JK series _humanoid Character Animation Rig

[minilogoguy18]

Well people asked for it and so for this is probably like my 4th or 5th go at this but it seems to be working well so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRioiCqWfGI&feature=plcp

Some people are surely going to notice things that will make questions pop up, mainly the nulls in the arms and legs, those replace the bones that are normally there so this skeleton can have a normal arm/leg setup. This is doable, after looking at the hierarchy in ModView I noticed that those bones that are mainly there for better twisting of the limbs are child to the closest bones but aren't actually in the bone chain. I'm sure you'll next notice that it of course is not in the root pose, the root pose is just there for modelers to rig a character to a simple skeletal pose. You could honestly rig a character model to any one of the animation sequences released and compile it using assimilate just exporting it as the name of the animation used rather than root and it would work.

To do list:

Rig a dummy model to it
Test, probably a walk cycle

Only thing is if people haven't noticed I have a student license for the latest version of Softimage which this was created and I don't think I'll be able to convert it backwards to an older version.

I've also rearranged some of the hierarchy since the video was uploaded but none of the rig elements are in the model_root hierarchy, it's all done using constraints, linked parameters and expressions. So you can still just branch select the model_root and export without taking any of the rig nodes with it.

EDIT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qflMxD_6FIc'


Finger curl controls and up vectors for the legs.

[eezstreet]

Very nice!

I assume you'll be able to export to .xsi and run it through Carcass just like before?

[minilogoguy18]

Should be able to, just need to take the time to envelope a model to it. The valve source addon for stuff like HL2 has a nice weight map export function but it doesn't work quite right in 2013 but I read somewhere that it can be fixed, just gotta take the time to do it.

 

I REALLY hope I can find a way to compile this into something like an addon (google GEAR for Softimage) so that someone with a different version can create it with 1 click from the primitive menu.

 

The magic with this is that all of the controllers are not in the skeleton hierarchy so they do not get exported.

[Garyn Dakari]

I love this.

 

Does it/will it work with Softimage Mod Tool?

[eezstreet]

From his post on Gamefront:

I made it with Softimage 2013 since I qualified for a student license so a free upgrade was hard to turn away from, if anyone has this version and would like to play around with the file lmk.

[minilogoguy18]

Trying to figure out a way right now where a script can generate the rig with a click of the mouse much like some other biped generator's I've seen so that someone with an older version could essentially 'make' it in an older version since scene files aren't backwards compatible.

 

Like mentioned though, if you or anyone you know can qualify for a single student license you can get the latest version for free.

[afi]

Can someone explain to me what this is and what it will be good for? D:

[minilogoguy18]

It's a set of constrained control objects constrained to a IK skeleton allowing for posing of the model to only take a couple of minutes. Someone with this could create character animations in the fraction of the time even the most experienced Dragon user could, the videos explain it all.

 

Figured it was only a matter of time before that post came since no one seemed to know what to say about it. This is how character animation is done most of the time in major 3d packages. You can do FK like dragon but that's like rubbing 2 sticks together to make fire when you have a torch lighter in your pocket.

[eezstreet]

I think minilogoguy18 sums it up pretty well. Dragon is okay at what it does (if that), but a fully fledged animation tool like Softimage XSI would be crucial in getting animations off the ground. While a JK2 skeleton exists, there is no known skeleton for JA.

[minilogoguy18]

There is, it's just not made of IK chains.

 

I based this one on the JO skeleton becuase it may be possible to recompile the _humanoid.gla using the source files since they contain all the missing bones and are animated, they just seemed to have been removed on compile. a few of the sequences are missing 1 or 2 bones but they can be added by using a simple null in the right place in the heirarchy.

 

Oh and I have a small update on this, I have fit the Kyle model to this and just need to start weighing him to it then I'll export a test.

[eezstreet]

I'm interested in how possible it would be to add some new bones or some such to this rig. Even if the models need re-rigged, I think that can be arranged (or I can learn how to rig models, since animation is one of the key places I'd like to focus on)

[minilogoguy18]

You can add bones but they wont be added to the games existing animations. Think of it like using a JO model, they have more bones and they work but the bones that aren't used by JA wont animate.

 

If you really wanted to add bones you'd have to add them to all the relevant animations and EVERYONE you were playing online with would need the updated .gla file or else crash.

[eezstreet]

Right. I can deal with that criteria though.

[Szico VII]

^^ I think he's talking about for JKG.

