23 réponses à ce sujet

[DahliaLynn]

Hi,

I have a custom model, with it's own race, and have just completed rigging it's face for facial animations.

The problem is, that while regular facial and body animations in the cutscene editor do work, generated facefx from the conversation editor do not. Does anyone have any idea if a setting need be made in order for the facefx to work?

The creature has settings for eyes, head, and hair. as opposed to a face morph. (if that means anything).

All help will be appreciated!

[Yara C.]

Hi Dahlia,

what have you done so far? What do you mean exactly by  "regular facial and body animations in the cutscene editor"? Have you already generated a facial or a head animation with the facefx editor from the cutscene editor, meaning that you have already an adequate fxa and can see the custom creature in the preview window? If you do not mean this by regular - this could be a cause for your problem. You need a fitting fxa. 

There are other fxas available which could be used. But for your  custom model you will probably need a custom fxa. If you have one - fine. (I have no idea if a plugin for Maya or another app is free available, doubt it, and we have only a limited version of the facefx editor...)

Given that you have the adequate fxa  - let´s move on to the facefx editor which is connected to the conversation editor and works a bit different because it was customized.

When you edit  a speak line in the facefx editor - is the regular human.fxa still loaded? Check the title bar if you see only the robo face. Afaik the human.fxa is loaded as default.

Again assumed you have already changed the fxa by opening a new actor - have you imported an anim set? May be you have to unmount it first.
(On my quick test I could not unmount . It was not enabled. Therefore I can´t exclude that there are some general limitations)

Are there any hints in your log window or in the console of the facefx editor?

Modifié par Yara Cousland, 03 octobre 2011 - 05:12 .

[DahliaLynn]

Hi Yara, thanks for the reply

I'll clarify what I have done. I am using the creature in cutscenes for now. Body animations work perfectly, and manual facial animations work well. i.e. cs_f.aod_o, cs_f.lpsync and all cs_f. manual animations work on the face itself.
I've never used the face fx editor itself, (nor do I know how at the moment unfortunately) but rather I generate facefx for VO and expression automatically in the conversation editor.

I also do not use a stage for my needs, so I don't preview the line through the Convo editor itself either. Currently the fxa generated by the lines I use work perfectly for other *human* models,(in said cutscene) only the custom model that I freshly rigged does not react to speaklines placed in the cutscene editor. So I have not touched any fxe's as of yet.

I suppose for further testing, I could associate the actor with a stage, then generate speaklines, preview and see if I get results, but I fear all that work will lead to the same problem.

I realize there are many differences between fxe/fxms and simple ani/gads but is there anything in the game that causes generated fxas to OWNER to work on every human model ? Do I need to make any specific settings to the race gda perhaps? (I did not create the race, and the person responsible for that is currently on vacation)

Edit: do you feel I need to work with the facefx editor itself to get more info from any potential log errors?

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 04 octobre 2011 - 09:16 .

[DahliaLynn]

Update: I've tried associating the actor with a stage, and previewing lines in the conversation editor. The actor shows up and all body animations work, only the facial animations remain lifeless:(

I just read that the FXA associates the bones accordingly. Do I have to set an FXA somewhere in the creature setting or race definition for the fxe to recognize the facial bones?

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 03 octobre 2011 - 01:14 .

[Yara C.]

Ah, as I have nearly assumed, you have meant the cs._f* animations. These animations are a different field. Stages can´t have an effect for the the same reason. If there will be a solution for your problem it will lay within the facefx editor. You need to override an existing fxa.

I will be away for a business travel the next days. So, let´s chat. I´ll send you a pm. I will see what I can do for you.

[DahliaLynn]

An update to this thread:

Thanks Yara for helping via chat . Unfortunately it seems the issue lies with the race and FXA association to the best of my limited knowledge.

I've tested a model using the same mesh before the race change, (using a regular DA:O skeleton) and that model *did* work with facefx, only looks slightly out of proportion.

