JKA humanoid GLA with omitted bones

[DT.]

I'm currently working on a recompile of the JKA humanoid GLA to have the bones that were omitted at compile time. This is ideal for total conversion mods, to add a bit more realism to their characters. The new bones will include:

 

- All 5 fingers, along with the "j3", "mc5" & "mc7"

- Seperate eyebrow bones

- Tarsal (toe) bone

- Extra lip bones (ie lblip1)

 

This brings the total bone count to 85. What I have not done, is create new bones. This is just adding existing bones back. Also, no animations have been altered.

 

I will be recompiling all base models (that we have the root.xsi source for) to work with this new GLA, but they won't be re-weighted to use the new bones. This is just to ensure JKA's base models can use this GLA. Any models not recompiled against this GLA will not work properly ingame as there will be a bone count mismatch.

 

I will also include a skeleton .max 8 file for people to rig models against. This will go nicely with the improved 3ds Max 6/7/8 xsi exporter Archangel & I have been working on once we release it.

[DT.]

Ok, release candidate - pk3 only:

 

http://www.sendspace.com/file/768zm3

 

This will replace all player models to use the new GLA. Not useable in SP, due to model incompatibilities with the cinematic GLA's.

[DT.]

Here's a full list of bones:

 

[eezstreet]

Why are the tarsal bones necessary, if I may ask? What about mouth bones? (those seemed a bit lacking to me) I was looking into some stuff for JK2 also for more defined facial animations.

[minilogoguy18]

I'll have to try this out, kinda got bored working on this although I had a different approach which was to also release the _humanoid animations in a state in which could be opened with a 3d package and viewed that way.

 

I haven't taken the time to compare but does this file contain everything? Like all the bones listed in the source files? Which of course should be all the same as JK2 although I don't think JK2 had the tail bones.

 

Did you really take the time to reweigh all the base models or did you manage to import the base models from the source files and clean them up? I know the source models don't import quite right.

[DT.]

Why are the tarsal bones necessary, if I may ask? What about mouth bones? (those seemed a bit lacking to me) I was looking into some stuff for JK2 also for more defined facial animations.

 

If you want toes to move seperately from the foot, then yeah it's necessary. Only the mouth bones that were in the original xsi source files are there now, I haven't added any actual *new* bones. There's not much point in adding many more bones for the face, seeing as the engine is still lacking visually with bad lighting and wouldn't really see the difference except in a very few lighting positions.

 

I'll have to try this out, kinda got bored working on this although I had a different approach which was to also release the _humanoid animations in a state in which could be opened with a 3d package and viewed that way.

 

I haven't taken the time to compare but does this file contain everything? Like all the bones listed in the source files? Which of course should be all the same as JK2 although I don't think JK2 had the tail bones.

 

Did you really take the time to reweigh all the base models or did you manage to import the base models from the source files and clean them up? I know the source models don't import quite right.

 

Nah I didn't reweigh any models, just recompiled them against the new GLA (using the xsi source files from Raven) to update the bone count. I didn't need to import any animations or JKA base model source files into Max luckily. Most of them recompiled without issue, though I had to go in manually into 3 of the xsi files with notepad++ to tweak weights (these were models with several parts, and I didn't want to be there all day reweighting). The Max 8 file I will include in the final version will just be a dummy skeleton to rig characters against & to animate with. However, to export animations with it you will need the updated plugin archangel & I have been working on.

[Archangel35757]

...What about mouth bones? (those seemed a bit lacking to me) I was looking into some stuff for JK2 also for more defined facial animations.

 

 

...Only the mouth bones that were in the original xsi source files are there now, I haven't added any actual *new* bones. There's not much point in adding many more bones for the face, seeing as the engine is still lacking visually with bad lighting and wouldn't really see the difference except in a very few lighting positions.

