character CUSTOM SKEL NPC: Gorc

[Psyk0Sith]

Even tho this will end up nowhere, here is a rough design of what Gorc could look like (needs proper gear and more sculpting!).
 

 

https://jkhub.org/images/sYKprBI.jpg

 

[minilogoguy18]

@@Psyk0Sith, if you keep going I will make it work in game, somehow, someway.

 

I feel like a custom skeleton and animation set would be the only real way to make these 2 characters work like they should. You are pretty free though to wing it a lot on their design since there isn't much art out there of them and the cinematic movies don't show much. You also can't really take anything from the game models since they aren't much more detailed than a minecraft character lol.

[Archangel35757]

A custom NPC skeleton with retargeted animations.

[minilogoguy18]

None of the animations fit and they wouldn't retarget in a click, editing would be needed, would rather just make them from scratch.

[Psyk0Sith]

Custom rig was the goal, or it could've been modified for the default rig *with wonky results* if needed. The design would be inspired by the original characters but improved to keep a little continuity.

 

@@Archangel35757 I don't know enough about transferring keyframed bones to other bones or CS biped in particular, using a CS biped would be a huge time saver for proportions and re-applying animations in a single click, might be possible with custom bone rigs but i'm quite useless with them!

[Archangel35757]

@@Psyk0Sith -- there are standard tutorials that ship with 3dsMax for retargeting animations from one skeleton to another-- even with different proportions. And can be done regardless of bones or CS Biped. Do you have the tutorial files and tutorial manual (you can download them from Autodesk). I can help get you going...

[minilogoguy18]

I can do it in Softimage using MOTOR but like I said, if the rigs and proportions differ too much it would require too much input/adjustment afterward to even bother, they kinda need custom animations anyways and not walk, stand or fight like a human.

 

Last rig I built took only a few hours and in 10 mins I had a walk cycle, making an animation is a breeze if you're using a rig. I hate pre made rigs and ones that come default with most softwares, they just don't give you the control you can get if you learn how to make your own.

 

Last pre made rig I used was the CSS biped 10+ years ago and that thing was basic AF compared to the one I made for JA.

[Psyk0Sith]

@@minilogoguy18 I'm approaching this as a modeler and have no skills in animation so i'm looking for shortcuts! I understand where you're coming from, nothing compares to a custom built rig.

 

My idea was to have the animations transferred to a biped for these reasons:

-Build characters with custom proportions and load all the animations found in the original .GLA with a single click (and possibly fix the crap ones if you are skilled enough)

-Adding bone driven cloth sim.

-Ditching modview completely when skinning / checking errors.

-I suck at building rigs / animating

[minilogoguy18]

Well here lies the problem, it'll be work before anything can be transferred. I don't know about Max but in Softimage to transfer motion data it's similar to doing MOCAP tagging. The thing that would need to be done is first get all the animations onto 1 skeleton file in Softimage which I started some time ago but never finished. Then transfer or possibly "trace" over top of them using the rig that I built to get them onto that rig. From there the animations could quite easily be transferred to another rig once all that is out of the way.

 

There just simply isn't the options for selecting each bone, it works best when picking controllers. The operator doesn't support 50+ inputs. But like I said, if we could transfer all the basic FK bone animation to an IK rig going to another rig would just be a few clicks but right now it isn't prepped to do that.

 

The other thing with my process of copy/pasting the animations from the source file to 1 skeleton is that it's done 1 sequence at a time and just to get like halfway took hours since I had to make a conversion table because a lot of the animations have all the JO bones where a lot of the JA specific ones do not.

[Psyk0Sith]

Archangel has proposed to use motion builder along with max so that's the first thing we're going to try, not sure how difficult it will be but we won't know until we do a few test runs. If that fails we'll have to rely on your skills, provided you have time and desire to work on something like that.

[minilogoguy18]

Well the real reason why I haven't done anything lately is because I'm bummed that this mod isn't going anywhere but for something like what you're making I'll make the time.

 

Shouldn't need too many animations, I was going to look at some of the NPC's like the saber droid for instance to see how I can incorporate a lightsaber wielding enemy that doesn't use the games basic styles but rather their own style so my route might possibly need some coding also. This was something I had thought about for some time, Gorc, Pic, Boc and Maw would all use their own styles where the other Dark Jedi would use the existing ones. Yun using yellow and maybe fast, Sariss being very similar to Tavion in JK2 and Jerec being similar to Desann in JK2 with some differences, mainly being more powerful but slow due to his age.

