For the record, I think that changing the default models+animations is a good idea.
Modifié par Sylrae, 24 janvier 2012 - 03:17 .
Looking for the "best" way of implementing a skin mesh on a PC. Thoughts?
Débuté par
OldTimeRadio
, déc. 03 2011 07:48
#51
Posté 24 janvier 2012 - 03:17
Sylrae
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Ah! that very much explains what seemed to be a weird design goal. I thought you were intending to replace the way things work now with a new way.
For the record, I think that changing the default models+animations is a good idea.
For the record, I think that changing the default models+animations is a good idea.
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#52
Posté 10 février 2012 - 09:23
OldTimeRadio
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Well, not looking so good to use tails and possibly wings for anything which is expected to properly play supermodeled player animations. I'm at a bit of a loss here because I speciously assumed that robes/wings/tails/cloaks were basically the same thing. Since my last post I had added faces as a wing, using the same skeletal setup that my tails used and which would be familiar to anyone who's ever looked at a robe model in Max.
The problem was, once I started testing these guys I noticed while the bulk of animations worked there seemed to be some big issues with how the supermodeled animations played- or didn't play, which was the problem.
I tried and tried to fix what I thought was a modeling/skeletal issue on my end but a very careful re-reading of the old "facelifting nwn" threads in the Omnibus indicated that I'd fallen into the same pit that Corporate Dog had when trying to animate his player mouths. Which can be summarized as: While you'd expect that robes/wings/tails/cloaks all work the same when it comes to playing back supermodeled animations, they don't Wings and tails don't play all supermodeled player animations back properly. AFAIK robes are the gold standard, probably cloaks too, playing back all the player animations properly. However, when a tail is supermodeled into the a_ba supermodel chain, here are some of the problems you're going to run into:
* Torches, weapon-draw or other non-base animrooted (presumably) animations don't play back properly
* Head look does not work
* Many emotes do not work
* After performing a nod or some other animations, it's possible for both tail and player models to go out of sync with each other which...is very bad, to say the least. If you set up a simple test with, say, Maugrim (tail 189, supermodeled into a_ba) in these tests as the player's arm swinging forward during a pause animation while the tail's arm swings backward.
And wings seem to have the same issues as tails, including going out of sync with the tail model's animations.
I also tested these situations while being mounted on the horse models and I didn't see anything which made me believe the issue had been conquered in some way. Since the horse isn't meant to mimic the rider's movements like a skin mesh skeleton supermodeled into a_ba, about the best I could do was confirm there seemed to be no independent animations of the horse (outside of the pause* animations) when I tested the bullet-pointed situations above.
So there appears to be something fundamentally different with the nature of how wings and tails are done versus how cloaks and robes are, when it comes to supermodeled animations. How to get around this? Well, baking animations onto tails and wings might address the issue but there's obviously something sketchy about them when some model events are playing through wings/tails to their supermodels and some aren't.
The cruddy part of all of this, LOL, is that both cloaks and robes, which appear to be the only viable target for a project like this are Kinda Nice The Way They Are™ and I don't particularly want to go chopping at them, even if the work wouldn't affect other existing phenotypes.
Another one of those "My god, this idea is awesome!...Why hasn't anyone done this- this is a freaking slam dunk!" ideas. Oh well, time to fall back to something a little less amibtious. Being able to see the same problematic issues using a default tail (Maugrim) supermodeled into a_ba helped immensely.
So where to next? I don't know. Despite being a little ticked off that wings and tails didn't come through for me on this, I'm maybe more in love with the concept than when I started. I didn't realize it, but there's already a prototype using robes that LeAdderNoir uploaded to the Vault, though I don't know how much of what's in the screenshot below is in the package.
And here's some artwork from Ashtefere giving some basic idea of the variety that model parts (in red) would give, overlaying a base skin mesh.
It is hard to look at those two images and think "Naaaah! Not worth it!" I am getting a little burnt, though, so I'm not sure exactly what or how much I'm going to pursue it in the near future. I loaded a full body skin mesh from another game into Max and made it a regular creature appearance. When I changed to that appearance, of course, everything worked perfectly including head look. But, LOL, no dynamic armor and (to a lesser extent) no PLT. What a tease.
Back to the drawing board...
The problem was, once I started testing these guys I noticed while the bulk of animations worked there seemed to be some big issues with how the supermodeled animations played- or didn't play, which was the problem.