 

 

I agree with eezstreet... there are 32 facials bones (just counted them now in the 3ds Max skeleton)... and while it is true that the action animations use fewer facial bones because they're not needed for action/fighting... I strongly believe that ALL 32 facial bones (and any other missing bones...) need to be in the baseline root.xsi recompile.  That way for action animations... people can only weight their mesh to the lesser facial bones only in the original released .xsi files-- but they can make a separate cutscene cinematic character where the face is weighted to all 32 facial bones using a complete root.xsi-- thus allowing for greater facial animation details and a much greater cinematic cutscene improvement... this is what I plan and was hoping to collaborate on with you.

[eezstreet]

I agree with eezstreet... there are 32 facials bones (just counted them now in the 3ds Max skeleton)... and while it is true that the action animations use fewer facial bones because they're not needed for action/fighting... I strongly believe that ALL 32 facial bones (and any other missing bones...) need to be in the baseline root.xsi recompile.  That way for action animations... people can only weight their mesh to the lesser facial bones only in the original released .xsi files-- but they can make a separate cutscene cinematic character where the face is weighted to all 32 facial bones using a complete root.xsi-- thus allowing for greater facial animation details and a much greater cinematic cutscene improvement... this is what I plan and was hoping to collaborate on with you.

 

Glad to see that someone sees where I'm coming from!

Yeah, I was thinking about using versions of Kyle/Jan/whatever with higher poly faces and custom animations for the cutscenes. I've been reviewing the original script of the game and it seems like the game could greatly benefit from this. There's also a few unused cinematic sequences and missed opportunities because of the console/game limits of 2002. I believe that the game will need some hacks to allow for more animations, but that shouldn't be too difficult, hopefully. Just a matter of redirecting all of the animation-related functions to use my custom animation set. You are talking about doing this for JK2, yes?

[minilogoguy18]

^I've been working with Archangel as well for a long time and this is all for JA atm but JK2 has the same skeleton when compared to the source files, just the naming of the left hand tag bone is different.

 

Only characters that are actually used for cinematics will really need the full face bone set since cinematics are animated separately and use their own GLA file.

 

I still wanna compare the source files to the recompile since it seemed as if the toe bones (they were the only ones I watched) didn't seem to animate in ModView.

[DT.]

Glad to see that someone sees where I'm coming from!

Yeah, I was thinking about using versions of Kyle/Jan/whatever with higher poly faces and custom animations for the cutscenes. I've been reviewing the original script of the game and it seems like the game could greatly benefit from this. There's also a few unused cinematic sequences and missed opportunities because of the console/game limits of 2002. I believe that the game will need some hacks to allow for more animations, but that shouldn't be too difficult, hopefully. Just a matter of redirecting all of the animation-related functions to use my custom animation set. You are talking about doing this for JK2, yes?

 

Kind of hard to see where you're coming from when you didn't mention about jacking up the face tri counts. Of course if that's done, then a complete set of facial bones would look better.

 

If you guys intend on taking over this project & my thread, then by all means. Sure I spent a full days work on this, but I can easily just delete it...

[minilogoguy18]

Well I did start on a 2nd rig, basically using the old one but constraining the JK2 skeleton to it which would have all the face bones, doubling the vertex count for the face can easily be done in softimage and it would even normalize the weights on the vertexes created between the existing making a smooth weight map without the need to edit the weights.

[eezstreet]

Kind of hard to see where you're coming from when you didn't mention about jacking up the face tri counts. Of course if that's done, then a complete set of facial bones would look fine.

I've mentioned it in about 3 other threads, but I can see why you would have missed that detail. Sorry about that.

[DT.]

Sorry that I don't keep track of everything you say in your threads.

 

Just an FYI, carcass will not compile if there's too many verts on a single mesh object so good luck with that.

[eezstreet]

Just for reference, Galak only contains around 2k verts total (or so ModView claims anyway). Objects can have around 1k verts before they poof, and 32 objects per model. The GMan in Half Life 2 has around 10k verts, Alyx Vance has around 9k, and Barney has around 6k verts. With that in mind, it really shouldn't get in the way of things.

[minilogoguy18]

Yes, even if you doubled each face mesh you could still probably be under the 1k limit, if you wanted to keep it under 500 splitting it into 2 meshes would instantly solve that.

[DT.]

I'll lock this thread so you guys can start another.