Went away for a few days on a much needed break - but back in the saddle again.
Been a frustrating day - discovered an issue with using referenced animation/rigs in maya, the issue being i couldnt get them to work. Which is a *bit* of a problem.
Slightly clunky workaround involved copying/pasting the animation from one file to another...definitely not ideal, but if that is the worst case scenario at least i can get things into the game
like this!
so still lots to do - mainly on the animation side, and a youtube video edit of some sort...best get on with it
Courier's looking great pixelherder. To get the referenced animations working ingame you need to make sure all the bone names are matching.
Either change you reference settings so it doesn't alter any bone names, or just rename the bones before export (easy in max, not sure about maya's rename tools).
Courier's looking great pixelherder. To get the referenced animations working ingame you need to make sure all the bone names are matching.
Either change you reference settings so it doesn't alter any bone names, or just rename the bones before export (easy in max, not sure about maya's rename tools).
thanks to you too! yeah, i thought it was something like that, but couldnt make *ANY* progress on it fixing it
- tried using maya's namespace editor, merging in the referenced file...yadda yadda, nothings worked so far.
Not being a technical, or any sort of animator i'll have to wait till i can ask a couple of friends.
I imagine it'll probably be sorted out pretty quickly then!
I really like your courier. I'm currently working on 1 and met some problem.=(
May i ask you a question regrading the attachment point needed for the courier. What is attachment point ? Hope you could show me some reference show you solve the attachment point problem.
in short there's no "attachment points" that i'm aware of - the courier is made from scratch. I've got a link a maya anim file if thats any use
Unfortunately its a bit messy - i'm not a rigger/tech artist, so things are very rough and untidy
I really like your courier. I'm currently working on 1 and met some problem.=(
May i ask you a question regrading the attachment point needed for the courier. What is attachment point ? Hope you could show me some reference show you solve the attachment point problem.
Things went a bit quiet after submitting our courier, so decided to take a bit of break - until recently getting some feedback that asked for some changes
The problem is, we keep running into a recurring issue with the blade rotation. No matter what we do, we always end up with a slight but noticeable jitter/stutter when it loops, when in-game. (just on the blades though, everything else is smooth and loops fine)
No idea if its something to do with
- the rig
- the animation (?)
- the fbx exporter
- something in the dota 2 engine that doesnt like things rotating!
(although gyrocopter seems to work fine)
Also!
- We've tried rotating the blades at slower and faster speeds - neither makes a difference
- In game everything else works, and loops nicely.
- exporting with and without baking the animation in maya first. Made no difference.
Just some random thoughts, maybe you should try it out see if that changes anything.
. Include frame 65 in your fbx export. When I tried to remove the last frame of my run animation to have something that loops perfectly, that's when I noticed some hicup in my cycle. Not sure if I was hallucinating, but who knows, maybe the importer removes the last frame of looping animations by default, so that you can work more easily in Maya, with your first and last frame being the same? Conspirationist speculation haha.
Again I don't know what I'm talking about just making some random suggestions:P
-bake your keys to remove all your rig when it's done. Make sure you don't have anything else than your joints and game mesh when exporting. No constraints, no empty groups, same hierarchy than your skinned file. Once your animation is baked, see if you need to rebake through the fbx options, or not. Try with both options on or off see if there is a difference.
-you said you tried different rotation speed so I guess this would be useless, but if you try to make a 5 frames idle just for test, and make a 360 rotation during these 5 frames? Just to see if a large value in rotation Y (5760) like you have right now is posing any problem.
I checked your curves, seem to be linear to me. I'm just a noob in animation so I hope I don't say stupid stuff.. but if you tried to add more keys outside of your animation range? This way the halves of your first and last keyframe won't be flat but following the rotation curve. Not sure if I am very clear.
What if you tried to add a new key at frame 64, and instead of a high value like 5670, you have the rotation Y value: -90? Or that your entire animation curve would be like mountains, never going over 360?
Frame1: RotateY 0
Frame2: RotateY 90
Frame3: RotateY 180
Frame4: RotateY 270
Frame5: RotateY 0
Frame6: RotateY 90
etc
Well, that's the stuff I would try I guess, but i never seen your problem in game so I don't know if the jitter is random or always of the same ammount.
