if it does get completed, then it would open the possibility to have a wide range of furry/animal(only canine and feline) models that other people can contribute to ut2k4.
my only critics is... that the body has to be a little bit longer.
sorry i have to revive an old thread..
if this model has been dumped then I will leave this thread alone.
[ QUOTE ]
if it does get completed, then it would open the possibility to have a wide range of furry/animal(only canine and feline) models that other people can contribute to ut2k4.
[/ QUOTE ]
isn't that already bad enough as it is?
well in one place anyway. I blame the Gen Mo'Kai skeleton.
Well It was stalled for a bit, for two reasons, finding someone with the hair dynamics for Maya 7 on whose machien I could rig on, and me having to read up on basic and advanced rigging in Maya, which I am still doing. Not easy for a math incompetant, like me. then I got unemployed, and everything got put on hold, But fear not, I will probably finish the male probably by the end of the summer. Also might have a Female lupine done as well. But it's a bit of a grind ti figure out the rigging and the dynamics.
As to the proportions, they are the proportions I like, and have drawn for my characters over time, and I will be sticking with them.
I just have to finish learning how to do these dynamics, and how to do the rigging to complete. the mesh is done, the maps are close, and I could release an SDK for people interested in skinning them, but what remains now, is the rigging and the actuall animation and exporting. As I remember, exporting from Maya has some "Gotchas" in terms of the bone nameing and socketing and "spaces or underscores" that could trip me up as well. Research or technical assistance in explanations would help.
Well, since this did come up in discussion. Here is an update. This is the Carcass(Skeleton) textured.
I may do a charred and discolored version of the armour to hang off this as well, for the "fully fried" effect. But wiyth the bulk of the texturing done, now Ihave to fionish reading the book on Maya Rigging, so that I can finally animate the guy. So anyone know about the pitfalls of animating a UT2K4 character in Maya from scratch?
Hey, there. Nice project. I'm about wraping up my modest UT2004 peice, just need to work out all the bugs. I can probably help you with most of these questions in your post:
QUOTE:
1.) Figuring out a Dynamics solution for the secondary animation on the loin cloth, so that there is some colision, but having to be bones driven, with a fairly low sample rate so I can copy key frams from the beginning of a cycle back to the end.
Answer: Maya Hair curves on joints is the way to go for this. Download MAYA Bonus tools from alias' site for a great script that does this automatically! I've done lots of UT import tests using this method and even did a little test with Bobo's IMP.. http://rodbrett.com/BoboImp/Imp_UT_test.exe
2.) Some other rigging issues, as I am not a TD, and other than using the base company rig from Castaway, do not know how to integrate the dynamics into the base rig.
Answer: The way that you should rigg your model is like this; Don't rigg the skinned skeleton. Make a duplicate of the skeleton and rigg that. This way you can use multiple joints constrained to the skinned skeleton(via parent constraint or orient/point) and have the rigg joints drive your clean skeleton. You can also have the rigg joints in however manner you need them, even if they are in broken heirarchies. You can change you joint orients without messing up your animations if you use constraints with offsets turned on. You can create a CHARACTER SET out of the attributes of the rigg controllers and store all of your animation cycles into "clips". This also helps if you need to "timewarp" trax clips to be quicker or slower when doing ingame testing. When it comes time to export the mesh and each animation cycle, you simply need to load up the clip, make a "quick select set" for all the skinned joints, highlight the rotation/translation attributes in the channel box and go to EDIT>KEYS>BAKE SIMULATION. Then you can delete your rigg and controllers and all you have left is a nice clean skinned skeleton with FK animation.
There are lots of other rules for skeletons using MAYA. Check out Sunny-D's tut. It's for UT2003, but it goes into some basics. www.sunny-d.com
3.) scale difficulties
Answer: the way I get the scale to look correct is, I create a MAP with an empty room and some lights. I load up a default player model into the scene and line him up with the floor. I highlight that player model and hit Ctrl+W to duplicate him/her. With the 2 models right next to each other, you can replace the mesh of one of them with yours and compare the scale(do this by right-clicking properties on one of them). Adjust the scale so it matches the player model. This is much quicker than doing "ingame" tests and jumping in and out of the game just to get scale right.
5.) learning the KAT tool properly for the karma collision model.
Answer: KAT was a bitch for me to figure out, but the MASTERING UNREAL book available at amazon really helped to get the basics down. From there it was a lot of trial and error.
6.) which sequences have hard coded animation time limits, and which do not.
Answer: None do, to my knowledge. But some with look funny if you make the cycles too long or too short. Again, this is where making a CHARACTER SET and using trax to manage your cycles will save you a ton of time. Also, if you use trax, you can create the walks/runs cycles with the first frame and last in the "extreme" poses, and just put two clips together and export the motion of the walks/runs with the "crossover" position being first and last. This blends better in UNREALed. Trax is also nice for testing out the blends of your cycles without doing it un UnrealED.
7.) how many of the sequences are necessary, and how many are repeats.
None are actually needed to run the game. For the sequences that are missing, your mesh will just be a still frame of your last cycle.
8.) What sequences are needed/added for use for a "melee" mod. Swordfighting ability would be good, if not esential for a "Sword & Sandal period model.
Answer: hmmm. not a clue for this one.