I tried and tried to fix what I thought was a modeling/skeletal issue on my end but a very careful re-reading of the old "facelifting nwn" threads in the Omnibus indicated that I'd fallen into the same pit that Corporate Dog had when trying to animate his player mouths. Which can be summarized as: While you'd expect that robes/wings/tails/cloaks all work the same when it comes to playing back supermodeled animations, they don't Wings and tails don't play all supermodeled player animations back properly. AFAIK robes are the gold standard, probably cloaks too, playing back all the player animations properly. However, when a tail is supermodeled into the a_ba supermodel chain, here are some of the problems you're going to run into:
* Torches, weapon-draw or other non-base animrooted (presumably) animations don't play back properly
* Head look does not work
* Many emotes do not work
* After performing a nod or some other animations, it's possible for both tail and player models to go out of sync with each other which...is very bad, to say the least. If you set up a simple test with, say, Maugrim (tail 189, supermodeled into a_ba) in these tests as the player's arm swinging forward during a pause animation while the tail's arm swings backward.
And wings seem to have the same issues as tails, including going out of sync with the tail model's animations.
I also tested these situations while being mounted on the horse models and I didn't see anything which made me believe the issue had been conquered in some way. Since the horse isn't meant to mimic the rider's movements like a skin mesh skeleton supermodeled into a_ba, about the best I could do was confirm there seemed to be no independent animations of the horse (outside of the pause* animations) when I tested the bullet-pointed situations above.
So there appears to be something fundamentally different with the nature of how wings and tails are done versus how cloaks and robes are, when it comes to supermodeled animations. How to get around this? Well, baking animations onto tails and wings might address the issue but there's obviously something sketchy about them when some model events are playing through wings/tails to their supermodels and some aren't.
The cruddy part of all of this, LOL, is that both cloaks and robes, which appear to be the only viable target for a project like this are Kinda Nice The Way They Are™ and I don't particularly want to go chopping at them, even if the work wouldn't affect other existing phenotypes.
Another one of those "My god, this idea is awesome!...Why hasn't anyone done this- this is a freaking slam dunk!" ideas. Oh well, time to fall back to something a little less amibtious. Being able to see the same problematic issues using a default tail (Maugrim) supermodeled into a_ba helped immensely.
So where to next? I don't know. Despite being a little ticked off that wings and tails didn't come through for me on this, I'm maybe more in love with the concept than when I started. I didn't realize it, but there's already a prototype using robes that LeAdderNoir uploaded to the Vault, though I don't know how much of what's in the screenshot below is in the package.
And here's some artwork from Ashtefere giving some basic idea of the variety that model parts (in red) would give, overlaying a base skin mesh.
It is hard to look at those two images and think "Naaaah! Not worth it!" I am getting a little burnt, though, so I'm not sure exactly what or how much I'm going to pursue it in the near future. I loaded a full body skin mesh from another game into Max and made it a regular creature appearance. When I changed to that appearance, of course, everything worked perfectly including head look. But, LOL, no dynamic armor and (to a lesser extent) no PLT. What a tease.
Back to the drawing board...
#53
Posté 11 février 2012 - 09:59
OldMansBeard
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*OMB nods*
I think you're right - only some of the animations link through to wings and tails so even if you define animations in the model itself they still don't fire. I suppose they are assumed to just go on flapping and swishing while the body does its own thing.
I think head-turning works if you re-parent wings to head_g so you could maybe still use wings for faces that way but it would be nice to be able to animate expressions. Do custom animations link through to wings? I haven't tried that.
Plodding on with my robes, I'm worrying about kilt bones currently.
OMB
I think you're right - only some of the animations link through to wings and tails so even if you define animations in the model itself they still don't fire. I suppose they are assumed to just go on flapping and swishing while the body does its own thing.
I think head-turning works if you re-parent wings to head_g so you could maybe still use wings for faces that way but it would be nice to be able to animate expressions. Do custom animations link through to wings? I haven't tried that.
Plodding on with my robes, I'm worrying about kilt bones currently.
OMB
#54
Posté 17 février 2012 - 05:21
Sylrae
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Interesting stuff.
I maintain my stance that a replacement graphic that uses its own animations is a valid approach, though it would mean ditching the models that already exist, and potentially modified or totally custom animations.
I maintain my stance that a replacement graphic that uses its own animations is a valid approach, though it would mean ditching the models that already exist, and potentially modified or totally custom animations.
#55
Posté 26 février 2012 - 04:40
OldTimeRadio
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Oh, now that's interesting....
