The Missing Tarsal Bones

[Cerez]

What the situation with the tarsal bones in the JKA skeleton? Some skeletons have it, others don't. My recent model compiled successfully without it. Does the game make use of these bones at all? I've heard that it's for the Single Player game only, which doesn't seem to make much sense... 

[Psyk0Sith]

Skeletons that have tarsal bones can be used to compile for Jedi Outcast as well. JA doesnt use them, period, i'm pretty sure carcass will reject them saying the bone hierarchy doesn't match.

[Cerez]

Oh, that makes sense! Thanks @@Psyk0Sith.

 

So no tarsals in JK3. *makes a mental note*

[DT.]

No tarsals, and a few fingers are gone from the JKA GLA. They exist in the source animations, but were omitted at compile time. The model compiled with the animation source determines what bones are present in the outputted GLA. If the model doesn't have weights to a bone, then it won't be included. Would be easy as pie to add them back, BUT it would break compatibility with all the existing models for JKA. Same deal if someone were to add in extra bones for capes, hair, etc.

[Asgarath83]

Really strange. I ever used JKA skeleton with tarsals bones and rigged feets of character with 50 tarsal and 50 tibia weight, and never got trouble about this bone. O.o

[DT.]

You might be thinking of the talus bone, @@Asgarath83

[Asgarath83]

Yes, sorry for mistake. I not feeling much good these days. :S

[Archangel35757]

No tarsals, and a few fingers are gone from the JKA GLA. They exist in the source animations, but were omitted at compile time. The model compiled with the animation source determines what bones are present in the outputted GLA. If the model doesn't have weights to a bone, then it won't be included. Would be easy as pie to add them back, BUT it would break compatibility with all the existing models for JKA. Same deal if someone were to add in extra bones for capes, hair, etc.

Would it truly break compatibility? If a "new" JKA skeleton were compiled against all the source animations and added back all of the omitted JO & SoF2 bones-- then the legacy JKA characters should work just fine with the new GLA (even if they don't weight any vertices to the restored bones), no? At most it would only require importing the legacy JKA character root pose with my Maxscript importer and recompiling As-Is against the "new" GLA-- not changing any weights, etc.

[Xycaleth]

The number of bones between the models and skeleton needs to match (except in the case of a JK2 humanoid model using a JKA humnaoid skeleton).

[Archangel35757]

The number of bones between the models and skeleton needs to match (except in the case of a JK2 humanoid model using a JKA humnaoid skeleton).

Some modders don't weight their face mesh to the mouth bones, and their model compiles and plays against the GLA just fine. So if you weight to less bones then you should be OK (as long as the bones you weight to are contained within the GLA), no?

[Xycaleth]

It states in the model's metadata how many bones the model expects to use which I think is extracted from the skeleton it was weighted against.

[Archangel35757]

It states in the model's metadata how many bones the model expects to use which I think is extracted from the skeleton it was weighted against.

That does not mean they used all the bones... right? It is reading that bone count value from the GLA You compile against right? But I see your point... you would need to recompile the legacy model against the new GLA.

 

Maybe the metadata of the GLM file could be hacked to reflect the new GLA bone count-- as long as all the bone names used are consistent.