minilogoguy18

Ok, so I'm kinda tired of Assimilate and how it generates an empty animation.cfg file every time I compile say my AT-ST model so I'm wondering if anywhere in the software you can tell it to write a proper file and have that saved in the .car file? @@eezstreet @@DT85 maybe you guys know?

^We're talking about JK2, not JA, there is a very different vehicle for the JK2 SP campaign since it lets you toggle between it's weapons.

I was just not sure, only did a quick look into the assets. I guess I'll truly find out tomorrow maybe when I beat the Doom Shields and Yavin Swamp 1 levels.

@@eezstreet Are you sure? Looking in the JK2 assets I only see 1 .glm and .gla for the AT-ST, I've been testing it in the JK2 SP game but haven't gotten to the Yavin Swamp levels yet to try out the SP vehicle. As far as NPC in SP goes it works fine in both games. Haven't had much testing as a vehicle though, just uses the base games .veh files.

Well it originally wasn't going to be released outside of the mod but since it would be a great replacement over the base model I figured why not. My main testing has been done in JK2 SP though as a fightable NPC which it works flawlessly, I should probably test it in JAMP as a vehicle.

Actually yes, I made both turning animations, just need to make a pain animation or 2 which should be quick then it's done. Made the 2 turning animations over the past few days and have them stored as action sources in the animation mixer along with all the other sequences. Made it this way so that the Mixer can be opened and you'll see all the sequences named as they will be in the animation.cfg file. I was gonna just surprise release this probably tomorrow but since you asked I figured I'd let you know. @@AshuraDX, since we're on opposite sides of the planet making catching you on steam chat difficult could I maybe send you the finished pk3 and you could maybe make it rend2 ready? I thought I had all the files needed but I guess I don't, I also don't have a way to test since I don't have OpenJK or Rend2.

The thing is that most coders don't seem to have an interest in the art tools like ModView. Emulating a shader in the 3d packages would be good enough for most, other than I guess the guys that are only doing texture edits.

I thought about making one just because the animation part would be a new challenge for me, the old AT-AT model isn't even hosted here on jkhub.

^No, I'm not. I'm just making a tool for making your own animations easily for Jedi Outcast, not converting anything.

^This, I mentioned it in my first post in this thread, you must have read over that.

Yeah, maybe tomorrow since the rain will keep me stuck inside all day I might dabble with it but last time I tried it in Softimage it didn't work so well. Once made though the shader could be shared so that anyone could load it and just plug the image files into the correct slots to see their model with shaders applied.

A realtime shader setup is what you'd use in Softimage, at least if you wanted to see it actively in the viewport, the settings would probably take time to set up to mimic JA, you'd probably use a OpenGL shader tree. I haven't messed with it very much, I tend to just keep my view set to Textured Decal since it's accurate to what a model with no shader applied looks like in Modview but I tend to just load the game to see the results.

Not that big a deal, the problem with GMax is that it's so horribly out dated that it's pointless to even use anymore. The reason though I made this in Mod Tool because it's by leaps and bounds the best freeware to use for JA, you don't even need to open your wallet to mod this game.

I think what I'm going to do for now at least is just update the current file without JK2 support and add that as I go.

Oh, well I'm not interested in that sort of thing, a group of people would have to beg me to take the time to do that. The only mod I'd dedicate any time to is DF2 since it requires the least engine changes making it much more likely to succeed if it had a team willing to work on it.

What do you mean? This is not a .gla file and Softimage cannot use .cfg files. It will be possible to export and create animations for both games but your question doesn't make sense.

@@Archangel35757, I figured but didn't know if whatever drives the facial expressions in game were already supported by some chunk of unused code or not. Well since all the people who voted so far even though it isn't an amazing amount seem to want the JO skeleton to be added to the file I've started doing so. The next release will include Revised look of face controlsImproved hand controls with forearm twisting using expressionsJK2 support including additional controls for the fingers and faceIf anyone wants to try out what I have at the moment just let me know since the hand controls alone make it superior to what's currently available for download. As for anyone wanting to do complex facial stuff for cut scenes that may have to wait. I would highly recommend that a custom setup be used in Face Robot with the model that will be used in the cut scene weighed to the custom rig and exported with it. Cut scene animations do not need a skeleton that matches what the game uses so you actually have unlimited freedom with that, only downside is that only the models weighed to it will work and will have to be their own file separate from what is played as in the game.