[eezstreet]

shhhh

you don't know that

[ChalklYne]

damn mini i gotta say u did an amazing job on this one man. i am still working out constraints for kazdan. but, i did make him a completely custom skele, animated a movement, merged it into animations.cfg and he performs the action but the skele is in no way near as detailed and nice as yours. i wont start animating kazdan until i got a rig like yers going to make this whole character more feesable. the amount of work u put into this, combined with the new possibilities of faster/ more accurate animations with capes and all is just incredible man. big props i cant wait to use it =)

[minilogoguy18]

^Better capes are already possible, just none of the released skeleton files for Softimage or Max have the tail bones included but if you open any base model in modview and look at the bones you'll find 2 tail bones that could be used to weigh a cape to judging by the way the move. Seems like they shouldn't interfere with the legs. Also looks like that's what those bones may have been intended for but it seems to have been over looked for all these years.

[eezstreet]

Hmmmm. Where are these bones located and what kind of animations do they go through?

[minilogoguy18]

If you open any base model in modview you should find them either under the pelvis directly or the humerus bones. All of the base animations SHOULD have them but I've never played through them all.

[minilogoguy18]

Well, glamerge doesn't like my file since it has more bones than the JA _humanoid.gla so either I remove some of the bones or attempt to recompile the _humanoid.gla file using the source files which for the most part has all the missing bones with animations while some here or there don't so some fixing needs to be done.

 

Thinking of using MOTOR to transfer each sequence to a root pose skeleton and try to have all the _humanoid animations in a single SI scene file.

[ChalklYne]

maybe try to add the toot.xsi into the assimilate instead of the _humanoid.gla and check the *makes own skele* path. ive used this to surpass the _humanoid problems in the past. the u should still have a .gla file and maybe glamerge will like that one?

 

*edit root.xsi lol not toot lmao. it was so cool i just left it there. rofl... i can haz yer toot.xsi?

[minilogoguy18]

It compiles but will not merge with the rest of the animations. Will either have to remove the rest of the bones or recompile all animations, as simple as that.

[minilogoguy18]

OK, coming back to this after messing with some models and working on the _humanoid bank recompile (which is about to put through a beta test) I rebuilt this rig in Mod Tool 7.5 since there was no way to transfer it from 2013 and at this point it actually suprasses the one from 2013.

 

Right now all it really needs is some constraints for the face and some synoptic views for the face/hands are planned (buttons that can switch hand poses from relaxed, open closed with sliders for finger curl) so it's getting very close.

 

Within the next few days It'll be far enough along to do a test, I imported the 52 bone skeleton that JA uses by default and have constrained it to this skeleton/rig, so even though the bone count isn't the same since they're stored under different Models it allows usage of the same names and I can just animated the rig, branch select model_root from the 52 bone skeleton and export, although the nulls wont be keyframed the animations will get plotted on export. I also added some sabers, these are actually the control objects for the lhang and rhang_tag_bone(s) so that you can animate saber moves and actually see in softimage how they should turn out, you'll animate the saber models themselves and the animations will be plotted to the proper bones on export. Will add staff saber as well tomorrow.

 

 

 

 

Hopefully tomorrow I can compile a simple animation, I'll add a clip (google clips in Softimage) that will contain the root pose that can be added to the beginning of your animation when finished so that the glamerge program will accept and merge it with the _humanoid.gla.

 

EDIT: Huge success, managed to get just the base pose of the rig in game with no errors. Will now work on something more complex to be 100% certain this works, a new run w/saber perhaps?

 

 

 

 

After that a video tutorial showing how I did it should follow after whatever new animation I make with this. This pose took mere minutes btw, very fast and efficient workflow.

[Stoiss]

Mini do you plan to release this mod with everything in it combind so does who would like to try this out don't need to dl alot of files to useing it for jka ?

i think it look's very good your work here and would like to try this out some time when it is ready as i think dragon was some werid stuff to be working with

[minilogoguy18]

I'm about ready for a beta release, was just going to make a new run w/staff animation so that I could make a tutorial on how to use it. I wont show you how to animate in Softimage itself since that info can be found anywhere but just show how to get your animation in game. I did a simple stance to test and it worked, just want to be 100% by doing something a little more difficult. I also need to make a couple more face controllers.

 

It should be out VERY soon, already started work on the run animation and the process from Softimage>game is pretty quick and simple, some things are the same as Dragon as far as the ROOT pose being the first frame and using GLAMerge.