IMPORTANT NOTE:
There is an issue with the NWN1 animation system that can cause animations to disappear or be played back incorrectly for certain nodes. This can make the cloaks either freeze like a stiff board or use the wrong animations. This issue is engine-level and cannot be fixed without Bioware intervention. However, there IS a workaround. You MUST make sure that your "cloak_g" node is defined BEFORE the "wing" and "impact" nodes. In fact, all animated nodes should be the first 4 children of the "torso_g" node. These will be "neck_g", "lbicep_g", "rbicep_g" and "cloak_g". You can use the "Order Children" tool in NWMax to adjust the order the child nodes are defined. NWMax will use this to determine exactly how the .mdl file will be written upon export.
#56
Posté 26 février 2012 - 07:17
Rolo Kipp
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<connecting a couple dots...>
<...in his spotty little mind>
Like the skinmesh being before the bones and animations on tiles being linked to an animation dummy and...OldTimeRadio wrote...
Oh, now that's interesting....IMPORTANT NOTE:
...
You MUST make sure that your "cloak_g" node is defined BEFORE the "wing" and "impact" nodes. In fact, all animated nodes should be the first 4 children of the "torso_g" node. These will be "neck_g", "lbicep_g", "rbicep_g" and "cloak_g". You can use the "Order Children" tool in NWMax to adjust the order the child nodes are defined. NWMax will use this to determine exactly how the .mdl file will be written upon export.
I wonder if our problems with tails animating correctly (and I've been following this discussion *closely*) can be... massaged a little by moving things around?Rob Bartel on Tileset Construction...
Emitters and Tiles
Also, I have added an emitter to tile TTE01_A04_01. This emitter box is linked directly to the AuraBase, and is therefore counted as a static object. This does not mean that the emitter will not work; it only means that any animation keys will not play. In order to make the emitter part of the dynamic geometry, link it to the animation
node (as above) and then keys will be recognized according to the animations played
<...in his spotty little mind>
Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 26 février 2012 - 07:18 .
#57
Posté 04 mars 2012 - 10:58
OldTimeRadio
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Well a week ago that was my hope, heh heh!
Tried a few tests since then. I couldn't achieve any difference in behavior by moving the hierarchy around, either in sensible or nonsensical ways. I then changed approaches, using one of the Lizardfolk appearances (which comes with tail nodes) and seeing if there might be a difference between player models and creature models on that point. Doesn't appear to be. After that I turned back to player models, using c_antoine, which is nice because he's got a greeting animation built in. I applied c_antoine as a wing, tail and a VFX (applied to any of the nodes he can be), he does not play his greet animation when I do. Fiddled around with "OrientToGround" column, "just in case". Nothing.
So looking at both situations, my player with Maugrim or Antoine as a tail, wing, VFX (Antoine at least has player-named anims) and the lizardfolk with lizardfolk tail, I'm not seeing a way to get those specific animations to play through a tail/wing/VFX.
As a sort of twisted bonus test, I modified capart.2da and pointed the right hand to spawn at the "root", same as the robe entry in that 2da. Right hand went missing and I couldn't figure out where it went- should have been between the feet if my guess was right. So I couldn't get far on that one but it's still possibly something to look into.
There's always the possibility that I performed or set up a test incorrectly, etc. I also didn't adjust the animroot of those animations to the base and I mention that because it's likely that if some finagling gets the animations to play, that would probably be it.
I likely won't pursue that course, though. One big example is the torch holding animation. Changing the animrooting on that would seem like a really quick way of borking things.
I suppose if one wasn't constrained by the way the current player animations are set up these things would not have as big an impact.
From what I've read (not tested yet), there might be a lot more available models per phenotype than I originally thought. (Omnibus: "Good news regarding") So I've shifted around a bit and am working (slowly) on a setup where I've restructured the a_ba series in such a way that body parts referenced in caparts.2da are no longer the animating joints, but are instead attached to (renamed) animating joints, vicariously. So on a_ba, for instance, torso_g becomes torso_m and torso_g is a dummy node attached to it. That sort of thing.
This is the "fallback", where I look at impregnating phenotypes with models using TGA/DDS textures- can't use PLT in that setup AFAIK- and then use the body nodes purely for armor/decoration while the "nude" underbody (generic chainmail or leather armor, something like that) has the armor pieces overlaid to make something that hopefully makes sense in a visual way. Because it straddles the fence of how dynamic and non-dynamic models appear, you could also get things like current non-dynamic monster appearances being able to wear dynamic armor, though some of their internal node names may have to be changed- I haven't played much with it yet.
Anyway, if someone has contrary observations on the point of supermodeled wings/tails/VFX into player nodes, I'd love to hear/see it.
