Archangel35757

I will ask Gummelt... but specifically-- the only other things we're missing are: ShaderED, EffectsED, BehaveED?

@@DT85, @@minilogoguy18, @@Xycaleth, @@eezstreet, @@Raz0r: GREAT NEWS!!! Raven is going to release the Carcass.exe source code to us!!! I said I would await their next response...

Yes, that is certainly one way to do it... and I will create an example of that method in 3ds Max by animating a texture map. And I also just thought of a way to do this by using only one (ah, ah, ah...) bone. (Did anyone catch my Sesame St. ref to "The Count"?) I'll post example videos of each method.

Would you be willing to make a video that clearly shows this carcass jitter issue best-- so that we can send it to Mike Gummelt to pass on to Ste Cork and James Monroe? Maybe that would motivate them to dig up the source code...

Thanks for the clarification But have you seen this in the engine? Or only in MODView?

Not sure... we'd just have to try it out in-game... but they wouldn't be used during gameplay-- the pupils would be set to a normal position. I will animate an eyeball both ways-- one with bones and another by texture (in 3ds max only).

I wasn't intending to use scale animation... my method will work.

@@minilogoguy18-- Are you talking about looking at your XSI file in Softimage? Or are you looking at your resulting AT-RT.gla file in ModView? You have to zoom way-in and slow the animation down to see it. @@DT85 -- Well, I just imported BOTH_WIND.xsi into 3ds Max 8 and I can't see the jitter in the left hand bones that I saw when viewing it in ModView-- could this be just a looping bias issue internal to ModView (i.e., are we chasing a ModView Ghost)? Or has this been confirmed inside of the game-engine?

@@DT85, @@minilogoguy18, @@Xycaleth, @@eezstreet: Let's move the discussion from DT's status thread to this thread if that's ok with everyone... I just looked at the Luke model with the default _humanoid.gla (looping the BOTH_WIND animation) and when you zoom in and play the animation slow... the bone jitter becomes quite evident. It's more prevelant at the end of bone chains (i.e., the fingers) which makes sense, since the errors would accumulate down the hierarchy... the other name that Gummelt dropped to me was Gil Gribb (the main programmer behind Ghoul2 according to Gummelt) who now works at epic games. I wrote him and he replied (cc'ing Gummelt) as follows: I noticed that "BOTH_WIND" is a version dotXSI 3.5 file... @@DT85, can you find a good example of this jitter in a 3.0 file? I'd like to verify that this jitter is not present in the officially released dotXSI animation assets. As an aside... it also appears to be present in the SoF2 GLA (when viewed in ModView-- looking at the "pistolstandaim01" animation).

Huh? Who's Credibility? what? I'm consfused...

@@Sithani -- if you're referring to that thin gap between her lips then that is just temporary-- and I will fix it after I have collapsed the Symmetry Modifier.

So I wrote an email to Gummelt... he responded immediately stating he forwarded my email to the "Tools" programmers-- Ste Cork and James Monroe (have not heard from them)... he also gave me another name to track down.

In the front reference photo she is smiling slightly-- pulling the corners of her mouth back. In the reference side photo her mouth is completely relaxed. So I chose to follow it rather than front pic. Also, when I mirrored the front pic for symmetry it also distorted her upper lip in the middle. Try this: Look in a mirror... completely relax your face/mouth-- then tell me that your mouth/lips also have a slight downward curve, yeah?

Edit: I prefer that the animator have direct control of pupil dilation in the skeleton rig and simply have a default eye pupil dilation animation in the _humanoid.gla. Then in cutscene GLA's, they can quickly animate the eyes (not breaking their workflow) however they choose-- and not force them to learn Icarus scripting to deal with eye details externally in the game engine. I'll post an animation of my prototype setup.

Thanks @@KENNITHH -- I'll download it when I get home from work today.

Not sure if carcass would like scaling bones (even if linear)... guess we could do a test My idea was to make the Iris inner radius as 8 sided and use 8 helpers at the vertices to contract or expand the Iris revealing the curved pupil underneath. I have this prototyped... and have made a test animation in 3ds Max.

So here's the latest update (some vertices still need to be properly placed... or edges turned...):

Ah it was Gummelt I was exchanging emails with... but he stopped responding (I don't see the harm in asking)... I'll send him an email "in-the-blind" tomorrow.

I thought that ModView had a feature to write out/create the animation.cfg file... am I wrong?

Yeah I saw that sometime back... when I loaded up the SoF2 GLA in ModView. It seems pretty crude... there are about 44 phonemes in the English language (varies by region and dialect) and they can be represented by about 20 visemes (...away from my PC right now so I can't recall the exact number) that I intend to create in the face rig. I think eye blinking should be treated separately from mouth visemes-- I think eye blinking should be in the facial expressions group (FACE_BLINK, FACE_WINK_R, FACE_WINK_L, etc.)-- or, create a separate "EYES_" group. One thing I was thinking of was to be able to have the pupils dilate for close-up facial animations (they would be fixed/set to normal during gameplay-- but the feature would be there for close-up cinematics)... the eyes are what bring's a character to life in my opinion.

I think we should bring the SoF2 GLA ( Or a derivative thereof...) into JKO/JKA as a new NPC-type for troopers/soldiers... maybe I'll undertake this task when I get more time and finish my priority projects.

Those hit textures are hitmaps used by the engine to register where they've taken damage and play corresponding animations-- stumble, limp, etc. (As I understand it) @@KENNITHH -- Are those standard poses in the SoF2 GLA? Or custom by you?

In regards the the red/strong stance-- I tend to think of this as how Luke fought in much of the ESB and in the throne room in ROTJ-- like swinging a broadsword in the age of Crusades. To me Red seems more "brutish" and less skilled (compared to the prequels). I think it is a bit slow... EDIT: The "power-swings" should be faster (accelerate more-- very similar to swinging a baseball bat). It's the recovery back to a neutral-ready pose that should recover more slowly initially (because you've over-extended) and then begin to accelerate the recovery back to ready pose-- it's at the end of your swing when you should be most vulnerable... again, because you have over extended and leave yourself open-- much like throwing heavy, strong punches in a boxing match.

He's on #jacoders all the time.