Entire Level Animation

Fogbrain

Bit of a noob question for you animators out there and those proficient with UDK, but is it possible to animate your entire level?

For example, the level I'm making is based out in the ocean and I want the player to feel like they're floating in the vessel, what's the best way to give off this illusion?

I am not really educated on Kismet or Matinee, so I'd probably have to have this one broken down for me to really understand the steps involved, although when I think about it, it shouldn't be that complicated.

Anyway thanks guys again

Butthair

The vessel would animate up and down using matinee.

As a platform, the player would need to base on it so they don't slide around.

Alternatively, if you can't get the player to base on your vessel properly, or you require them to climb or jump or something, you could animate the water and camera. The camera would rock and sway. To do this, you'd want to place a camera and attach it to the player in order to control it with matinee.

Shift`

It also depends on what kind of vessel you are on, I would assume it is a small one?
If it was a small one I would animate the vessel itself, if it was a large ship then I would animate everything around it.

Fogbrain

It is just a simple environment presentation about 400 Unreal Units big, so not very large in scale.

But yeah I do like the idea of the camera being attached to the player to give the illusion of swaying in the ocean, how can I pull that off?

Fogbrain

So I gave it a shot, and attached a camera to the player upon spawn in kismet, and made a simple head bobbing animation in Matinee, and it worked, problem was, either the player cannot move because I guess it was technically an ever looping cut scene or that if the player could move and the animation was working, the player cannot look up.

Also the player size would constantly change, Ive also been trying to figure out how to make the player a specific size upon spawn.

Butthair

That's unfortunate.

I can't remember what it's called, but I think there is a way to control camera animation in the post process chain. I remember doing it for a cinematic because the default had this annoying subtle bob/move.

I'll let you know what it is tonight, no udk here.

Fogbrain

Cool thanks man, let me know if things work out.

Butthair

It was more obvious than I thought. It's called a CameraAnim. You can create your own by right clicking in the content browser and finding New CameraAnim. (Same place where you'd make a new material)

This will open up a matinee for you to animate camera movement. Then you just hook it up to your camera actor in kismet. I think the node is Play Camera Animation. Something like that.

This way should allow you to move the camera freely with the additional animation of the CameraAnim.

Fogbrain

Thanks Butthair, I'll try that out in a bit.

One thing related to materials, do you know anything about a warning in UDK material editor saying "warning X4008 floating point division by zero"?

It's gonna prevent me from cooking and making it into an executable.. Which is unfortunate because I need this particular shader to work, since it's pretty central to the scene

EDIT: Nevermind, the material seems to work in editor, fingers crossed it cooks out the game okay...

Butthair

That warning is a problem. You'll need to find the area in the shader that's causing it and handle it. It's not a common error for me, so if you find what is causing it a screenshot would be helpful to give a remedy.

Fogbrain

On the subject on animation, I did try out the CameraAnim thing, and it does work, just not once I start playing. It must not be attached to the player or the kismet is mishandled, I'll post some screenshots of it tomorrow morning.

It's 4AM here and UDK'ing all day has destroyed me haha.

Butthair

Cool, glad there is progress. If you haven't, hook up the Play Camera Anim node to a level loaded event so it happens right away. If you are doing that, then make sure you're pointing to the right camera.