NEW ANIMATIONS IN JKA/JK2 - HowTo

[diane20]

New Updates are in red

Last update was at: April 1st 2004 - no, this is not an aprils fool joke

 

 

Disclaimer: use the process described here at your own risk. Authors are not responsible for any data loss / damage that may

 

occur as a result of following these instructions.

 

Any modification that wishes to use these instructions to create the animations for their mod MUST include the following in

 

the readme/credits file:

 

For JK2:

========= start paste =========

 

New animations in this mod were created using the skeleton made by Corto and the glaMerge program made by ASk. All rights for

these are reserved to the original creators.

 

 

======== end paste ============

 

For JA:

========= start paste =========

 

New animations in this mod were created using the skeleton made by keshire and the glaMerge program made by ASk. All rights for

these are reserved to the original creators.

 

 

======== end paste ============

 

New animations in JK2/JA

 

 

Your animation must have the base 'DaVinci' pose as first frame. It will be ignored during merge.

 

JK2:

 

The process is simple.

 

Get the .xsi skeleton from this link:

 

Skeleton

I think the link is broken now, does anybody have a mirror of that, so I can update

 

Make your new animations, and export this file as XSI.

 

 

Suggestion by Corto: Use only one animation per XSI, it will keep things more tidy.

 

Open Assimilate, add the XSI to it

Double-click the file, and check these boxes:

 

- Keep "motion" bone

 

- Create own skeleton

 

Add these bones to PCJ

- skeleton_root

- pelvis

- lower_lumbar

- upper_lumbar

- thoracic

- cervical

- cranium

- face

 

 

Set the scale to 0.64, origin to 0,0,24

 

 

Save the .car file, time to get dirty (and use the command line)

 

Run carcass.exe with the following command-line parameters:

 

-flatten path:\to\your\file.car

 

Now, time for the fun part.

 

(continue after JA instructions)

========= end of JK2-specific =====

 

JA:

 

The process is simple.

 

Get the .xsi skeleton from the OJP repository (how to access - http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119776):

 

Make your new animations, and export this file as XSI.

 

 

Suggestion by Corto: Use only one animation per XSI, it will keep things more tidy.

 

Use the .car file in the Modelling SDK released by Ravensoft awhile ago

Run carcass.exe with the following command-line parameters:

 

-flatten path:\to\ravensofts.car

 

Now, time for the fun part.

 

============= end of JA-specific ==

 

Get the glaMerge program, written by yours truly from

 

GlaMerge

 

Put these files in the same directory as the exe:

 

_humanoid.gla

your.gla

 

Run the program using

 

glamerge _humanoid.gla your.gla

 

 

Optional switches:

 

-o - Makes the program optimise the output, removing any redundant bone data. For the above animation, file size is 9.56mb without -o, versus 9.53mb with

 

-l - Makes the program dump the bone (hierarchy, bone names) data from both gla's. This will be appended to file named 'bone.log' (will be created if necessary)

 

If you specify both switches, the second one (in the order they were specified) will be ignored

 

It should prompt you for the output file name.

 

And wait a bit (a file with 2000 frames takes about 5 minutes on my CPU, and should take around 1-2 minutes on a modern one)

 

After it is done, just add the new animations to animations.cfg using this format:

ANIM_NAME	startingframe	framecount loopframe speed

 

 

For example:

NEW_ANIM	17278	40	-1	20

 

Do this for all the animations, remember to update the startingframe positions accordingly (first new animation should start

 

at 17278).

 

Now, the animations are ready to be played in modview.

 

Example:

 

New animation

 

For programmers:

 

To add support for them ingame, add the same name as you used in the animations.cfg in these 2 source files:

 

========== game\anims.h ============

typedef enum //# animNumber_e
{
//=================================================
//ANIMS IN WHICH UPPER AND LOWER OBJECTS ARE IN MD3
//=================================================
BOTH_1CRUFTFORGIL = 0,		//# G2 cannot have a reverse anim at beginning of file
.........
FACE_DEAD,				//# 
////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//  Add your animations here
//
////////////////////////////////////////////
[b]NEW_ANIM,[/b]
//////////// end of example ////////////////



//# #eol
MAX_ANIMATIONS,
MAX_TOTALANIMATIONS
} animNumber_t;

========= eof of game\anims.h =========

 

and

 

======== cgame\animtable.h ===========

stringID_table_t animTable [MAX_ANIMATIONS+1] =
{
//=================================================
//ANIMS IN WHICH UPPER AND LOWER OBJECTS ARE IN MD3
//=================================================
ENUM2STRING(BOTH_1CRUFTFORGIL),		//# G2 cannot have a reverse anim at beginning of file
......
ENUM2STRING(FACE_FROWN),				//# 
ENUM2STRING(FACE_DEAD),				//# 
////////////////////////////////////////////
//
//  Add your animations here
//
////////////////////////////////////////////
[b]ENUM2STRING(NEW_ANIM),[/b]
//////////// end of example ////////////////
//must be terminated
NULL,-1
};

======== eof of cgame\animtable.h ===========

 

 

Afterwards, refer to them ingame with the usual coding.