The only difference between the DA:O skeleton and the new race skeleton is the distance of the head to the shoulders. The model is slightly taller than human female. Bonecount is the same.

Would anyone know if there was a way to set this race to a DA:O FXA preset? (If I am even asking the right question). Or, create a new FXA? Or any other option for this model to react to facefx generated by the conversation editor?

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 04 octobre 2011 - 09:25 .

[Beerfish]

Is that something that would be assigned in one of the 2DA excel files that can be changed? Have you looked into the 2DA's?

[Cuvieronius]

I haven't delved into it much myself... but you can extract the human.fxa from the face.erf... load it into FaceFX studio and save as another name. You will probably need to load an animation set to get any results. How the fxa is assigned or called? I have no idea yet... working on it, would have to be in either the APR or the RACE xls, but I am not seeing it. We will have new races also, will let you know if I discover anything useful.

[DahliaLynn]

Unfortunately I don't have the original *xls files used for compiling the race GDA at the moment. (the race creator is on vacation, and ..her computer crashed.. )

I have found that the Facefx editor can indeed save an actor as a new FXA which is good news I think, as I hope to add the new FXA for the game to recognize.

Since I have very little experience in editing the 2DAs, and mapping out all their associations, I will have to look into that more closely, and hope that this will actually solve the problem.

@cuvieronius if you do come up with any results please do share!

The crazy thing is, that for the moment, I only need three spoken lines for a cutscene But in the long run I will need more, and having the power of the facefx editor can extend the facial expressions better than I imagined (thank you Yara for teaching me the basics!) 

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 05 octobre 2011 - 02:18 .

[DahliaLynn]

Apparently, there is a setting in the character portion of the creature, when its resource opened, that sets the FXA override.

I tried setting the FXA override and other setting in the *.chr file, only this file cannot be exported.
E: 02:02:56 - Unable to locate an exporter or resource information for object type:chr

Does anyone know how this resource affects the game?
Resetting the facefx in that field still yielded no results, but it is the first place I was able to find that has this setting.

[Cuvieronius]

Yes, the CHR is how you set the soundset for the creature. The resource doesnt export, but somehow the engine retains the information that is linked to it by simply creating it. Assign your soundset to the CHR, then assign that CHR to your UTC. Good find on the FXA override, will test that, didnt remember it was in that resource.

[alschemid]

Dahlia, you do have the APR and RACE.gda files, for whatever you need... I haven't created then in excel, but edited another gda file.

[Yara C.]

Dalia, actually I would say forget for a moment the approach we have discussed last night. Let´s see why this custom werewolf lip-syncs with the default humanoid setting and what we can conclude for the setting of your custom model. The golem which did not want to lip-sync misleaded me a bit, but it was just a bad example. Golems are bit different. 

Lip-sync for speak lines should work for all other fxa types with the default setting.
And the werewolf has not so much humanoid features. I haven´t tweaked it.
Mapping within the facefx editor could be the last step if your custom model will respond to the default setting.

Edit: The werewolf.utc has no reference to a character.

Modifié par Yara Cousland, 06 octobre 2011 - 08:02 .

[Cuvieronius]

I have just confirmed this, as Yara says above,.... I used a custom creature (The Djinni) that has all the human face bones with an existing dlg and facefx... and it works perfectly. Also tried it with an Imp and a Troll... and they at least tried to mouth the lines, but they are not setup with the proper bones for lip sync.

So, the problem you are having must be with either the bones in the custom model, or your facefx export. Tell me more about your custom creature please and maybe I can help more.

[DahliaLynn]

@Yara, I do remember seeing werewolves talk in DA, (and they have a race) but if you say this is custom, along with Cuvieronoius models, the only thing I can ask is, have either of you done anything to manipulate the bonestructure of the model? moved them, etc? Are you using DA creature bones or completely custom?

As far as the model I am using, it uses the humanfemale bonestructure, only the head and neck were raised as far as I know. Perhaps if Alchemid has time she could tell a bit more on the details on how it was designed and implemented into the game.

