEMBER that GLMs do not CONTAIN animation data, its referenced to the _humanoid.gla

 

so theortiically this is possible

[agentj64]

hopefully Dest123 can solve those problems

[Mr Tim]

Great work agentj64 and Dest123!

 

It's great to see someone solving the animation 'problem'. This is certainly the way for the JK2 modding 'community' to move forward.

 

I will watch your work with great interest.

[agentj64]

Any starting position works too

 

I could theoritically tyr it out but it would take too long, to build a GLA (atl east the first 5 frames of it:P) and release it and test out my animations

they should work.

 

also if you using animation.cfg and transfer <name>.frames data to it, it works fine

 

:0

 

The problem is if code can call these animations

 

 

Thanks Mr. Tim:)

[Toonces]

Agent, you and Dest are the best I also find Raven's lack of assistance on the animation issue dissapointing, but I realise that Lucas Arts may have tied their hands in this issue.

 

I'm glad there are people out there like you guys who just wont take no for an answer. It's a big reason that the computer industry in general has come as far as it has

 

Good luck man

 

Toonces

http://www.drivingcatstudios.com

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[Grafox]

Damn, this is certainly good news!

[agentj64]

Lol it seems after discovering this process that even Kinja himself is leaving our hubble! sigh:\

[agentj64]

I appreciate it wholey:D

Yes I do to believe the raw animation data should be released

and thansk to LucasArts and their cashcow Star Wars galaxies it seems no expansion or anything will come for JK2, as we've seen jedi knight 1 had an expansion

 

nonetheless I am adue!

[Mr Tim]

Do you know something definite about the lack of expansion pack, or is it merely specualtion?

 

My personal speculation is that they haven't release the single-player source code yet so that they can make a SP expansion, which no-one else can do yet.

 

Part of my thinking is also that it took quite a while for for an expansion pack for Medal of Honor to be announced, and MOHAA has sold better and is more popular online than JK2 (and has less modding, customisation, modelling, etc).

 

And who knows if Galaxies will end up being the cash-cow it is predicted to be. We'll just have to wait and see.

 

Anyway, to keep this relatively on topic - yes, release of raw animations would be good; although I think the convertor for Milkshape or 3d max would be at least as useful.

[ReIIiK]

As far as I know Jedi Knight II has sold VERY well.

[Darth Loki]

In australia JO has sold very well, even people that I know have bought the game just cause its star wars, and haven't even started playing it yet.

[UniKorn]

Jedi Knight II has been Raven's most succesful game as of yet. Hoekstra said it in an interview.

[agentj64]

its a good game

just could be better

[remark 666]

could be much much better, if new animations are 100% possible then way better saber fights can be made...maybe...

 

I'll see hwo this one turns out, too bad can't help with anything .....

[agentj64]

I do agree

 

I was actually thinking (dear god) of reanimating all the animations! or with lots of help at least, and then later we could release "animation" packs and so on for people to use in mods etc

 

I've asked DEST123 (and bofh) if they could find ways of "calling" animations, that is instead of just calling _humanoid.gla (remember glms are indepent of animation, so in theory it would work) calling other animation files and maybe one day we could have "animation packs" so ppl could have different animations etc for stuff

[zero427]

Raven is on to the next project guys face it. This is a job for these people they finished it got paid and moved on "to making Quake 4" as for refusing to release the raw animation files. There is only one explanation for that we all know what it is LUCASARTS. they didn't even want teh mod tools to be released in the first place! raven fought them tooth and nail to get that. My only assumption is that when it came to the animation files lucasarts was like no way for the exact reason taht we are discussing here the don't want peopl runing around in the game flipping people off or worse. While most of us just want to amke our mods more realistic, Lucasarts just sees it giving the cance for someone to add something obscene to the game. As for an expantion pack I doubt it Lucasarts would not allow anything to compete with the release of a new flagship product. and if by some miricle there were to be one I doubt it would be made by raven as they are just REALLY busy.

 

Just my 2 cents

[zero427]

one more thing... I seriously doubt that it would be a 650mb dl. if I understand the prcess correctly the model could be stripped leaving only the animated tags and bones in a .xsi file that should be sufficiant to make a new .gla file, no? even with the huge number of animations. With the model stripped and only the skeleton left in the file I find it really hard to believe that it could be even 200mb and prolly less than 100mb zipped

[Emon]

Nope, 650 MB... 17,000+ frames of animation.

 

And yes, LEC are bastards, they don't give a **** about modding, which ultimatly could make them tons of money.

[Young Master]

It would seems that creating a convertor ourselves( that being you talented coding types.. ) that that would possibly be the best route to go. Raven has stated palinly( in email) that they do not have time. I believe the needed info to do such a thing is available( the .xsi format and the gla format). From what i understand of the animations...i dont thik the idea of making calls to seperate gla files is gonna work...the model needs to be compiled with whatever anims its gonna use...and unless we can compile multiple files.....well, I think you guys get the point.

 

So whats the idea of creating a convertor ourselves sound like?

[blah2k]

I agree with LucasArts being a bastard of a company. They still have yet to release the source for Xwing: Alliance. It was pretty sad to see their refusal to do that, I think it would have made the life of Alliance run a little longer than it did, in the end they're really only hurting themselves. But, oh well.

 

Great job on your work Agent and Dest.

[Subject452]

http://www.petitiononline.com/jk2raw/petition.html

[agentj64]

I've signed the pettion but I think they wont much say anything abomut it

 

I really wish the animation files were relesed but apparently this won't happen:|

 

oh well

 

Jk2 is actuallyq uite easy to mod i think its just people getting pissed at anot having full control over the engine or midding cappibilities

 

bt we esee just like in quake3 how people have made even the Starship torooper bugs tow ork at q3ppms - im sure we may reach such a pinnacle in our community but for now..:0

[ArtifeX]

Agent, I've looked at the ProMod source and I think I could probably import a second, third or however many extra animation files you needed. I might even be able to provide console commands for loading/unloading them with a bit of time.

 

Contact me at arsartifex@msn.com and maybe I can add support for this type of thing to ProMod.