I hope you find a fix soon coz I love the little MOK! Good luck.
We had the same problem with the propellers on the llama. I think gyro even has some of that going on (they have another effect layered on top to make it less noticeable though).
I think in our case we just had to adjust the timing to get it working nicer. It was rotating a bit fast, causing it to skip frames in-game i think. Make sure you've slowed the rotations down enough to give the game a chance to actually render out the frames needed. (at certain timings it just seems to catch the same section of rotation/animation making it look like its just jittering in place)
I know you said you've tried adjusting the speed, but I wouldn't give up yet!
How are your keyframes set up, how much does the blade rotate between frames? If you have it doing a full or half rotation from one frame, try breaking it up and adding a frame for each quarter turn.
If all else fails, you could decompile gyro and see how his props work or ask valve for some insight on the dev comments or forum.
An ingame video of the problem might be helpful as well.
Just some random thoughts, maybe you should try it out see if that changes anything.
. Include frame 65 in your fbx export. When I tried to remove the last frame of my run animation to have something that loops perfectly, that's when I noticed some hicup in my cycle. Not sure if I was hallucinating, but who knows, maybe the importer removes the last frame of looping animations by default, so that you can work more easily in Maya, with your first and last frame being the same? Conspirationist speculation haha.
Again I don't know what I'm talking about just making some random suggestions:P
-bake your keys to remove all your rig when it's done. Make sure you don't have anything else than your joints and game mesh when exporting. No constraints, no empty groups, same hierarchy than your skinned file. Once your animation is baked, see if you need to rebake through the fbx options, or not. Try with both options on or off see if there is a difference.
-you said you tried different rotation speed so I guess this would be useless, but if you try to make a 5 frames idle just for test, and make a 360 rotation during these 5 frames? Just to see if a large value in rotation Y (5760) like you have right now is posing any problem.
I checked your curves, seem to be linear to me. I'm just a noob in animation so I hope I don't say stupid stuff.. but if you tried to add more keys outside of your animation range? This way the halves of your first and last keyframe won't be flat but following the rotation curve. Not sure if I am very clear.
What if you tried to add a new key at frame 64, and instead of a high value like 5670, you have the rotation Y value: -90? Or that your entire animation curve would be like mountains, never going over 360?
Frame1: RotateY 0
Frame2: RotateY 90
Frame3: RotateY 180
Frame4: RotateY 270
Frame5: RotateY 0
Frame6: RotateY 90
etc
Well, that's the stuff I would try I guess, but i never seen your problem in game so I don't know if the jitter is random or always of the same ammount.
I hope you find a fix soon coz I love the little MOK! Good luck.
thanks a lot for that - really appreciate it!
I've got a few things left to try tonight, but then going to have a talk with the animator and go through all of this with him and see if we can sort things out.
We had the same problem with the propellers on the llama. I think gyro even has some of that going on (they have another effect layered on top to make it less noticeable though).
I think in our case we just had to adjust the timing to get it working nicer. It was rotating a bit fast, causing it to skip frames in-game i think. Make sure you've slowed the rotations down enough to give the game a chance to actually render out the frames needed. (at certain timings it just seems to catch the same section of rotation/animation making it look like its just jittering in place)
I know you said you've tried adjusting the speed, but I wouldn't give up yet!
How are your keyframes set up, how much does the blade rotate between frames? If you have it doing a full or half rotation from one frame, try breaking it up and adding a frame for each quarter turn.
If all else fails, you could decompile gyro and see how his props work or ask valve for some insight on the dev comments or forum.
An ingame video of the problem might be helpful as well.
Ok, i think between your and Goldo's feedback, i've got a really great hit list to tackle.
So over the next couple of days we'll see if it bears any fruit!
Also asked on the dev comments, and uploaded some more of our anim files - it'd be great to get a bit of tech support straight from the source, but i dont know how likely that is!
I'd say give him some satchels to get the whole courier theme going and make his anatomy a bit more teen/adult like so it doesnt look like child labor :P
I'd say give him some satchels to get the whole courier theme going and make his anatomy a bit more teen/adult like so it doesnt look like child labor :P
yeah, satchels will definitely be piled on!