That sounds like code changes, I want to make something that will stay usable with the vanilla engine as that will make it usable across all platforms. Since shape animation doesn't seem possible I'll just add a bunch of different poses to the animation mixer so that they can be copied and layered around into whatever someone wants. That will be a totally different file than what's in this topic and only if the interest is even there, I don't have time to waste on something that might not get used.

I fixed the eye controls, in JA the leye and reye bones are used to control the eye lids where in JO they were used for the eye balls where the top and bottom eye lids had their own bones. I thought about making some face controls but with how limited the _humanoid bone set is I realize now it would actually be best to use a custom skeleton or even the JO one for cut scenes since cut scenes use their own .gla files and don't have to match what's used in MP. You would of course need to weigh a dedicated model to that skeleton but your end result would be far better. Here would be an example of what I would do say if I needed to to some facial animation since shape animation would be best but JA doesn't support it so my next choice would be something like Face Robot. The workflow seems so easy and straight forward. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJzXRkIOEZ8 @@Archangel35757, weren't you working on some sort of shape animation system for JA or something like that?

Of course, watch the video in the tutorials section in my sig. You can load the animation either before merging with the _humanoid.gla or after. If you view it before you'll just see the dummy mesh which will be a bunch of small cubes. If you do it after you'll just have to add your animation to the animation.cfg file so that it loads with whatever player model you load in modview. People shouldn't be intimidated by character animation for this game anymore, I've literally made it so easy that first timers are getting animations in game, wish some of them would post their stuff on here but they're all people who are on like ModDB making stuff for whatever conversion they're doing. I'm helping someone through PM as we speak who's making cutscene animations, they had a simple problem. I tend to get these people every so often that sign up here and PM me about this. On a side note: I started playing around with the AT-ST again, I may release the scene file for it as a learning tool on rig construction as it has some advanced expressions driving 1 of the mechanical joints in the legs as well as a reverse foot (dog leg) setup.

@@DT85 It will be 1 file, like you animate the rig as before and just middle click which model_root you want to export, JA or JO one. It's a shadow rig, the bones that move the Kyle model are not the bones that get exported, the skeleton that gets exported is a null one similar to what gets used for character weighing. It has it's own "dummy" mesh that's just a bunch of cubes since bones that have no weights are left out at compile. If no ones modding JO in such a manner though I'll just leave it as is unless maybe some mods out there plan to add the bones back into JA since I know that's been discussed before.

Wouldn't be hard, just don't know if anyone would actually use it.

^No big deal, leaps and bounds of progress have been made since. OK, I added a poll for anyone who might care, I could add the JK2 skeleton to the file so that it works for both games. Is anyone interested in even modding JK2?

OK, I'm bringing this back from the dead. I tend to either get Google+ messages or PM's on this site about certain things on either tips on it's usage or someone managed to break the rig so I'm working on this again and going to try to get it to the point in which I feel like it should no longer be a BETA in the download's name. So far I've reworked the face controllers to be a bit more appealing, fixed the roll division controllers and fixed the hand controllers. The roll division and hand controllers seemed to only work as I wanted if constraint compensation was on, which should only be used out of desperation as it can break the rig and cause certain constraints to act oddly. Before I update the file again I'm going to test some options on even further automating the rig so that you can just simply rotate the hand controller and the arm will twist realistically without the need to use the arm's up vector constraints since they should only be used to keep the elbow from moving in unnatural ways. Not sure of how many on here are willing but it'd be nice if someone took the time to do their best to break the rig so I can find any problems.

I recommend PakScape as well, so simple and straight forward for PK3 files. Later down the road you may want to dabble with a bit of 3d modeling in a 3d package of your choice, a lot of the smaller detailed parts of maps are models that are imported into Radiant using the .ASE and .MD3 file formats. Mapping takes a bit of time to learn, as well as some other aspects of modding so take your time, have patience.