I'm having a huge amount of trouble with the animator right now. And from what I gather after long peroids of time trying to animate a humanoid, is that it is really bloody hard with the current system. The bones have no constraints, the bones don't have rotation axis you can grab for movement (halo2). You can't pull a bone and have the rest of the body follow. You can't even create bones without going through a huge amount of trouble. Especially on high poly characters. I really think Animator needs a big face lift Brian, it's way to manual now, and it's really hard to do good animations without a whole lot of work. Not that I am against work, but sometimes it really gets over the top. Maybe when you finish the networking stuff?
yeah, it is a lot of trouble to make bones, but I personaly can't think of a better way, even in maya the bone system is kind of messsed up, like if it were automated in animator, it would grab polygons you wouldn't want it to, so you would have to manualy change that anyway. A way to remove or add polys to a bone after it is made would be helpful though.
As for the realistic IK, I gues thats up to brian to add. Rotation axiss around the bones would be cool. and maybe a way to watch animatioons in the animator to avoid constanty switching into the engine would be nice too. (like a play button next to each anim's name)
Alexander Smith Wrote:I'm having a huge amount of trouble with the animator right now. And from what I gather after long peroids of time trying to animate a humanoid, is that it is really bloody hard with the current system. The bones have no constraints, the bones don't have rotation axis you can grab for movement (halo2). You can't pull a bone and have the rest of the body follow. You can't even create bones without going through a huge amount of trouble. Especially on high poly characters. I really think Animator needs a big face lift Brian, it's way to manual now, and it's really hard to do good animations without a whole lot of work. Not that I am against work, but sometimes it really gets over the top. Maybe when you finish the networking stuff?
Making bones is never going to be easy, but lets slowly go over the complaints and see what I can work up for 1.6.
Let's stick with creating bones, first, then we'll move on past that. Right now, you select polygons, and either attach them to a bone, or create a new bone (it appears in the middle of the polygon.)
There's also a option that finds all the vertexes near a bone and selects them, that might help you out.
What exactly would make this easier on you (i.e., just creating bones or adding vertexes to bones.)
[>] Brian
Brian, try making an armature in the free modeller Blender (plenty of tutorials around). That would be a great way to create bones, with having an original bone and making all others parented of another, extruded from one point of the bone.
And the moving the whole body thing with it is Inverse Kinematics. Check out the Poser demo for a great example of this.
Brian, check out A:M's methods. I suggest something like this, as this is what 3dsMAX, A:M, and others use.
http://hash.com/VM/
Scroll down to exercise 9: Flower Power and wtach those. One of those has the boning in it.
Alexander Smith Wrote:I'm having a huge amount of trouble with the animator right now.
I want to try to do some work for this in 1.6, and probably get to more in 1.7. Alexander, can you send me whatever model you are trying to add bones to? I want to try some things out, and it might be easier for me to follow along with your problems if I try to do the same thing you are.
[>] Brian
Thanks, I'm sorry to be a pain, I'll send the model soon, the stuff I could use the most is the IK and Contraints.
Alexander Smith Wrote:Thanks, I'm sorry to be a pain, I'll send the model soon, the stuff I could use the most is the IK and Contraints.
It's not a big deal, it's just hard to parse the requests sometimes, especially if there is a bunch at once. Fixing one thing at a time is a lot easier
Let's specifically work on adding bones first, get over that hump, then move onto constraints, and then past there.
I have been itching to add constraints, myself, so that's good.
[>] Brian
I'm not putting down the editor or anythin but does anyone have a diffrent model for the player because he's really ugly:annoyed:
(Edited by Brian to clear out some possible offensive text.)
bluebar Wrote:I'm not putting down the editor or anythin but does anyone have a diffrent model for the player because he's really ugly:annoyed:
Let's watch what we say on the boards, people, be as PC -- and I don't mean Personal Computer -- as possible.
About the models in the demo -- feel free to use the models when working out your projects. The models were given to me by a number of different people for use ONLY in the demo -- that's the way they are "licensed" to me and I agreed to use them. You can certainly use them to get off the ground, but you CAN not use them for your own projects. You'll need to create your own assets before you ship anything.
[>] Brian