Tried a few tests since then. I couldn't achieve any difference in behavior by moving the hierarchy around, either in sensible or nonsensical ways. I then changed approaches, using one of the Lizardfolk appearances (which comes with tail nodes) and seeing if there might be a difference between player models and creature models on that point. Doesn't appear to be. After that I turned back to player models, using c_antoine, which is nice because he's got a greeting animation built in. I applied c_antoine as a wing, tail and a VFX (applied to any of the nodes he can be), he does not play his greet animation when I do. Fiddled around with "OrientToGround" column, "just in case". Nothing.
So looking at both situations, my player with Maugrim or Antoine as a tail, wing, VFX (Antoine at least has player-named anims) and the lizardfolk with lizardfolk tail, I'm not seeing a way to get those specific animations to play through a tail/wing/VFX.
As a sort of twisted bonus test, I modified capart.2da and pointed the right hand to spawn at the "root", same as the robe entry in that 2da. Right hand went missing and I couldn't figure out where it went- should have been between the feet if my guess was right. So I couldn't get far on that one but it's still possibly something to look into.
There's always the possibility that I performed or set up a test incorrectly, etc. I also didn't adjust the animroot of those animations to the base and I mention that because it's likely that if some finagling gets the animations to play, that would probably be it.
I likely won't pursue that course, though. One big example is the torch holding animation. Changing the animrooting on that would seem like a really quick way of borking things.
I suppose if one wasn't constrained by the way the current player animations are set up these things would not have as big an impact.
From what I've read (not tested yet), there might be a lot more available models per phenotype than I originally thought. (Omnibus: "Good news regarding") So I've shifted around a bit and am working (slowly) on a setup where I've restructured the a_ba series in such a way that body parts referenced in caparts.2da are no longer the animating joints, but are instead attached to (renamed) animating joints, vicariously. So on a_ba, for instance, torso_g becomes torso_m and torso_g is a dummy node attached to it. That sort of thing.
This is the "fallback", where I look at impregnating phenotypes with models using TGA/DDS textures- can't use PLT in that setup AFAIK- and then use the body nodes purely for armor/decoration while the "nude" underbody (generic chainmail or leather armor, something like that) has the armor pieces overlaid to make something that hopefully makes sense in a visual way. Because it straddles the fence of how dynamic and non-dynamic models appear, you could also get things like current non-dynamic monster appearances being able to wear dynamic armor, though some of their internal node names may have to be changed- I haven't played much with it yet.
Anyway, if someone has contrary observations on the point of supermodeled wings/tails/VFX into player nodes, I'd love to hear/see it.
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 06 mars 2012 - 05:05 .
#58
Posté 12 juillet 2012 - 02:59
Rolo Kipp
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<getting his...>
I'd really like to pursue this again.
Our goal of ingame customization of players is really crippled by not being able to 1) target specific nodes other than the head and impact and 2) not being able to layer customization.
OTR, if you're feeling froggy, what do you think about setting up a player model with monster nodes located (well, only the first 3 for starters :-P):
monster0 = head
monster1 = r hand
monster2 = l hand
monster3 = r foot
monster4 = l foot
monster5 = torso
monster6 = pelvis
monster7 = belt
monster8 = r shoulder
monster9 = l shoulder
If we can bind a durable spell effect to the monster node (*and* align it, somehow :-/ ) then we could make multiple, layered accessories on your skinmesh-robe body. Example: Hands with different grips, gloves for the hands, wolverine claws for the gloves... etc.
The first blatant challenge I see is attaching a durable spell rather than a fire and forget to the monster node. The second is aligning it to the monster node orientation.
@ Virusman: Have you come across any functions relating to the monster nodes? Perhaps something we can experiment with?
<...monster on>
I'd really like to pursue this again.
Our goal of ingame customization of players is really crippled by not being able to 1) target specific nodes other than the head and impact and 2) not being able to layer customization.
OTR, if you're feeling froggy, what do you think about setting up a player model with monster nodes located (well, only the first 3 for starters :-P):
monster0 = head
monster1 = r hand
monster2 = l hand
monster3 = r foot
monster4 = l foot
monster5 = torso
monster6 = pelvis
monster7 = belt
monster8 = r shoulder
monster9 = l shoulder
If we can bind a durable spell effect to the monster node (*and* align it, somehow :-/ ) then we could make multiple, layered accessories on your skinmesh-robe body. Example: Hands with different grips, gloves for the hands, wolverine claws for the gloves... etc.
The first blatant challenge I see is attaching a durable spell rather than a fire and forget to the monster node. The second is aligning it to the monster node orientation.
