Cloth sim experiments...

[Psyk0Sith]

Nothing worth showing for now, but i'm tinkering with pre-rendered cloth and trying to find an easy way (i'm lazy and on a tight schedule!) to bolt it on all characters. There would be no such thing as a complete jedi robe floating around in the wind and reacting to each movements, it would be better for hanging pieces of cloth, hair, rope etc.

 

Approach 1

Simulate a short sequence, create keyframes from simulation, export to either .glm or .md3 as a separate animated object. With that approach i want to replace an already bolt-able object with animation support, jetpack seems like a perfect candidate. First .glm test was vertex driven and failed to export animations, i guess that would've been too easy. Max 9 Md3 was not even compatible with JA, still haven't tried npherno's tool but i doubt it will make much of a difference.

 

Next test was bone driven, new standalone skeleton created, transfered cloth sim, exported with success, works in modview when bolted on character and looks half decent, the real test however was in-game: complete failure, animations are not working and the temporary texture doesn't even show up. Any coder(s) would like to enlighten me on the process of bolting animated objects on a player model? I've seen weapon holsters in a mod *i think*...they required extra tags being added to the player model or something like that, but i'd like to know if an animated object is possible at all without code.

 

Approach 2

This one would be bone driven with new sets of bones added to the existing skeleton. The major drawback is each model would have to be recompiled but no coding required and lots more chances of success.

 

More to come at some point...or i might just give up XD.

 

 

http://youtu.be/tBtYSg6nPDk
 

FAQ

 

Is this still going utilize the same rig up/compiling process of export to .xsi -> assimilate.

Same process, the only thing that would be different is the skeleton, one with additional bones.

 

Is this new animation/rig up going to have it's own _humanoid folder for the animations.

It can reside in the same _humanoid folder, but probably will have a different name as to not conflict with the original one, some people might prefer to use the classic one. It would also prevent bones mismatch between old and new skeleton for regular models.

 

Is the new animations going to be functional as well as capable of being utilize from a clean install of base JA so everyone can use it no matter what mod they play.

It would only be functional with "special" characters that have been compiled with the new .GLA, so when both the character and .GLA files are present, they would work like a regular player model.

 

Is there any possibilities of this working as well with JO.

It would be possible, but only with characters that use the new GLA, if the whole GLA sequence match in both games then it could be done for both without extra work for me, if not then it would not be a priority to get it to work.

 

What modeling applications can be utilized for this for the full rig up process of these animations (XSI, Max 6-10, etc).

For the new skeleton you can use Max 4 to at least 2010, thanks to the new plugins by Archangel.

 

If the facial animations are setup and added to the cloth animation setup, can there be a version stripped of new facial animations and 1 with new facial animations(my interest is the animated flaps but I'm sure someone else would hold interest in the facial animations).

I guess, if you don't mind having 2 .GLA versions in the .pk3

[Tempust85]

Each model would only need to be recompiled IF they need to use the new bones, otherwise I can whip up a conversion table to make JKA compiled models work with your new skeleton provided all the other bones are the same. I coded this in OpenJK (unreleased) for my own skeleton.

 

Just remember that carcass won't like any position bone data from your new bones if you compile against any other .xsi files that have none of those bones. GLAmerge is a workaround.

[Futuza]

eezstreet might be able to help you out with this, and I'd love to see this work.

[Archangel35757]

Hopefully MD3 models can be bolted-- I think that would be best method.

[Psyk0Sith]

@@Archangel35757 I tried Npherno's compiler and it crashes MD3Viewer with the following error...(headerSize 1644)!=108.

 

@@DT85 For the 2nd approach i didn't mean every single model already working, just the ones that would require cloth of course...unlike the bolted alternative, which would've been universal.

[Archangel35757]

@@Psyk0Sith - Did you find the Maxscript MD3 exporter? The pre-Max9 scripts should still work in Max9.

[redsaurus]

The problem is that the jetpack isn't set up properly in code to do all the different animations, but adding boltable cape support shouldn't be too difficult codewise.

[minilogoguy18]

If all else fails perhaps you can use the ASE->MD3 converter that was released with the SoF2 tools.

[Psyk0Sith]

@@Archangel35757 I got the Max 6 exporter to work, but the problem is getting the cloth sim into Max 7, stupid importer destroys the weights.

 

@@redsaurus Thanks for clearing that up.