What I myself ended up doing, was rig the head mesh to work with regular animations.

@Cuvieronius if you have the time and skype installed would you mind if we took this to chat? I can send you my details via pm if that is alright with you.

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 06 octobre 2011 - 08:58 .

[Yara C.]

The DA creature bones.

[Cuvieronius]

of course Dahlia... I am online right now and most days

And yes, our Djinni uses DA humanoid bones.

[DahliaLynn]

Ok then, so basically the DA bones were never manipulated in your models, which seems to be the difference between our examples. Which leads me to wonder if perhaps there is some sort of setting that got botched up when the head and neck bone placement was manipulated.

Would you know if there is any special setting or bone linking that needs to be done for facefx to recognize the headbones? (This is way out of my league) but I am trying my best to think logically.

@Cuv thanks will PM

[alschemid]

We have two custom models, both created from the DAO skeletons but some bones from the neck and face was moved a little bit to match the mesh.

One of the models will be used only for cutscenes I think it has two models: the head and the body. In the APR file it is set as a creature and it seems the face fx works for this model.

The other model, the problematic one, should be a companion, so we created a custom race for him... with separated pieces body, head, eyes, hair and eyelashes. Again using the DAO skeleton and moving bones of the neck and head to match the mesh... I don't have a computer right now to see what the problem is, perhaps I have broken the skeleton structure when moving the bones (I would have to redo it in smaller steps and check each one in game) or is something race related missing.

[Eshme]

The FXA is associated within the model, thats all i know about it. How it is assigned before its created, or vice versa how it could be created before the model is made is beyond me. This is nothing out of the ordinary in that game.
The FXa is out of my league, but i assume what it does is make the connection between a gesture and the bones, so the game voiceacting can instruct any different faces by common gesture controls.
Facial Animation by Cutscenes animates the Bones directly ,so it appears to work regardless of the FXA.

Might be interesting to know which FXA is assigned by the model. Via "Facial Animation Blueprint" setting in my scripts if it were used.

[tmp7704]

Going completely from memory as i don't have access to the toolset at the moment, but the link to .fxa file is included either in the .mmh file of the model, or the .mor file. Possibly your problematic creature misses this data (as it seems to be optional) and being custom race the engine doesn't know what default .fxa should be used instead?

Alternatively there may be something concerning that race-fxa link defined in the configuration file of the toolset itself, but that's pure guess.

[DahliaLynn]

OMG TMP and Eshme you are just geniuses for posting here...Thank you SO MUCH!!!

I went to the wiki and found the following page:
http://social.biowar...t/index.php/MMH

The first few lines in the mmh "script "show the optional FXActor name and it's string. I opened up the head mmh of the model in GFF editor and found the "MMH_FACIAL_ANIMATION_BLUEPRINT_NAME" which was located in the same hierarchy as the script,  and decided to try my luck at inserting humanmale.fxa in the empty field.

Although the animation looks a bit strange, it WORKS! At least now I have something to work with, figure out what I need to tweak...but this is wonderful. I'm hoping now I can find out what I need to do to make the facefx work properly, (more rigging I guess *sigh*) but thank you so much for getting me out of the hole I was so deeply stuck in!

Edit: Eshme,  I use your import/exporter in gmax.(awesome) can you tell me where this "Facial Animation Blueprint" setting/script is located? This is what I need so that hopefully I don't have to manually set it in the mmh file every time I export a new version - unless the setting imports and exports automatically once set?

Modifié par DahliaLynn, 09 octobre 2011 - 03:15 .

[Cuvieronius]

Awesome stuff! so glad it was a simple solution.

[Eshme]

DahliaLynn wrote...
Edit: Eshme,  I use your import/exporter in gmax.(awesome) can you tell me where this "Facial Animation Blueprint" setting/script is located? This is what I need so that hopefully I don't have to manually set it in the mmh file every time I export a new version - unless the setting imports and exports automatically once set?

Its a setting in GOB object. The setting shouldnt be lost once its made, it is stored in the max scene.