 

Enjoy.

 

 

P.S.: If you have any technical questions about the process, feel free to post them here, and I will try to reply to them to the best of my ability

 

Credits:

 

- ASk - coder of glaMerge

 

- Corto - creator of the JK2 skeleton

 

- keshire - creator of the JA skeleton

 

- Special thanks to Wudan and Razor_Ace

 

 

History:

- Fixed origin

- Updated glamerge program, updated instructions to reflect that

- Updated glamerge program once more, updated instructions

- Added bone reordering (to fix wrong internal bone order, providing the hierarchy is fine) to the program. Should produce correct animations now.

- Fixed an overlooked harcoded constant

- Implemented a hack around relativeness of gla format. Proper solution is recalculation of bone offsets, but that does not work at the moment

- "merged" info from keshire's post about JA animations. I hope he doesn't notice

New updates are in red

Hello guys,

i dont know if you are still active in this forum, but i have a question about animation in ja. I downloaded keshires animation file pack, opened his skeleton in 3ds max and changed his Dual_baster.bip, by saving only from frame0 to frame10 (so that I only have a dual-blaster-draw-animation now).Than I exported this new animation as xsi file. Now I dont know, how to compile the animation with carcass the right way. Can someone please explain step by step what I have to do with the assimilate/carcass program ? Do I have to open or add my new animation.xsi in assimilate? Whitch parameters do I have to change where ?Do I get a gla file by using carcass ? how and where fits the humanoid.car file in the process? Do I need to extract the _humanoid.gla file as been discribed in the moddeling tutorials here as well? Please explain as if I was 4 years old(or as if I was a girl:)). I only found tutorials explaining carcass use for custom models. Sorry for my bad english (Im from germany and try my best) and thank you for your time.

[Boli_Delish]

game\anims.h...cgame\animtable.h...

 

Where can I find these?

[razorace]

Uh, they're in there with the other source files, like w_saber.c, w_force.c, etc.

[Boli_Delish]

Nevermind, i'm an idiot. Anywho, another quick question:

 

"Afterwards, refer to them ingame with the usual coding."

 

What does this exactly refer to? I've followed the coding steps up to here to add in placeholders for another lightsaber form, but I don't know what the 'usual coding' is. Some help would be much appreciated.

[razorace]

I didn't write the tutorial but I think that means you can treat it like any other animation.

[Boli_Delish]

What I was more interested in was what this actually means ie how do you treat it like any other animation/how do you treat ANY animation?

[razorace]

It depends on what you're doing. The method for activating animations for NPCs, saber animations, force powers, etc. are all activated using different methods. Could you be more specific?

[Boli_Delish]

Alright, hmm...let's try activating saber animations for a player. As I stated above, i'm working on a new lightsaber form (a fourth single saber form). Once I get that figured out, we'll move onto getting it NPC usable

[razorace]

I thought I covered that in a fair amount of detail in the other thread. What parts are you having issues with?

[Boli_Delish]

Well, firstly, when searching, the are a LOT of PM_SetSaberMove in bg_saber. I understand how it worked, and how it's meant to work, but I don't understand how to edit it to work with my new moveset.

 

Also, I named the animations the same way as they did for the existing form, except I replaced the number with a letter. It's all in the right order (I just copied and pasted it, then edited the names) so that shouldn't be a problem.

[Fmmm]

Does anyone know where I can get the GLAMERGE program? The link in the main post is dead and I cant find it anywhere, also if anyone knows where to find the Dragon Animation Tool that would be great too!

[Sith Dagger]

http://mt-wudan.com/forums/index.php

[nizwiz]

Anyone knows where to get Corto's skeleton for jk2 these times?

[LightNinja]

JA:

 

The process is simple.

 

Get the .xsi skeleton from the OJP repository (how to access - http://www.lucasforums.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=119776):

 

DONE

 

Make your new animations, and export this file as XSI.

 

DONE

 

Use the .car file in the Modelling SDK released by Ravensoft awhile ago

Run carcass.exe with the following command-line parameters:

 

-flatten path:\to\ravensofts.car

 

Which .xsi of the repostory? OJP_Anim_template.XSI?

 

I modifyed the nulls which had the names of the bones for the animation: did I do right??

 

Can someone help me with this? I don't know what .car it means, I downloaded the SDK and there's no .car inside. Even in that Modelling SDK from Ravern.

 

What I have to do with this?:

-flatten path:\to\ravensofts.car

For example: -flatten models\players\ravensofts.car??

(Again where's that .car?)

 

Simple tutorial, yes, but for advanced users

[Psyk0Sith]

Sometimes you have to write it/modify yourself. It's the same thing as using assimilate to create the car file for you, probably have more options when writing your own. Like creating batch jobs. The car file refered to is possibly the "master".car that points to all the anims found the .GLA (so that carcass can join all of them into the final .GLA used in the game)

 

You have to use it in a command prompt like so: carcass ravensofts.car

I'm assuming you add your .XSI anim to the list so it can be added into your new custom .GLA.