@ Virusman: Have you come across any functions relating to the monster nodes? Perhaps something we can experiment with?
<...monster on>
#59
Posté 12 juillet 2012 - 05:53
OldTimeRadio
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Um, crap. It's easy enough work but I'm going to beg off because I'm working with these files right now and I don't want to eff with anything in my override folder at the moment. I'm taking another crack at this for the CCC on the sly, as robes. It's really easy to do though: Just load a PMH0 from HotU, create the dummy monster nodes you want and then align them by pivot to x, y & z to the joints you're talking about and then attach them to that joint. Joint=body part. I think at that point you're done. You could just test without a modified model and then create something more complex when a method was actually found that works, too.
Linked (or possibly ****) ProjType seems the most promising for what you're thinking of, IMO.
I'm pursuing this whole thing from the standpoint of using full robes (from the neck down) and then turning the body parts themselves into the accessories I want by setting the robes 2da so that it doesn't hide them. Plus the obligatory head/wing hair thing, and Ippensheir-style VFX, blah blah blah. There's an ACBONUS value attached to body parts, though, so, I mean, yeah, that could get a little weird. I'm always down for a little weird, tho.
Doubt I'm going to pull off what I want to do with the robes, though. I'm drawing elements from 4 different body meshes (Kotor, Sims 2, Sims 3 & Titan Quest) and whatever I come up with has to be UV mapped to Sims 2 textures and decent (non fists-of-doom) hands. That's the plan, anyway. Turning the actual NWN model into its own skin mesh is attractive technically, but it's so godawful. I mean, maybe tesselate or something but....yeah.
Linked (or possibly ****) ProjType seems the most promising for what you're thinking of, IMO.
I'm pursuing this whole thing from the standpoint of using full robes (from the neck down) and then turning the body parts themselves into the accessories I want by setting the robes 2da so that it doesn't hide them. Plus the obligatory head/wing hair thing, and Ippensheir-style VFX, blah blah blah. There's an ACBONUS value attached to body parts, though, so, I mean, yeah, that could get a little weird. I'm always down for a little weird, tho.
Doubt I'm going to pull off what I want to do with the robes, though. I'm drawing elements from 4 different body meshes (Kotor, Sims 2, Sims 3 & Titan Quest) and whatever I come up with has to be UV mapped to Sims 2 textures and decent (non fists-of-doom) hands. That's the plan, anyway. Turning the actual NWN model into its own skin mesh is attractive technically, but it's so godawful. I mean, maybe tesselate or something but....yeah.
#60
Posté 12 juillet 2012 - 06:01
Rolo Kipp
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<watching the old man squirm...>
Ok, back on the back burner for now. That *is* where I want to go, pretty soon.
Glad you're doing something tricky for the CCC, though ;-)
But *I* am also doing something CCC-related... working on the TaVFX templates to make backpack, scabbards & quivers easier to build <and amulets, gorgets, mutant limbs, familiars on shoulders...>
*hangs head* Yeah, I know. Promised you TAD's raven-on-the-shoulder a *long* time ago... I'll get to it. <*raven glare*>
So it'll have to wait :-P
<...and enjoying it>
Ok, back on the back burner for now. That *is* where I want to go, pretty soon.
Glad you're doing something tricky for the CCC, though ;-)
But *I* am also doing something CCC-related... working on the TaVFX templates to make backpack, scabbards & quivers easier to build <and amulets, gorgets, mutant limbs, familiars on shoulders...>
*hangs head* Yeah, I know. Promised you TAD's raven-on-the-shoulder a *long* time ago... I'll get to it. <*raven glare*>
So it'll have to wait :-P
<...and enjoying it>
Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 12 juillet 2012 - 06:02 .
#61
Posté 12 juillet 2012 - 10:48
Failed.Bard
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OldTimeRadio wrote...
...
I'm pursuing this whole thing from the standpoint of using full robes (from the neck down) and then turning the body parts themselves into the accessories I want by setting the robes 2da so that it doesn't hide them. Plus the obligatory head/wing hair thing, and Ippensheir-style VFX, blah blah blah. There's an ACBONUS value attached to body parts, though, so, I mean, yeah, that could get a little weird. I'm always down for a little weird, tho.
...
That's the general method I'd been trying with the monsters as robes tests I'd been doing. I think it has merit for PCs as well, and at least standard PC races won't run into the problem I was having with non a_ba rooted models not being animated as robes.
Have you managed to have it take a model specific plt? That was the single largest problem I'd had with the method, I had to use the pmh0 plt even with setting them as a new race letter.