Hope this helps. It definately pays to take your time, especially with joint layout and orientation. Maya's not as forgiving with custom characters as Max is and there are a lot of things that can go wrong if you are not careful which I am currently learning the hard way.
Replies
if it does get completed, then it would open the possibility to have a wide range of furry/animal(only canine and feline) models that other people can contribute to ut2k4.
my only critics is... that the body has to be a little bit longer.
sorry i have to revive an old thread..
if this model has been dumped then I will leave this thread alone.
if it does get completed, then it would open the possibility to have a wide range of furry/animal(only canine and feline) models that other people can contribute to ut2k4.
[/ QUOTE ]
isn't that already bad enough as it is?
well in one place anyway. I blame the Gen Mo'Kai skeleton.
As to the proportions, they are the proportions I like, and have drawn for my characters over time, and I will be sticking with them.
I just have to finish learning how to do these dynamics, and how to do the rigging to complete. the mesh is done, the maps are close, and I could release an SDK for people interested in skinning them, but what remains now, is the rigging and the actuall animation and exporting. As I remember, exporting from Maya has some "Gotchas" in terms of the bone nameing and socketing and "spaces or underscores" that could trip me up as well. Research or technical assistance in explanations would help.
Scott.
I may do a charred and discolored version of the armour to hang off this as well, for the "fully fried" effect. But wiyth the bulk of the texturing done, now Ihave to fionish reading the book on Maya Rigging, so that I can finally animate the guy. So anyone know about the pitfalls of animating a UT2K4 character in Maya from scratch?
Scott
Scott
and no I'm not a furry but I do like wolves and thats cool
QUOTE:
1.) Figuring out a Dynamics solution for the secondary animation on the loin cloth, so that there is some colision, but having to be bones driven, with a fairly low sample rate so I can copy key frams from the beginning of a cycle back to the end.
Answer: Maya Hair curves on joints is the way to go for this. Download MAYA Bonus tools from alias' site for a great script that does this automatically! I've done lots of UT import tests using this method and even did a little test with Bobo's IMP..
http://rodbrett.com/BoboImp/Imp_UT_test.exe
2.) Some other rigging issues, as I am not a TD, and other than using the base company rig from Castaway, do not know how to integrate the dynamics into the base rig.
Answer: The way that you should rigg your model is like this; Don't rigg the skinned skeleton. Make a duplicate of the skeleton and rigg that. This way you can use multiple joints constrained to the skinned skeleton(via parent constraint or orient/point) and have the rigg joints drive your clean skeleton. You can also have the rigg joints in however manner you need them, even if they are in broken heirarchies. You can change you joint orients without messing up your animations if you use constraints with offsets turned on. You can create a CHARACTER SET out of the attributes of the rigg controllers and store all of your animation cycles into "clips". This also helps if you need to "timewarp" trax clips to be quicker or slower when doing ingame testing. When it comes time to export the mesh and each animation cycle, you simply need to load up the clip, make a "quick select set" for all the skinned joints, highlight the rotation/translation attributes in the channel box and go to EDIT>KEYS>BAKE SIMULATION. Then you can delete your rigg and controllers and all you have left is a nice clean skinned skeleton with FK animation.
There are lots of other rules for skeletons using MAYA. Check out Sunny-D's tut. It's for UT2003, but it goes into some basics. www.sunny-d.com
3.) scale difficulties
Answer: the way I get the scale to look correct is, I create a MAP with an empty room and some lights. I load up a default player model into the scene and line him up with the floor. I highlight that player model and hit Ctrl+W to duplicate him/her. With the 2 models right next to each other, you can replace the mesh of one of them with yours and compare the scale(do this by right-clicking properties on one of them). Adjust the scale so it matches the player model. This is much quicker than doing "ingame" tests and jumping in and out of the game just to get scale right.
5.) learning the KAT tool properly for the karma collision model.
Answer: KAT was a bitch for me to figure out, but the MASTERING UNREAL book available at amazon really helped to get the basics down. From there it was a lot of trial and error.
6.) which sequences have hard coded animation time limits, and which do not.
Answer: None do, to my knowledge. But some with look funny if you make the cycles too long or too short. Again, this is where making a CHARACTER SET and using trax to manage your cycles will save you a ton of time. Also, if you use trax, you can create the walks/runs cycles with the first frame and last in the "extreme" poses, and just put two clips together and export the motion of the walks/runs with the "crossover" position being first and last. This blends better in UNREALed. Trax is also nice for testing out the blends of your cycles without doing it un UnrealED.
7.) how many of the sequences are necessary, and how many are repeats.
None are actually needed to run the game. For the sequences that are missing, your mesh will just be a still frame of your last cycle.
8.) What sequences are needed/added for use for a "melee" mod. Swordfighting ability would be good, if not esential for a "Sword & Sandal period model.
Answer: hmmm. not a clue for this one.
Hope this helps. It definately pays to take your time, especially with joint layout and orientation. Maya's not as forgiving with custom characters as Max is and there are a lot of things that can go wrong if you are not careful which I am currently learning the hard way.
-pod
My UT2004 troubleshooting thread:
http://boards.polycount.net/showflat.php?Cat=0&Number=110795&an=0&page=0#110795