Archangel35757

Hey just for fun would you post a pic with all the facial bones overlaying your head?

How will the facial bones drive this? Just weight to a select few?

Then maybe I can understand it. Which c++ files govern the in-game facial animations that get played when a sound plays on VOICE Channel?

@@eezstreet -- there are a number of scripts, tools, and plugins that do this inside 3dsMax. We can make a "mouth area" animation for all of the standard visemes (see http://aidreams.co.uk/forum/index.php?page=Visemes_-_for_Character_Animation ) and map the phonemes to the visemes. Doesn't the game already do this? But it only uses a few visemes? As for facial expressions to go along with speech... that's pretty complicated. Perhaps we could modify the ROFF system code and existing game lip-sync code to achieve all of the above. ROFF files can already process and use sound files. And we could add a new notetrack type called "expression" and then you would place expression notetrack keys along the sound file animation inside 3dsMax or Blender to play the facial expressions. Then in-game you'd check for facial expressions in the ROFF and play the facial expression animation as the sound plays. Only thing now is that ROFF sounds only play on CHANNEL BODY so that would need a slight modification to play on VOICE channel. What do you guys think of that?

I like this last idea of a complex bone face rig... I was planning to do just that. We can create a complete library of visemes to be used with the lip-synch autoformatting the visemes to the sound file. What about modifying/using the lip-sync code from the game? We would need to have a facial pose library for facial expressions that the user would need to manually set against the soundtrack.

@@DT85 -- you asked for a ROFF tutorial so I dug this up from my old computer... Perhaps also check the web link on the Internet Wayback Machine.

But you can read C++ code... no?

@@mrwonko and/or @@eezstreet and/or @@Xycaleth -- I've quickly taken a look at the cg_camera.h and cg_camera.cpp files in the cgame folder to investigate the camera ROFF noteTrack properties therein. It seems to me that this code and the ROFF callbacks somehow automatically appends the camera ROFF noteTracks to an existing ROFF file... rather than being a noteTrack that a user would create inside 3ds Max (or Blender) like an "effect" or "sound" notetrack. Am I seeing this correctly? So I'm asking if Camera ROFF notetracks are automatically handled by the game's code and whatever normal Icarus camera scripting one would do? Should my 3ds Max ROFF exporter be able to create and export camera notetracks as well??? Or would this conflict with what this game code is doing? Thanks! :unsure:

Ok... so I'm trying to verify the actual format for the noteTracks that can be used in ROFF files. Basically, in 3ds Max you use the NoteTrack feature to add sound and effects files to your ROFF. Sounds always play on CHAN_BODY. An example of what you would enter into the NoteTrack is shown below: "sound sound/world/drone6.wav" And for an efx notetrack you would enter: "effect effects/explosion1.efx 0+0+64 0-0-1" My understanding of the 0+0+64 represents an offset from the object's origin of where you want the effect to originate on the object and the 0-0-1 is a unit vector relative to the object for the direction you want the effect to play... in the above example this explosion will be offset 64 units in the z-axis and is directed along the z-axis unit vector. @@mrwonko has pointed me to the cgame camera files that deal with ROFF Note Tracks For animating a camera along a ROFF defined path. So I am studying those now.

Update: So I started writing the meat of the ROFF exporter code today. Hope to have more of an update soon.

Try SimCloth3 v1.84 for 3dsMax 8 from Chaos Group (search for it on maxplugins.de)... better yet, here is the direct download link: http://www.spot3d.com/simcloth/files/simcloth3.rar They also made a "cloth mesh" object (ClothMesh v3.0) to use with it... get it here: http://www.spot3d.com/simcloth/files/SimCloth_2.53_for_3dsmax_R6R7.zip The source code for the plugin is here: http://www.spot3d.com/simcloth/download.html Note: All of these links are on maxplugins.de One question/concern I have is... how might this cloth object impact the bounding box of the player? What if you do a spin move near a wall or crate object, etc. and your cape collides with it?

What 3dsMax Cloth plugin are you using?

Sorry... it'll be a week or so before I can get to this.

Good to hear the file is created successfully ...yes, the progress window hanging/not-closing is a known bug.

@@DT85 -- you're using the max2010 32bit exporter?

@@DT85 -- so is the exporter still churning out your total GLA? Did it finish?

@@DT85 -- Got anything to show us?

@@Asgarath83 -- Max5 is better than nothing ...so you can't import any files that are XSI v3.5 using 3dsMax5... perhaps that is why the one animation failed for you.

@@Asgarath83 -- What version of 3dsMax do you use?

Blender supports FBX import: http://www.blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?304646-FBX-importer-included-in-blender-ready-for-testing

If the handplate is weighted properly in Max... and exports properly via XSI to Carcass then there must be some transformations in the FBX converter that are not being applied to it. You should not have to re-weight it differently in 3dsMax. @@DT85 Please post a pic from Blender to Ghoul2.

Well IMO the FBX file should always be exported at 100%. For the case when we want to create a new GLA... (e.g., a new creature or vehicle) your converter will have to provide us with a scale option-- so we can set it to 0.64

Is there no scale option directly from the 3dsMax FBX export dialog you can use?

@@DT85 ...to address @@Xycaleth 's ravenism... use wonko's blender script to Ghoul2 to see if it has the same issues.