[Archangel35757]

@@Archangel35757 I got the Max 6 exporter to work, but the problem is getting the cloth sim into Max 7, stupid importer destroys the weights.

 

@@redsaurus Thanks for clearing that up.

Why do you need to re-import the MD3 into Max7?

[Psyk0Sith]

I need to reimport the Max 9 FBX / XSI into MAx 7 to be able to outpout the .md3, unless i find one that works in max 9.

 

@@ChalklYne That's the Max 6 version i've been using for a while now. Milkshape won't work for the current purpose.

Edited August 4, 2013 by Psyk0Sith

[ChalklYne]

Not sure if you've already found this... but I found some cool md3 export scripts for max and blender here

 

http://www.katsbits.com/tools/

 

Not max 7 unfortunately... but I see a max 6?

 

Also. milkshape exports to md3 and can make animated md3's... I'm not sure if this helps

[Archangel35757]

I need to reimport the Max 9 FBX / XSI into MAx 7 to be able to outpout the .md3, unless i find one that works in max 9.

Just export as .ASE directly from Max9. Then use the SOF2 ASE to MD3 converter... I'm away from home so @@minilogoguy18 can upload it to the utility files section.

[minilogoguy18]

I'll upload it, haven't tried it myself yet but it's a Raven made tool for SoF2 to convert ASE models to MD3 which mainly I wanted since there is no MD3 exporter for Softimage but perhaps it can help out the 3ds max guys.

[Archangel35757]

Question: Is it possible to bolt animated MD3 models onto Ghoul2 characters? Or are only .GLM models allowed? For things like cloth I believe MD3's would be better since they are per-Vertex animated objects and thus require no bones.

 

Or would this require a coding change to implement?

[Xycaleth]

It would indeed need code changes.

[Archangel35757]

 

It would indeed need code changes.

Where specifically? Also, I don't recall... was the source code for modview released? Because modview only allows bolting on .GLM files.

[Futuza]

Where specifically? Also, I don't recall... was the source code for modview released? Because modview only allows bolting on .GLM files.

I...think it was?  Accidentally.

 

@othercoders?

[Archangel35757]

I just looked at the repository and the ModView project code files are under the tools folder. So it will need a tweak to allow you to choose an MD3 file to bolt onto a character.

[Psyk0Sith]

Question: Is it possible to bolt animated MD3 models onto Ghoul2 characters? Or are only .GLM models allowed? For things like cloth I believe MD3's would be better since they are per-Vertex animated objects and thus require no bones.

 

Or would this require a coding change to implement?

 

While MD3 requires no bones, the performance cost of 21 376 frames would be too high. If that approach works the sim would have to be quite simple and adapt to pretty much all situations with just a few frames (and look hilarious in many others!)

[Archangel35757]

Older Quake3 games have the characters made of vertex animated MD3 files... n'est-ce pas? Under skeletal animations all the vertices still have to undergo transformation matrix operations based on their bone weighting... not sure how memory intensive animated MD3's would be.

[minilogoguy18]

^They do, saw a tut on it before using MS3D.

[Xycaleth]

I just looked at the repository and the ModView project code files are under the tools folder. So it will need a tweak to allow you to choose an MD3 file to bolt onto a character.

ModView doesn't support loading of MD3 files as far as I know so you would need to add support for that first.

 

Regarding memory usage for vertex animations compared to skeletal, skeletal animation uses far less memory than vertex animations. With skeletal, only the vertices of the base/bind pose need to be in memory plus the skeletal key frames (and an added bonus is that multiple animations can be mixed and blended). With vertex animations, at least two sets of vertices need to be in memory so that the vertices can be interpolated.

[Tempust85]

MD3 worked in Quake 3 but it's very different here for JKA as there are a sh*tload more vertex animation frames that you'd need to have. I don't see how this can possibly work, it would end up bogging down the game's performance as Xycaleth pointed out. Only way I can see any cloth moving is just add new bones to the GLA and strap those bones to a cloth simulation. Either that or just find a way to get cloth sim in-game, which would require an experienced coder & an appropriate licensed physics engine to incorporate into OpenJK.

 

However, what MD3 could be used for is bolting a head onto a model and have vertex facial animations. Only need a handfull of expressions.

[Archangel35757]

...However, what MD3 could be used for is bolting a head onto a model and have vertex facial animations. Only need a handfull of expressions.

Now that's an interesting idea... that would allow you to use morph targets for facial animation in 3dsMax and export result as MD3.