As for proportions, it seems that couriers mostly have to have more cartoonish proportions than normal, so i'm going to go with something a little more along those lines than my last effort!
Sorry, I didn't express myself well enough. What I meant is that right now, I'm getting a 'child' vibe rather than a 'adorable' vibe which is creating a bit of an uncanny valley experience.
Sorry, I didn't express myself well enough. What I meant is that right now, I'm getting a 'child' vibe rather than a 'adorable' vibe which is creating a bit of an uncanny valley experience.
ok, thats a bit different! and a tricky one to define artistically - i'm not rushing into modelling just yet, hopefully going to spend the next few days developing this further, so i'll see what i can do!
hehe that was exactky my thought, you could have strated right from the first sketch, the new one doesn't give any more information needed for the 3d progress, but you're not doing all this just for the sake of efficiency, anyways good job
hehe that was exactky my thought, you could have strated right from the first sketch, the new one doesn't give any more information needed for the 3d progress, but you're not doing all this just for the sake of efficiency, anyways good job
So I suppose the bagpipe horn thingies will be a different object than the rest of the bagpipe so you can easily switch where they are?
exactly! - i'll make the main body of the bagpipe,( with a few different attachment points), and the pipes separately, so i can easily reconfigure things for ground/flying modes
Replies
as youve spotted, its still not quite finished
he will have eyes sooner or later!
he's hopefully going to look even better once he's moving...and tonight i got round to a first pass at skinning
Still a lot to do but excited all the same
[ame="
this was just a test to check out the rig - final anims will be more simian-like (running on knuckles etc.)
[ame="
thanks for the kind words! Not been too much to show recently, i spent a while working on texture + shader tweaks - not very exciting.
Made a start on a promo pic for when i eventually get to submit.
Obviously, very work in progress!
Been a frustrating day - discovered an issue with using referenced animation/rigs in maya, the issue being i couldnt get them to work. Which is a *bit* of a problem.
Slightly clunky workaround involved copying/pasting the animation from one file to another...definitely not ideal, but if that is the worst case scenario at least i can get things into the game
like this!
so still lots to do - mainly on the animation side, and a youtube video edit of some sort...best get on with it
Either change you reference settings so it doesn't alter any bone names, or just rename the bones before export (easy in max, not sure about maya's rename tools).
Mok - Courier (click to view in 3D)
thanks! i think he's getting there at long last!
thanks to you too! yeah, i thought it was something like that, but couldnt make *ANY* progress on it fixing it
- tried using maya's namespace editor, merging in the referenced file...yadda yadda, nothings worked so far.
Not being a technical, or any sort of animator i'll have to wait till i can ask a couple of friends.
I imagine it'll probably be sorted out pretty quickly then!
[ame="
Votes on the workshop would be appreciated too
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=147234127
the more thumbs the better!
I really like your courier. I'm currently working on 1 and met some problem.=(
May i ask you a question regrading the attachment point needed for the courier. What is attachment point ? Hope you could show me some reference show you solve the attachment point problem.
God bless you =D
Ruifeng
Unfortunately its a bit messy - i'm not a rigger/tech artist, so things are very rough and untidy
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/452461/mok-help_flying_idle.zip
Things went a bit quiet after submitting our courier, so decided to take a bit of break - until recently getting some feedback that asked for some changes
The problem is, we keep running into a recurring issue with the blade rotation. No matter what we do, we always end up with a slight but noticeable jitter/stutter when it loops, when in-game. (just on the blades though, everything else is smooth and loops fine)
In maya everything seems good
[ame="
Heres the anim graph for the blade rotation
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v714/pixelherder/mok-help_rotation01_zps59eb6bd9.jpg
No idea if its something to do with
- the rig
- the animation (?)
- the fbx exporter
- something in the dota 2 engine that doesnt like things rotating!
(although gyrocopter seems to work fine)
Also!
- We've tried rotating the blades at slower and faster speeds - neither makes a difference
- In game everything else works, and loops nicely.
- exporting with and without baking the animation in maya first. Made no difference.
