Archangel35757

There is an MD3 exporter Script (i.e. MAXScript) that should work in Max9. And there's also this: http://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=539453 http://www.quakeunity.com/file=481

@@Psyk0Sith Let us know how it goes-- if you get your MD3 bolted onto the character... I suppose you can use MD3View to view your per-Vertex animations. Perhaps your MD3 animated frame numbers need to be in synch with the .GLA ???

Maybe you could give it a try... Maybe it will work.

What were you trying to do? Has anyone ever attempted to bolt on an animated MD3 model (... of say a cape for example)? Seems like it's doable. Wonder how you'd have the animated MD3 play different anims based on what the character is doing?

What I think you are referring to would be considered Vertex Animated objects... I believe animated MD3 models are vertex animated objects [http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/MD3_(file_format)]. The Ghoul2 Characters are bone-driven deformation animation. So maybe you could try that with the MD3 model format.

Adding a completely new NPC like IG-88 (or creature like a Gundark) and how to customize an NPC behavior class derived from existing class (e.g. use Boba Fett for IG-88?) Also how to add his custom GLA animation file into the game.

You are mistaken. While the current 3dsMax exporter does have some minor deviations out in the 5th or 6th decimal place... they are insignificant and within the allowed tolerance such that the -ignorebasedeviations switch is not required. (Except in the very beginning before the 1st beta release) in all of my test compiles I have not used it.

One thing to remember about importing your .gla file into Blender is that (I think) you'll end up with a key on every frame for each bone-- so you may be introducing .gla compression artifacts into the animation due to the .gla half-precision format. My recommendation is, whether in Blender or after you import an FBX file into 3dsMax or Softimage, delete the keys on the bones between major poses so that the "in-betweens" are governed by the controllers. This should remove any .gla compression artifacts.

Yes. Look here: http://jkhub.org/files/category/1-utilities/

If Dragon saves the animations as a Ghoul2 .gla file, then you can import the .gla into Blender using Mr. Wonko's Blender tools. Once in Blender you can convert it to .FBX and bring it into 3ds Max or Softimage Mod Tool (or just continue to work in Blender).

Good news... care to elaborate for the edification of others?

Just use all of the JO facial bones only... they should be more than sufficient for hi-def facial animations anyway.

This doesn't make sense... don't the original facial talking animations have both position and rotation animation data? Would you post a picture of your facial hierarchy showing the constraints?

My "face_always_" dummy helper is Position & Orient constrained to the bip01_head object-- not linked... Position & Orientation Constraints won't break your JO Null linked hierarchy. Isn't this what you are doing? It should still work if you have "face_always_" linked to the JO Cranium null and the Cranium null constrained to the Biped head. Is that how you have it?

This is strange... because the fix I did for @@AshuraDX enabled his dummy control objects and Max bones to write out position data-- but he had IK chains linked to them... and that same R1 fixed my "test spine" output. Are you using any special controllers or just the standard PRS controller? I've looked at the code and cannot find why it would fail to write out position data for a dummy helper. I need to study this further and find the root cause rather than putting a band-aid on it. :-\

@@DT85 Are they biped objects, dummy or point helpers, or Max bones? Please do the following troubleshooting (independently): 1. Test/animate a standalone dummy/point helper in both position/rotation with a primitive linked to them so you can view the animation output in the XSI Viewer. 2. Repeat above for a dummy helper but turn on the bone property in the object properties dialog. 3. Animate a simple two-link bone chain animating the bone nub in position and the others in rotation, as well as the root bone in position. Export bones as geometry and view results in XSI Viewer. Try both the R2 and previous R1 plugins. "writeBipedPosData" should only be used on Biped Xtra Objects. Post your results. Edit: How are these nulls tied into your hierarchy?

Maybe see if they import properly in Max5 (if they're 3.0) or Blender or Milkshape. There is no importer code available for 3dsMax. I have importer code for Milkshape that I was going to try to convert for 3dsMax.

@@DT85 Does the new Beta R2 exporter work for your Biped Xtra Objects?

@@DT85 -- Sorry for the delay... Just create your User Defined Property for each of the Biped Xtra Objects as given: writeBipedPosData = true The new logic should catch this user defined property and export out the position transforms. Please post your results. Thanks!

Yes, I know... but sometimes it is useful to see examples of how others implemented cloth. The Open Dynamic Engine does have the ability for cloth... as it does have a spring-mass system; however, the ODE would need modification to add proper cloth buckling (see the papers I posted on my github request).

It's just solving a system of equations... only these equations are based on mass-spring physics using particles (i.e., vertices) -- with a special spring setup for buckling. See the papers I posted on my github request. Seems like it's just a special mathlib to me. Cloth code examples: http://code.google.com/p/opencloth/ http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/simulating-cloth-for-3d-games

So what's the difference in an "engine" versus a library that would contain the cloth physics calculations? Or even a class method?

I was thinking this cloth Shader and cloth physics would work would work similarly to how some current shaders deform world objects but on the character instead... (like the Shader that makes a wavy flag motion). Couldn't the cloth physics be handled by a new cloth object class methods? Maybe one method could generate those elliptical hulls (see the paper I posted on github) for the charactner to use in player collision detection if the low-level LOD/Ghoul2 is not efficient enough? @@eezstreet - The open dynamics engine does have a spring-mass system but it won't yield good cloth buckling. I read a thesis where ODE was used to simulate rope pretty well. I imagine that ODE could be modified to include the immediate cloth buckling method. See the github papers I posted.

One of the papers I referenced talked about simple elliptical hulls... but we could also use a low-level LOD. Could also use LODs for the cloth mesh as well... even have cloth turn off collision detection when NPCs are at a certain LOD (i.e. a good distance away from player)-- mesh would just keep its root pose if cloth was turned off??? I'm sure we could think of solutions.

I don't think its thousands of hours to implement cloth.