#62
Posté 12 juillet 2012 - 11:47
OldTimeRadio
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I'm not sure I have. Going for the PLT version of a skin was always the last possible thing I'd do and I tend to use this trick when testing so...no? I thought all that was settled business from 1.67:Failed.Bard wrote...
Have you managed to have it take a model specific plt? That was the single largest problem I'd had with the method, I had to use the pmh0 plt even with setting them as a new race letter.
See also: Omnibus: custom AND race AND skin AND 1.67, and/or hereChange to allow plt texture support on custom created part-based creature races. Part-based creatures (past row 481 in the appearance.2da) will now use a plt texture name based on the "RACE" letter specified in the appearance.2da (rather than always using the pfh0_ prefix). If your custom part-based creature is past row 481 in the appearance.2da and you haven't specified the race specific PLT texture the game will use the human PLT texture by default.
I've never done any of this stuff, AFAIK. Just pointing to something useful, hopefully.
#63
Posté 28 décembre 2012 - 08:19
MerricksDad
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Keep this thread alive:
I've been working on this exact thing since 2006 and I apparently missed this entire conversation. Keep watch in the next few weeks for the start of my own take on how to do it. You guys seem to have stumbled across all the same things I did when I first started. And fortunately, found out a few unrelated things I needed to complete the task (especially OTR).
My intent is to replace the entirety of the human animation tree with a new one, which of course contains a skin like those you were all working on. I then intend to release an entire package of replacement body parts that go over the skin, as shown in OTR's pics. With proper modeling in the skinmesh, they really do look good. I have just a tiny set of body pics waiting for approval on the vault, but soon I will show some ingame pics with gear on.
Is there really a bone limitation!? hmmmm, that will suck
Ive merged the human animation tree into a single model so I can run all my automated parts on just one file. Nothing is keeping me from breaking it up later of course. I've added (via scripts) a few more nodes (working on shoulders that actually work), and animations for those nodes. The female model also has jiggle built in that looks much more fluid than danglymesh, AND being hard-coded into the animation, is not apt to spill beyond armor parts built for that base skin.
This actually was pretty easy to skin because I can hide all the bones in gmax and use the animation slider to move parts around for better skin-to-bone painting.
After I finish both m and f human, I will start work on some custom non-humans. Not sure about what to do with phenotypes though. A lot of the games out there now have so many changeable features, like girth, that a single large phenotype doesn't seem like enough. I might do a skinny, realistic, and...er...big boned. Since its all in the skin, its super simple really to make phenos.
be back soon
I've been working on this exact thing since 2006 and I apparently missed this entire conversation. Keep watch in the next few weeks for the start of my own take on how to do it. You guys seem to have stumbled across all the same things I did when I first started. And fortunately, found out a few unrelated things I needed to complete the task (especially OTR).
My intent is to replace the entirety of the human animation tree with a new one, which of course contains a skin like those you were all working on. I then intend to release an entire package of replacement body parts that go over the skin, as shown in OTR's pics. With proper modeling in the skinmesh, they really do look good. I have just a tiny set of body pics waiting for approval on the vault, but soon I will show some ingame pics with gear on.
Is there really a bone limitation!? hmmmm, that will suck
Ive merged the human animation tree into a single model so I can run all my automated parts on just one file. Nothing is keeping me from breaking it up later of course. I've added (via scripts) a few more nodes (working on shoulders that actually work), and animations for those nodes. The female model also has jiggle built in that looks much more fluid than danglymesh, AND being hard-coded into the animation, is not apt to spill beyond armor parts built for that base skin.
This actually was pretty easy to skin because I can hide all the bones in gmax and use the animation slider to move parts around for better skin-to-bone painting.
After I finish both m and f human, I will start work on some custom non-humans. Not sure about what to do with phenotypes though. A lot of the games out there now have so many changeable features, like girth, that a single large phenotype doesn't seem like enough. I might do a skinny, realistic, and...er...big boned. Since its all in the skin, its super simple really to make phenos.
be back soon
#64
Posté 28 décembre 2012 - 08:44
Rolo Kipp
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<practicing yoga...>
I am so very interested in this that I've gone ahead and published the incomplete project so you can see what's got me excited :-)
<...to stay flexible>
I am so very interested in this that I've gone ahead and published the incomplete project so you can see what's got me excited :-)
<...to stay flexible>
#65
Posté 31 décembre 2012 - 03:02
OldTimeRadio
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Looking good!
After looking over both your notes in this thread and on the Vault, the biggest warning/advice I can give with this particular task is as soon as you can, try to get a complete end-to-end process done to make sure the path you think is going to work, works. Just confirm whatever workflow you have in mind will really get you 100% there.
As far as bone limits go, you can get around any problems there by slicing your skin up into smaller chunks. The last time I was playing with this I was using a weighted mesh which had way too many bones for NWN and whose bones I had attached to NWN bones so as to benefit from the existing NWN animations.
I get around the bone limit by duplicating the skin mesh multiple times and then deleting portions of each duplicate so what's left has ~16 bones or less, with all unused bones removed. So the girl in that video is multiple skin meshes: IIRC, one for her neck, chest, pelvis, thighs, shins and feet. One for her arms and one (each) for her hands. I kind of mix it up a bit when I'm testing, but I believe that's how this specific one was chopped up. At most, there was one more segmentation, chopping the torso/legs horizontally at the navel or thereabouts.
That whole multi-skin process works absolutely fine- no problems at all. It looks a little crazy, but it's not. A good example of this technique is NewByPower's Talim robe.
I've moved onto experimenting with something I've been calling The Shady Sands Shuffle but the idea is so "out there" I've hardly worked on it am a little embarrassed to describe it until I can confirm it actually does what I think it will. It would probably never come close to the nice looking bodies one thinks of with typical skin mesh, but trades all that away for (hopefully) an easier-to-achieve functionality using body parts to hold adornments like earrings, bracelets, etc.
So get your project done quickly so I can drop all this madness and become a contented pensioner making armor parts for those skin mesh bodies!
After looking over both your notes in this thread and on the Vault, the biggest warning/advice I can give with this particular task is as soon as you can, try to get a complete end-to-end process done to make sure the path you think is going to work, works. Just confirm whatever workflow you have in mind will really get you 100% there.
As far as bone limits go, you can get around any problems there by slicing your skin up into smaller chunks. The last time I was playing with this I was using a weighted mesh which had way too many bones for NWN and whose bones I had attached to NWN bones so as to benefit from the existing NWN animations.
I get around the bone limit by duplicating the skin mesh multiple times and then deleting portions of each duplicate so what's left has ~16 bones or less, with all unused bones removed. So the girl in that video is multiple skin meshes: IIRC, one for her neck, chest, pelvis, thighs, shins and feet. One for her arms and one (each) for her hands. I kind of mix it up a bit when I'm testing, but I believe that's how this specific one was chopped up. At most, there was one more segmentation, chopping the torso/legs horizontally at the navel or thereabouts.
That whole multi-skin process works absolutely fine- no problems at all. It looks a little crazy, but it's not. A good example of this technique is NewByPower's Talim robe.
I've moved onto experimenting with something I've been calling The Shady Sands Shuffle but the idea is so "out there" I've hardly worked on it am a little embarrassed to describe it until I can confirm it actually does what I think it will. It would probably never come close to the nice looking bodies one thinks of with typical skin mesh, but trades all that away for (hopefully) an easier-to-achieve functionality using body parts to hold adornments like earrings, bracelets, etc.
So get your project done quickly so I can drop all this madness and become a contented pensioner making armor parts for those skin mesh bodies!
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 31 décembre 2012 - 03:03 .
#66
Posté 05 février 2013 - 05:38
OldTimeRadio
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This is mostly just for people who are actively working on this sort of thing and probably not so interesting to anyone else. Even then...(lol!)
Since I started this thread I've tried every way to attach skin mesh to a PC that I can think of. And while the goal is an improvement of some sort over the existing bodies we have, during the work I wound up rolling the problem around in my head and looking at it from different angles. Just identifying what the problem was, was interesting, because it's really multiple problems and/or multiple goals.
All the stuff about dynamic armor and the ancillary issues of dynamic hair etc., aside, there's really a simple issue at the heart of all this, which is the Wooden Puppet Blues. They're caused because the individual armor/body parts of a model are shaded independently of each other. So, when a forearm is shaded, the engine knows nothing about having a hand attached or being attached to the bicep. It just knows to shade the forearm model. And because of the shading system, the darkest part of the bicep enters into the brightest part of the forearm and so on..
To wit:
You can get around this by using flat shading for all your areas, which is a terrible idea, or you could set the model to render in such a way that the shading doesn't affect it, such as I describe above. Problem with this is that you wind up essentially making your model self-illuminating to blast away the shading, and that's not really much of a solution, either.
If anyone knows how to selectively turn off the shading for a model without causing it to become brighter, please post it! Because that little trick, alone, could make most of the worst of the Wooden Puppet Blues go away, right there.