And if it helps, here's our FBX exporter options AND keyframe baking options
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v714/pixelherder/mok-help_settings_zps5a7f8229.jpg
If we cant fix this, then we'll have to give up - not ideal, but really not sure where to go from here
If anyone has ANY ideas, then please reply/PM or email me
(pixelherder a t gmail dot com)
If anyone wants to have a look, then click here for the flying idle maya file on Dropbox
Thanks and fingers crossed...
. Include frame 65 in your fbx export. When I tried to remove the last frame of my run animation to have something that loops perfectly, that's when I noticed some hicup in my cycle. Not sure if I was hallucinating, but who knows, maybe the importer removes the last frame of looping animations by default, so that you can work more easily in Maya, with your first and last frame being the same? Conspirationist speculation haha.
Again I don't know what I'm talking about just making some random suggestions:P
-bake your keys to remove all your rig when it's done. Make sure you don't have anything else than your joints and game mesh when exporting. No constraints, no empty groups, same hierarchy than your skinned file. Once your animation is baked, see if you need to rebake through the fbx options, or not. Try with both options on or off see if there is a difference.
-you said you tried different rotation speed so I guess this would be useless, but if you try to make a 5 frames idle just for test, and make a 360 rotation during these 5 frames? Just to see if a large value in rotation Y (5760) like you have right now is posing any problem.
I checked your curves, seem to be linear to me. I'm just a noob in animation so I hope I don't say stupid stuff.. but if you tried to add more keys outside of your animation range? This way the halves of your first and last keyframe won't be flat but following the rotation curve. Not sure if I am very clear.
What if you tried to add a new key at frame 64, and instead of a high value like 5670, you have the rotation Y value: -90? Or that your entire animation curve would be like mountains, never going over 360?
Frame1: RotateY 0
Frame2: RotateY 90
Frame3: RotateY 180
Frame4: RotateY 270
Frame5: RotateY 0
Frame6: RotateY 90
etc
Well, that's the stuff I would try I guess, but i never seen your problem in game so I don't know if the jitter is random or always of the same ammount.
I hope you find a fix soon coz I love the little MOK!
I think in our case we just had to adjust the timing to get it working nicer. It was rotating a bit fast, causing it to skip frames in-game i think. Make sure you've slowed the rotations down enough to give the game a chance to actually render out the frames needed. (at certain timings it just seems to catch the same section of rotation/animation making it look like its just jittering in place)
I know you said you've tried adjusting the speed, but I wouldn't give up yet!
How are your keyframes set up, how much does the blade rotate between frames? If you have it doing a full or half rotation from one frame, try breaking it up and adding a frame for each quarter turn.
If all else fails, you could decompile gyro and see how his props work or ask valve for some insight on the dev comments or forum.
An ingame video of the problem might be helpful as well.
thanks a lot for that - really appreciate it!
I've got a few things left to try tonight, but then going to have a talk with the animator and go through all of this with him and see if we can sort things out.
Ok, i think between your and Goldo's feedback, i've got a really great hit list to tackle.
So over the next couple of days we'll see if it bears any fruit!
Also asked on the dev comments, and uploaded some more of our anim files - it'd be great to get a bit of tech support straight from the source, but i dont know how likely that is!
Also, your llama is great. Had to say it.
Any thoughts, suggestions etc are welcome - want to know i'm on the right track before committing!
yeah, satchels will definitely be piled on!
As for proportions, it seems that couriers mostly have to have more cartoonish proportions than normal, so i'm going to go with something a little more along those lines than my last effort!
ok, thats a bit different! and a tricky one to define artistically - i'm not rushing into modelling just yet, hopefully going to spend the next few days developing this further, so i'll see what i can do!
thing is could have done this entirely in zbrush, but thought it'd be nice to spend some time in photoshop!
yup, just trying to make sure i have fun!
still to do
- backpack stuff
- bagpipes!
when thats done i'll be able to see whether he's going to have satchel+backpack, or just one or the other (as well as his pipes)
great! going to put in a couple more hours tonight, so hopefully should have even more to show by the end of the evening...
So I suppose the bagpipe horn thingies will be a different object than the rest of the bagpipe so you can easily switch where they are?
exactly! - i'll make the main body of the bagpipe,( with a few different attachment points), and the pipes separately, so i can easily reconfigure things for ground/flying modes