 

With custom animations I feel the characters would end up being more unique. Even if you use the existing ones I'd like to try to make my own at the same time, just to see what I can come up with.

 

Would you be willing to let me?

[Archangel35757]

@@minilogoguy18 -- feel free to make any custom animations you'd like for Gork using your humanoid rig. Simply export each animation to a dotXSI 3.0 file and also an FBX (with +Z up); then we can retarget it onto Gork's CS Biped using MotionBuilder.

[minilogoguy18]

Not going to be using the _humanoid biped, making one custom to his proportions.

[Archangel35757]

Not going to be using the _humanoid biped, making one custom to his proportions.

That's not really necessary... and you would have to match the CS Biped we plan to make if you want the results to match exactly... and it would still have to go thru the same retargeting process (shown below):

[minilogoguy18]

I never intended to retarget, I just wanted a custom proportioned character that I could attempt to make working as a NPC with it's own custom skeleton and animation set.

[Archangel35757]

I never intended to retarget, I just wanted a custom proportioned character that I could attempt to make working as a NPC with it's own custom skeleton and animation set.

It will be its own custom NPC skeleton and GLA... but we can still retarget many of the existing animations.

[minilogoguy18]

Yeah, I know, I just wanted to see how well I could make my own. I don't think animations and motions that were meant for humanoids would look good on a deformed gammorean.

[Archangel35757]

@@Psyk0Sith - send me the .max file after you have him fitted to a CS Biped... or if you want me to do it, then just send the mesh as a .max file.

 

I also noticed you've modeled him with some amount of forearm pronation. Do you want that in the root pose?

[Psyk0Sith]

It's way too early to have that thing rigged tho, this was just a zbrush sketch to update the design, i could create a dummy base mesh with similar proportions, common thing to do when developing a character so that the motion artists aren't sitting on their ass doing nothing...not that i would imply that about you

 

The pose can be changed to whatever would work best, matching JA's default might be better.

 

@@minilogoguy18 does have a point tho, in a perfect world he should move / behave according to his size.

[minilogoguy18]

I would just like to try sort of along side of what Archangel wants to try, just to see what I can come up with. I've already been acting out some of his motions and how he'll wield the saber in almost a hacking axe like way with heavy powerful strikes. I figured that would be a good contrast with Pic who would probably fight more like Yoda.

 

If you pose it to the default JA base pose could you possibly do that at the VERY end? Reason why is that pose is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE to start any animation from. The current pose you have it in would be fine or at least way better than the Da Vinci pose since I won't be forced to use that with a custom skeleton.

 

If you look at my JA biped I purposely set the neutral pose to something different and just added the Da Vinci pose as a animation clip for GLA merge reasons because it's an absolute shit starting point to have the legs spread with the feet off the ground.

[Archangel35757]

@@Psyk0Sith -- sure the weighting & timing for his size would need tweaking-- but I think much of the strong (red) style would suit him. With a custom NPC the default root pose can be whatever you want (like @@minilogoguy18 said).

 

I just meant you probably want the limbs close to neutral-- not too much pronation or supination...

 

I will wait to you have the root pose figured out... before attempting to fit a CS Biped. @@minilogoguy18 -- if you wait for the root pose and allow me to fit a CS Biped, I can send you a Null skeleton-- at least then everything will be based on the same skeleton animation-wise...

[Psyk0Sith]

I would just like to try sort of along side of what Archangel wants to try, just to see what I can come up with. I've already been acting out some of his motions and how he'll wield the saber in almost a hacking axe like way with heavy powerful strikes. I figured that would be a good contrast with Pic who would probably fight more like Yoda.

 

If you pose it to the default JA base pose could you possibly do that at the VERY end? Reason why is that pose is ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE to start any animation from. The current pose you have it in would be fine or at least way better than the Da Vinci pose since I won't be forced to use that with a custom skeleton.

 

If you look at my JA biped I purposely set the neutral pose to something different and just added the Da Vinci pose as a animation clip for GLA merge reasons because it's an absolute shit starting point to have the legs spread with the feet off the ground.

 

You're more than welcome to create your own rig and animations, what we'll be working on can be used for other creatures as well so it won't be for nothing. The current pose can be changed to fit your needs, i usually prefer a more natural gesture when sculpting vs the stiffness of T & Davinci pose.

[DrXann]

Interesting take on Gorc so far.

[minilogoguy18]

@@Psyk0Sith, the pose you have it in is just fine.

[Ramikad]

Very good model, but I would make the head and the mouth a bit sharper, more resembling the original concept arts for Gorc and its cutscene appearance: