14 réponses à ce sujet

[Appolo90]

Hey, I'm looking into starting a cutscene project and starting to use tutorials to learn the ins and outs (It actually doesn't seem too horribly complex )

However, as far as animation goes, I can only find tuts on facial animations, none on full body animations. I can see some awesome dev did it for the DA outtakes (seen at www.youtube.com/watch) The ogre dancing at the end... not sure I've ever laughed so hard the first time I watched that.

So if anyone could give me a general outline of how to start animating bodies I'd really appreciate it.

[-Semper-]

to animate creatures you will need an external animation tool like gmax (freeware) or 3dsmax (expansive). also lots of experience should come in handy... it's by far not learned within 3 days^^

Modifié par -Semper-, 02 décembre 2010 - 04:36 .

[Appolo90]

Gotta start somewhere. How do I export/import creatures from DA into the program and back out to the toolset? Is there any documentation on cutscenes/animations made by Bioware?

The toolset must have an instruction PDF somewhere, right? I hope they don't expect everyone to be modding veterans who want to mod DA.

Modifié par Appolo90, 02 décembre 2010 - 05:40 .

[-Semper-]

to export there's no way around eshme's tool.
to animate just use google in combination with gmax. you could also use other freeware tools like blender and do your animation there but then you have to find some way to transport your animations from blender to gmax, as you will need gmax to export.

there is no doucmentation for cutscenes by bioware. you could use eshme's tools to import animations into gmax to get a feeling of movement and key positioning

to animate there are tons of tutorials scattered around the interweb.
there's also no official documention for the toolset, at least not in pdf format - for questions there's a toolset wiki and the forum too.

[Appolo90]

That wiki is badass. Again, the cutscene editor does not seem very daunting, but maybe that's because of my After Effects experience. AE also uses a timeline and keyframes in a similar layout. It's too bad they couldn't package something similar to FaceFX to animate the bodies.

Hm, maybe I'll seek out an animator once I learn the toolset in and out. I don't doubt I can learn it, but I'm not sure it's worth 100 hours of learning and work to produce a 10 minute cutscene.

Thanks for your help.

Modifié par Appolo90, 02 décembre 2010 - 07:38 .

[-Semper-]

with the cutscene editor of the toolset you can play around with the vanilla animations like stretching and mixing them. this way you could also create the illusion of new animations. anyway for "real" custom ones you need to work with other programs as described above.

[DahliaLynn]

Feel free to have a look at my group...there are many questions answered there as well as useful links and resources regarding the CS editor and animations.

Cutscene Editor Tips and Usage

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 03 décembre 2010 - 05:01 .

[alschemid]

Appolo90 wrote...
Hm, maybe I'll seek out an animator once I learn the toolset in and out. I don't doubt I can learn it, but I'm not sure it's worth 100 hours of learning and work to produce a 10 minute cutscene.

Anyone can learn how to do animations, but it is a very time consuming process, even more if you don't use automated animation's tricks, like inverse kinematics, controllers, helpers and scripts. I would advise using the cutscene editor as much as you can and only go into doing "real" custom animations in gmax if you really need one, unless you love rigging and animation as much as I do and don't mind wasting the whole weekend to get 1 second of crappy tweeked animation when lucky.

Btw, I've written a tutorial on how to get the animations in/out toolset/gmax.

Modifié par alschemid, 04 décembre 2010 - 02:12 .

[John Epler]

Remember, as well, that you can blend animations and combine animations to get the desired effect. There are a lot of moments in DA2 where you'll see something that is the result of cutting and pasting literally 15 different animations together And as time-consuming as that was, it was still less work than creating the animation from scratch.

[DahliaLynn]

Agreed. Actually it's the only way I know how to work (for now

[Appolo90]

Nice resources/tips, guys. Thanks.

As I thought, this thing isn't too scary! I've managed to move cameras any way I wish with keyframes (thank you AE experience) and using the default animations is easy too. I have a question though.

How can I animate two or more creatures to directly interact? Like if I want an ogre to grab a human and start pounding away.. how?

Thanks for any more help.

Modifié par Appolo90, 07 décembre 2010 - 05:20 .

[John Epler]

Appolo90 -



Most animations involving two people are actually two separate animations. Basically, our animators will take both models, animate them together and then split each one out into its own animation. We refer to them as '2P' animations, shorthand for '2 person' animations. Normally, they should line up (start them both at the same time and the movements should sync) but you may have to do some reworking. I've had 2P animations where the creatures involved had 30-40 keyframes over 2 seconds of animation just to keep them aligned properly.



I'm not sure what animations are used to have an ogre pick someone up and pound on them, though

[Appolo90]

 Hm, that's cool but I haven't located those anims yet. I found a list:  http://social.biowar.../Animation_list

But there's nothing that says 'duck' or 'dodge' in any of those descriptions! If there's seriously no dodging or ducking animations then I'll make them myself, whatever it takes. Simply essential for a combat scene.

EDIT: Well, figured out that list doesn't nearly show all the animations. Is there really no description manual for ALL of them? Testing them 1 by one is going to be extremely tedious.

Modifié par Appolo90, 07 décembre 2010 - 03:40 .

[alschemid]

There is an animation list with its descriptions, not sure if it has all of them: http://social.biowar...oject/30/#files
To see them it is easier to use the Animation Events Editor.

Modifié par alschemid, 07 décembre 2010 - 06:58 .

[Appolo90]

alschemid wrote...

There is an animation list with its descriptions, not sure if it has all of them: http://social.biowar...oject/30/#files
To see them it is easier to use the Animation Events Editor.

I love you.

There's even two dodge ones listed there.

*hug*