[LightNinja]

I've found out how to run the command for carcass, and also I found a post from 2004 where keshire explained me what meant the things inside the .car, so I've done some progress.

 

ShadyD is giving me some help, he was able to make new animations with 3dsMax and he's trying to refresh his memory. We have been able to at least compile the new_anim.xsi into a new_anim.gla with a .car file, however, glamerge give us an error because it says that the number of bones is different, so in ModView the model deforms like a demon for the new animation.

 

Does the number of bones being different means that the OJP_Anim_Template.xsi is wrong? I'd like to know the answer.

 

I hope we can find our way out to add the new animations. Once I get it I'm gonna do a tutorial and post it in this thread, since this one is really confusing and frustrating ending in a dissapointment at least for me.

[Psyk0Sith]

You should ALWAYS have the same number of bones when compiling for a specific GLA.

 

Jedi Academy has some bones that have been removed, some that have been added (the tail bones) and some that have been renamed. I have a scene file setup with the biped and all, altho it could be the same thing as OJP_Anim_Template.xsi. It uses the skeleton made out of dummies from corto.

[LightNinja]

Great, Shady has managed to get it done and has teached me so maybe soon I write a different tutorial since I use the biped that keshire made.

 

We wanted to change the both_vt_idle1 animation to fit in the horse so here's the result

 

[Psyk0Sith]

Pretty sweet! i think a bit of specular highlights would really help the horse's armor tho, unless you want to use a shader.

 

For anyone interested, the problem for shady was simply using the wrong plugin, so if you are a trying to make new humanoid anims you absolutely need the original plugin from the SDK. So it looks like you need to use Max 5: in later versions of the plugin the XSI exporter writes a "max_Scene_root" that screws up everything.

[senorita]

Thanks for your nice information and animations as well... Read Jedi Adventures Book By Heather Scott which was launched in 2009 paperback series.... i really loved to read that book and still reading some of its interesting parts as well.. i really loves Jedi.....

[katanamaru]

What do I need a plugin for if I use Dragon? I've never had a problem with making and getting animations in game without it. Or is that for older versions or vehicles?

[LightNinja]

Pretty sweet! i think a bit of specular highlights would really help the horse's armor tho, unless you want to use a shader.

 

For anyone interested, the problem for shady was simply using the wrong plugin, so if you are a trying to make new humanoid anims you absolutely need the original plugin from the SDK. So it looks like you need to use Max 5: in later versions of the plugin the XSI exporter writes a "max_Scene_root" that screws up everything.

 

Ok I'm really ashamed...

I have forgotten how I put the new animations ingame >.>

 

Ok, I have the animation done in the biped, I export the .xsi and check all the boxes (Mesh, Animations, Bones, Point Weights, Basepose Transforms, SRT Transforms) so then I open Assimilate and load up that .xsi. But here's the problem, it won't compile the .gla because there are meshes without weights or because of heriarchy problems. I'm using the exact same .max that I used back then to make that horse riding animations.

 

If someone is still around - Help!

[LightNinja]

I've found our msn chat where Shady teached me. He gave me these files:

 

- The bipped.max

- BonesWSaber.xsi

- newanimations.car

 

Then he said:

you animate the biped, you keep the rootpose as the first pose. You export as a xsi 3.0. Compile it with the .car file I gave you, change the name of your .xsi to "ultimatetest.xsi" and than just merge it with GlaMerge

 

Ok, I made that but when I open assimilate and loadup the .car it says "models/players/_humanoid/ultimatetest.xsi" not found -.-! (Of course it is on the _humanoid folder)

 

Code inside the "newanimations.car"

$aseanimgrabinit
$scale 0.64
$keepmotion
$pcj $flatten
$pcj upper_lumbar
$pcj lower_lumbar
$pcj cranium
$pcj cervical
$pcj thoracic
$pcj pelvis
$pcj face_always_
$pcj Motion
$pcj rradius
$pcj lradius
$pcj rtibia
$pcj ltibia
$pcj rhumerus
$pcj lhumerus
$pcj lfemurYZ
$pcj rfemurYZ
$aseanimgrab models/players/_humanoid/theultimatetest.xsi -loop -1 -qdskipstart -framespeed 1 -qdskipstop
$aseanimgrabfinalize
$aseanimconvertmdx_noask models/players/_humanoid/boneswsaber -makeskel models/players/_humanoid/theultimatetest -origin 0 0 24

 

I'm doing it correctly opening the "newanimations.car" directly?

[Psyk0Sith]

Damnit, i'm sure i've run into this problem once...

 

Dumb idea, but did you try to run it in a command prompt instead of loading into assimilate?

 

Did you poke around in assimilate in the paths thingies (yeah sorry that's vague) and check for more options? Thats all i can think of for now.

[LightNinja]

Dumb idea, but did you try to run it in a command prompt instead of loading into assimilate?

 

You got it!

 

Dumb idea or not, now I see that I trusted more in Assimilate than what I should!

 

Thanks Psyk0