Realistic Stormtrooper Stances

[Tempust85]

Yeah but jk2 models lhand tag is weighed to the lhand. You'd need to do some hacky thing in the code to swap out its weights from the lhand to the lhand_tag_bone it if that's even possible.

[eezstreet]

I'm talking about eyes following the character.

[Tempust85]

I know, I forgot to add in who I was talking to.

 

Who actually should I talk to about this conversion table for a new GLA in OpenJK, @@ensiform or @@Raz0r ?

[minilogoguy18]

Ah, didn't even realize that the tag wasn't weighed to the right bone.

[katanamaru]

I can attach seperate animations to all the characters (some custom models don't work for some reason). 

The downside is that if there are any cutscenes with with troopers that use unique animations they will just stand there in the root pose.

[Cerez]

Just out of curiosity, do we have any JKA animation experts here? Both the new shooting stances (for all the characters, actually) and the eye-movement are a great idea. The eye-movement is a little harder to program, and the engine uses head movement already, as @@therfiles has pointed out, to achieve a similar -- albeit somewhat less detailed -- effect.

 

That shooting stance got me really jumpy, though @@minilogoguy18. Realistic animations like these would be fantastic. @ is right, the original Dark Forces had stances that were a lot more natural than those in Jedi Outcast. That's actually one of the reasons I keep going back to that game for a more authentic Star Wars experience.

 

The big challenge is tying them together into a smooth sequence. If you look at all the custom JK animation mods that have been created so far, the one thing they all have in common is that the stances and animations don't really tie in well together. They often appear jerky in their transitions, and simply don't look natural.

 

Whoever embarks on this challenge will need to think of all the moves and actions as a cohesive whole, and plan and test with all the possible combinations they are used in in order to tie the movement/animation together. This is one of the real challenges/limitations with this engine, I think. Especially because length for each animation is "hard-wired" in the code, and so it cannot be changed unless changes are also made to the code.

 

That said, I don't see why lifting the gun up to a little higher then waist-level will cause any problems. Some carefully thought out small tweaks are definitely possible even without changing the code.

[minilogoguy18]

Well the thing is like I said is that the games current code will only allow for the waist up to be animated for shooting stances, it takes the leg animations from the basic idle stance and combines them, code needs to be changed before it will look proper.

[Cerez]

I think a complete overhaul of the animation code might actually be a really good idea if it was rewritten to allow more freedom and flexibility, but I'm not sure that that would be in the scope of OpenJK. In fact, probably not.

 

I've sort of started playing around with that idea in my facial expressions tweak, and I've noticed that the Raven team has rushed things quite a bit and only programmed for Icarus what they needed specifically for the story in the game. They didn't code the animations with extensibility in mind, and not a lot of thought was given to combining certain animations for the sake of creating new ones. In other words, it's a big mess, and to fix it we need a new design and extensive code rewriting.

 

Otherwise you could build the new (waist-up) shooting stances around the current limitations, and try to make them look good even with the default idle stance. Making the characters hold the weapons proper will still make a huge difference to the overall game experience.

[minilogoguy18]

It's definitely something I don't have time for right now, the biped in the picture is available for download and a handful of people behind the scenes have contacted me showing some very impressive animations with it. Posing the character can be done in minutes but I have to finish my AT-ST which Ashura is texturing and I have to make the LOD's. It has a full rig but has no animations yet so my animation plate is full, just showing off that this can easily be done.

[Archangel35757]

I can attach seperate animations to all the characters (some custom models don't work for some reason). 

The downside is that if there are any cutscenes with with troopers that use unique animations they will just stand there in the root pose.

Can't cutscenes also involve NPC's that have their own GLA file? It's just scripting right?

[ensiform]

What I really hate about Jedi Academy is the lack of animations. The majority of NPC's are using the same animations,

which looks a little bit monotonous. I mean, it's looks weird when the Stormtroopers (and other NPC's) are running with a blaster rifle as

if it was a blaster pistol. Concerning animations in general, this game needs to be enhanced.

