Cloth sim experiments...

[DT.]

Precisely.

 

Though now thinking about it we would only be able to have the face as MD3 as the bolted MD3 mesh can only inherit the movements of the bone it's bolted to - aka we can't have cranium & cervical movement in an MD3 due to no bones. So in the end, we would have the entire model with a hole where the face goes as GLM, and the entire face all the way along the jaw as MD3 or we could replace the entire head from the jaw line up.

[Archangel35757]

The JKA models are already set up with the face as a separate mesh from the head... so that works.

[Psyk0Sith]

First test:

[DT.]

Awesome! Now to tie some nulls to the cloth. This would go nicely with my custom GLA :

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MOtY56180D0

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6L4TYFsRUQ

 

Sorry to highjack your thread, this will be the only time I'll post content here lol. We should totally join our efforts together. My custom GLA has a new set of facial bones, toes and all 5 fingers added back with all 3 segments too.

 

Btw, I've managed to work out the kinks in adding new bones to the existing animation source. No more GLAMerge like I posted in the 3ds Max plugin thread, just need to make sure every bone that has position data also has rotation data (ie it needs to rotate a smidge at least in order for the position data to be added at compile time).

[Pande]

So much win in two posts. So.. whats the next step? And, can any of this be applied to the existing models in jka? 

[ChalklYne]

 

 

 

 

...

[Futuza]

Hooray!  I'm looking forward to the completing of-erm...this is awesome!

[DT.]

I can whip up a conversion table that will allow existing JKA models to run off the custom GLA. They won't have access to any new bones unless they are reweighed but they will be useable for sure.

[CaptainChar]

that test animation looks, impressive

[Stoiss]

First test:

That my friend looks danm badass

[DT.]

Now that is just cloth sim right? Not a weighted mesh on bones that are moving?

[katanamaru]

Is it possible to change the cloths wieght? So it will be possible to make light or heavy cloth?

[CaptainChar]

if that's possible Kat, im seeing a lot of potential

[DT.]

There won't be any cloth physics in game unless someone codes in say, bullet physics. Pretty sure pyschosith is going to target bones onto the cloth simulation and bake the animation onto those bones for use ingame. In the end, it's just animation so you can't affect how heavy the cloth is.

 

This will be a mammoth task importing all the animations and then exporting them into xsi files.

[katanamaru]

Ah. Now I follow.

 

Side effect would be that we'd get the base animations in XSI. That'd be useful for animation modding.

[minilogoguy18]

Workflow (my best guess) would be, import JA base animations, weigh simple model to skeleton, make cloth pieces, add cloth properties (in Softimage it's under Simulate) then plot the animation to the vertex's.

 

I see that you mentioned bones DT, doubt Psyk0 used bones and it's going to be because to have a decent result you'd need like a grid of 20+ nulls where as applying a cloth physics modifier directly to the vertex is much faster and easier.

[DT.]

It is a cloth simulation, but what I mean is to get it to work with JKA you:

 

- target bones to certain vertexes on the simulated cloth mesh

- bake the simulation onto the bones so the bones are now animated

- put those bones ingame with a full replace of every .xsi animation file

 

6 bones would be enough to retain most of the cloth simulation ingame:

 

 

White dots = cloth simulation baked ingame bones. Smooth out the skin weights on the game mesh and all done and looking fabulous!

[minilogoguy18]

I thought they he was trying to get the MD3 solution figured out?

[Psyk0Sith]

It's almost what you have there @@DT85, except the bones (5 of them currently per piece) will be placed on the center verts of each piece of cloth, the bending and twisting transfers nicely without costing too much, the helper objects look like a chain flopping around and with the correct weights, it will be pretty close to the sim. Once the sim is completed, the bones will get their keyframes from "tracking" dummy objects that are themselves linked to the center vertices.

 

One thing to note is that sometimes the cloth will "pop" into place because of how sequences quickly shifts between each other, it's not a big deal but it won't always be perfect, i don't feel like editing all those transitions manually.

 

@@minilogoguy18 MD3 would end up costing too much for 23k frames and then you'd have to be able to pin cloth onto characters then somehow match frames betweem the md3 and .glm. Maybe it's easy for a coder, but i'm a 3D monkey so i picked the easiest solution.

Edited August 22, 2013 by Psyk0Sith

[DT.]

Are you planning on adding cape or any other simulation?

 

If you finish this, I can add my new facial bones + animations. I won't need your max files and you won't need mine, all I'd need is your .xsi files that are compile-ready.

[eezstreet]

If one were to make actually coded-in cloth animations, how would they handle this format-wise? I was thinking myself of a .phys file that goes along with the .skin file and sets a weight value or something to that effect on the surfs.

[Stooben]

I am curious of this project and I have some questions if someone would be kind enough to answer them, or answer them when this is a lot more complete and released to the population.  I wagered years ago a kotor 2 style animation of flaps would be more likely to come out before cloth physics.  Process intensive wise also it wouldn't be as heavy on a machine either as compared to physics since it's just animations tied to those extra meshes/etc.

 

If possible a sticky with basic notes on all this information can probably be answered once this is complete to save on having to answer repeat questions.

 

 

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

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

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.

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

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

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).

 

 

Working on my own little personal projects and this just gives me incentive to get back into JK which I'm sure it just might for some other people.  Keep up the good work as well, good to see some fresh creativity and interest into things lot of people been waiting on coming to fruition.

 

 

 

Might put up a model package of some 100+ of some models like these I'm digging into for a prefab model pack if this project comes to fruition.  Little back scratching sure, but the players benefit the most from these open ended projects.  Namaste and good day.

[DT.]

If one were to make actually coded-in cloth animations, how would they handle this format-wise? I was thinking myself of a .phys file that goes along with the .skin file and sets a weight value or something to that effect on the surfs.

 

I have no idea what format can do this, but here's my thoughts. The player model would have a collision GLM version of itself which is a super basic model for cloth (and anything else for that matter) to collide with. The actual cloth would be a bolt-on model. This bolt-on model would contain:

 

- the cloth mesh

- one bone used as an attachment point and has the entire cloth mesh skin weighted to it

- cloth influence data. 1.0 will be full simulation, 0 will be no simulation and would fallback to the skin weights. Inbetween values will have a blend, for example a value of 0.5 would be 50% skin weights influence and 50% simulation influence.

 

@@Stooben

 

Just an FYI - My facial bones allow for complex facial animations. Eyelids, eyebrows, upper and lower cheeks, tongue, chin and better lip bones.

 

Concerning JO compatibility. The main goal would be having JKA model compatibility (JKA models can't use any of the new bones unless they are re-weighed) and in order to do this JO compatibility has to be dumped at least with the conversion table I made.

[Psyk0Sith]

@@DT85 I don't mind mixing both together, there's a few things i'll need to work out before it's ready. I will certainly attempt capes, expecting it'll require more bones.

 

@@Stooben things are not set in stone, but with current lazy setup this is how i would answer:

 

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

[eezstreet]

@@DT85, fyi Ghoul2 can already handle mesh-based collision, see saber collision vs ATSTs and rancors, so no need for a second mesh

 

So aside from the physics data on the cloth, this would already be possible, however this doesn't take into account wind (which doesn't exist in MP, but it's on my to-do list). In which case, this wouldn't be ideal at all because of the Reborn hoods etc