Archangel35757

I see your point, but I'm just thinking beyond your JK:Enhanced... This could be useful for future endeavors involving other species that used the humanoid skeleton: Malastarians, Ongree, Ithorians, etc.

If you're speaking in general terms of aliens versus humanoids... I would think yes. But I think we'd need to have a unique alienXX_lipsync.gla for each race. If you're meaning variations within a single species (human or aliens)-- I believe that could quickly get out of hand...

Do the base aliens blink their eyes (e.g., Malastare characters?), etc. If you're going for better facial animations, and Hi-Def, then you should allow this method to work for alien creatures as well-- IMHO.

In 3dsMax it'd be the JK2 skeleton(?) But it might be better to keep lipsync facial skeletons as separate 3dsMax files and only reference in the lipsync head/face you need based on a selection menu of head types (I.e., humanoid or alien races...) Maybe @@Psyk0Sith will let me rig his custom Ongree head to better show what I mean in my WIP thread.

But I believe we would need the head bone to be included in the lipsync.gla because the outer vertices on the face need to be weighted 100% to the head bone. So the head bone would be common to both the lipsync.GLA and legacy _humanoid.GLA (but you would not be touching/modifying it-- only getting head bone transform matrix to drive the lipsync.GLA. ...and you could do similarly for a cloak.GLA.

In my last suggestion you wouldn't touch or merge anything with the _humanoid.gla. You'd only need the transform matrix of the _humanoid head bone from the _humanoid.gla.. to put the lipsync.gla in the proper model space. Inside 3dsMax however this could still be one rigged skeleton file. You would simply do an "Export-Selected" and export out only the head and face helper bone and all of the facial bones (with prefix on bone name so as not to conflict with legacy face bones). Then compile these 84+ animations (combinations of 14 visemes and 6 facial expressions) into its own GLA. So then you would be using the legacy _humanoid.gla for the body and the new lipsync.gla for new facial animations, no? In like manner you could have a separate cloak.GLA for capes, cloaks, robes...

@@eezstreet -- one attractive benifit of having a separate facial GLA would be the ability to make better alien facial animations-- since many aliens don't conform well to the _humanoid facial bones... but I believe we'd still have to have independent MOUTH and FACE groups for the reason I already stated above. Not to mention that most aliens will likely have different visemes/expressions. Pursuing your original idea... you could use the face helper bone, that is co-located with the _humanoid head bone, as the main root node for a separate facial skeleton/GLA. Then, in simple terms, I believe all you would need to do is multiply the face helper bone transform matrix by the head bone transform matrix (so face follows the head/body).

I think I can handle it as well... I will begin working on my facial rig and GUI in 3dsMax and start a WIP thread for it. It will include a pose library for existing FACE_*** animations (for backwards compatibility) and at least the 14 primary visemes. It will also include a pose library for the 6 primary facial expressions: joy, sadness, anger, fear, disgust, surprise. Hmmm... @@eezstreet, to blend the different visemes and facial expressions-- may need to create a MOUTH group to play the new Visemes on top of the expressions targeting the FACE group. Legacy animations would play on the FACE group. Otherwise, we'd have to make anims for all mouth/facial expression combinations...

... the SoF2 facial bones are already in the root.xsi file... it's just that nothing is weighted to them... so it is like DT said-- create all the new Viseme animations ( even add more bones if necessary) and recompile the GLA.

TORSO anims only play on the bones in the TORSO group, while LEGS animations play on the LEGS group-- this is how they do strafing and other TORSO/LEGS combinations, if I'm not mistaken ...meanwhile the FACE group can be playing facial animations... I could be wrong, but I thought there's a lot of setup for this in/via Assimilate. IMO the additional SoF2 bones should be sufficient... I will start on my facial rig so you can see what it can achieve... but it seems your plan can work on a new GLA that has all the current bones & perhaps a few more. I guess I'm not grasping your need for a second facial GLA when it can reside in the one current /expanded GLA with new facial bones & facial anims (the extra SoF2 facial bones are already in the root model).

I will probably need to re-read what you wrote... but in essence don't we already have a split skeleton in the GLA-- it's already broken down into bone hierarchy subgroups: FACE, TORSO, LEGS, BOTH (meaning torso and legs). Facial animations only play on the facial bones, while the torso or body (I.e., BOTH) can be playing other anims, no? So wouldn't it be the same as creating all of the viseme animations and adding them to the current GLA as: FACE_ah, FACE_xx, etc.? Likewise you could make gesture animations that only target the TORSO, etc. So, couldn't we script different combos on the different groups?

Exactly -- Not sure what your plan is... guess we won't be finding out anytime soon; but I plan to use all of the facial bones that are there in the skeleton I uploaded. They should be more than sufficient -- unless one wants additional detail for the tongue for some of the phoneme/viseme combinations. My rig will store a library of visemes to choose from/play for the phonemes when the voice audio is analyzed. I was planning to export these as additional facial animations to be merged with the GLA. I hope what I'm planning can fit in with your plan as well.

Count me in with regards to better lip-synching and rigging... I intend (once I get finished with the Max2013/2014 dotXSI exporter) to get back to my advanced character rig setup in 3ds Max... and my plan is to use ALL of the facial bones (JO/JA/SoF2) that are there in the released skeleton-- maybe add a few more for the tongue as well. I also found some lip-synching code that might interest you. I was also thinking we need to add in more facial animations to the .GLA for all (or the most common set) of the phonemes/visemes.

Smoothing Groups is 3dsMax nomenclature (perhaps other 3D software too)-- the dotXSI exporter dialog says it ignores smoothing groups when exporting vertex normals. I thought Carcass ignored smoothing group info anyway... or made it's own smoothing groups when converting to Ghoul2, no?

Because that is what the exporter option says when you select Vertex as the Normals type. @@DT85 -- Did you ever try the "Remap UVs" option?

The per-vertex normals option ignores smoothing groups... does that matter?

I'm not too sure if the dotXSI format directly supports normal mapping... as far as the dotXSI 3.0 Exporter that I've been re-developing based on the original Softimage Co. open source code... their original FAQ states the exporter code supports the following features: ...and in my code changes I have added exporting of procedural animations (i.e., constraints). Perhaps @@minilogoguy18 or @@Corto would be kind enough to try and export out a simple Softimage model containing normal mapping and export out as dotXSI 3.0 and send me the file (or post it) to look at.

I've isolated where it's crashing... hope to have it resolved very soon.

The Debugging session shows that it is crashing when it gets to the line of exporting the scene nodes, in method CdotXSIMapper::Export( ) here: // // Recursively export // ExportNode ( l_pRootNode, m_pParser->dotXSITemplate() );...stepping into the function to follow the rabbit trail. :unsure:

@@AshuraDX -- Let me test the x64 version.. and if it works then give me a few minutes to compile a 32-bit version. Nope... No Go. I get an error after the progress bar launches at: Converting Scene... [Exporting Animation]

@@DT85 -- Perhaps the reason it's crashing on you is that it is compiled against Crosswalk 2013... which doesn't support Max2014. In the morning I will test it on Max2013... and post my results.

What makes you think the tangent space in the Carcass GLM file is bad? Is the GLM file different from Blender or FBX Converter? I agree the renderer would be best solution.

I have max 2013 installed... I just don't have time to check it out today... still-- the fact that it compiles is HUGE!!! At least now I can compile a hybrid version and run a debug session to see where it is crashing.

UPDATE: I GOT THE MAX2013 EXPORTER TO COMPILE!!!!!! I'm going to email it to @@DT85 and get him to beta test it.

IIRC, Basically it's another texture with an alpha channel that you could blend with your main texture using a shader blending function.