 

With some adjustments to the source code, everything is possible .

Of course that's true.  I never denied that.  You'd most likely lose out on compatibility in some way or another though.

[Tempust85]

Who should I talk to about support for a new main humanoid GLA in the main OpenJK project? It won't break any models, except maybe JO IF 2 conversion tables can't be used. Only re-rigged models will use the new bones of the new GLA though, but will keep 100% of the old ones for compatibility.

 

 

@@ensiform @@Raz0r

[ensiform]

It's hardcoded in mod and in engine to use only humanoid for players iirc.

[katanamaru]

Can't cutscenes also involve NPC's that have their own GLA file? It's just scripting right?

If the cutscene uses an animation in the _humanoid.gla yes they will work. Some stages use specific animations that are not in the _humanoid.gla. Such as the one where you rescue the elders from the rancor. The level starts with Jaden hanging from a pipe. Or the tutorial level with Rosh. Those don't work with the altered animation attachment.

 

If you don't mind skipping cutscenes then it's not really a problem. Also they are ok with player made sp level mods since they just the regular _humanoid.gla.

[Archangel35757]

If the cutscene uses an animation in the _humanoid.gla yes they will work. Some stages use specific animations that are not in the _humanoid.gla. Such as the one where you rescue the elders from the rancor. The level starts with Jaden hanging from a pipe. Or the tutorial level with Rosh. Those don't work with the altered animation attachment.

 

If you don't mind skipping cutscenes then it's not really a problem. Also they are ok with player made sp level mods since they just the regular _humanoid.gla.

 

I thought they compiled a unique GLA for each cutscene animation, no?  For example, the Alora and Jaden duel in Echo Base... I would think that it was all animated inside Softimage-- and then the Jaden and Alora animations were exported out as their own cutscene GLA and invoked by scripting, no?

[Tempust85]

It's hardcoded in mod and in engine to use only humanoid for players iirc.

 

Yeah I noticed that, but I'm wanting to have OpenJK (official project, not a fork) support a _humanoid.gla with more bones. This would replace the base JKA one and would be useable for SP & MP with full compatibility for base JKA/JO models via conversion tables.

[katanamaru]

I think you are right, I'm not sure about all the technical details.

 

Attaching a separate animation gla to an npc is done by modifying it's hex address. Doing this makes it so that it can't access the cutscene animation.

 

Default: models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla

Into: models/players/_humanoid_trooper/_humanoid_trooper.gla

 

Now the new trooper npc cannot access the cutscene animations since it's hex path is different.

[Tempust85]

While that works for SP, I doubt it would for MP. I've tried to load models that use their own GLA & the game has a sh!tfit lol.

[katanamaru]

Oh yeah this is sp only.

[Langerd]

You can change a npc of stormtrooper and change his model in npc file but the model with new animations. Thre will be no problems with stormie in mp i think if you will not chnage orginal model. It would be cool if al characters would have a own _humanoid animations. But to much work (sry for English i am polish)

[Bek]

Well I hope someone would like to take this on, but it seems somewhat unlikely, but in my opinion it would make the stormtroopers looks soooo much better  .

[Lancelot]

Well I hope someone would like to take this on, but it seems somewhat unlikely, but in my opinion it would make the stormtroopers looks soooo much better  .

I totally agree with it. I wish someone could at least attempt to give them better animations.

[Langerd]

This is very good idea! But not only with stormtroopers I think the movie duels mod have models with diffrent animations. Some are screwd up (Obi wan is holding a concussion rifle with one hand ...wow) .
Stromtroopers are in armors soo their animations should be diffrent. Also i was disappointed when i saw that boba using e 11 not his ee3 (maybe because luke destroys it who knows)but my point is he should have his own animations too. But they were too lazy.

Modders take games to the better path. I am 100% sure that somebody will make one. Or check out tutorials on this site and make one on your own. This tutorials rly helped me.

[Bek]

I'll get on that  .

[Tempust85]

This will most likely happen in DF2 mod.