So the idea goes that doing the whole model (or as much as possible) as one solid skin mesh will result in even shading over the whole model or at least prevent the wooden puppet blues. And that's true but the shading still highlights even the tiniest differences in a skin mesh.
Here are some experiments (which will hopefull move to WIP status soon) being displayed in the same unflattering lighting conditions. Heads are the only normal geometry. The neck on down, everything below the head, is skin mesh:
So it gets better, but there are still issues. By no means are these done but the female has much more work put into her skin weighting and even then, look at the shading between the pelvis and the thigh. I'm not saying these are paragons of anything, so someone can probably do better- but these are what I'm working with now.
These bodies are very low-poly. I think they're both almost exactly 1.5k faces each and at least for the male the individual part-based geometry is around 500 faces. So pretty much 3x the faces.
A reasonable question to ask is "Is it worth it?", then. I think it is. Technically, I could make a case that these robes actually run faster than their part-based counterparts, even at 3x the faces. But the main thing is it cures most of the Wooden Puppet Blues and things like that nightmarish shading between the torso and the pelvis.
But you give up dangly boobs and dangly boobs are not inconsequential, IMO.
Interestingly, out of all the approaches I tried, doing a full creature appearance where the skin is baked into the creature model itself gave the best result, though it too lost use of dangly. No PLT either but things like the mythical head-tracking while in a skin mesh worked fine. I would say OldMansBeard's approach, while seemingly limited, does have an awful lot going for it, especially with his purported enhancements to the bones, bringing back something like dangly for hair and breasts.
Having come to the conclusions I have, it's difficult to imagine a world where I do these as anything but robes. The compatibility is high, whereas other approaches seem to run into roadblock after roadblock and also require what is probably a full re-do of the entire armor system. Not saying it's not do-able, because I've seen enough to believe that it technically is. It's just the tradeoffs. At least that's the way I'm looking at it, today. The tradeoffs along the way seem to have eaten at the usefulness of the dynamic armor/skin mesh idea to the point that I look at robes and they look like a better deal. Again, that's just my arithmetic.
Since I started this thread I've tried every way to attach skin mesh to a PC that I can think of. And while the goal is an improvement of some sort over the existing bodies we have, during the work I wound up rolling the problem around in my head and looking at it from different angles. Just identifying what the problem was, was interesting, because it's really multiple problems and/or multiple goals.
All the stuff about dynamic armor and the ancillary issues of dynamic hair etc., aside, there's really a simple issue at the heart of all this, which is the Wooden Puppet Blues. They're caused because the individual armor/body parts of a model are shaded independently of each other. So, when a forearm is shaded, the engine knows nothing about having a hand attached or being attached to the bicep. It just knows to shade the forearm model. And because of the shading system, the darkest part of the bicep enters into the brightest part of the forearm and so on..
To wit:
You can get around this by using flat shading for all your areas, which is a terrible idea, or you could set the model to render in such a way that the shading doesn't affect it, such as I describe above. Problem with this is that you wind up essentially making your model self-illuminating to blast away the shading, and that's not really much of a solution, either.
If anyone knows how to selectively turn off the shading for a model without causing it to become brighter, please post it! Because that little trick, alone, could make most of the worst of the Wooden Puppet Blues go away, right there.
So the idea goes that doing the whole model (or as much as possible) as one solid skin mesh will result in even shading over the whole model or at least prevent the wooden puppet blues. And that's true but the shading still highlights even the tiniest differences in a skin mesh.
Here are some experiments (which will hopefull move to WIP status soon) being displayed in the same unflattering lighting conditions. Heads are the only normal geometry. The neck on down, everything below the head, is skin mesh:
So it gets better, but there are still issues. By no means are these done but the female has much more work put into her skin weighting and even then, look at the shading between the pelvis and the thigh. I'm not saying these are paragons of anything, so someone can probably do better- but these are what I'm working with now.
These bodies are very low-poly. I think they're both almost exactly 1.5k faces each and at least for the male the individual part-based geometry is around 500 faces. So pretty much 3x the faces.
A reasonable question to ask is "Is it worth it?", then. I think it is. Technically, I could make a case that these robes actually run faster than their part-based counterparts, even at 3x the faces. But the main thing is it cures most of the Wooden Puppet Blues and things like that nightmarish shading between the torso and the pelvis.
But you give up dangly boobs and dangly boobs are not inconsequential, IMO.
Interestingly, out of all the approaches I tried, doing a full creature appearance where the skin is baked into the creature model itself gave the best result, though it too lost use of dangly. No PLT either but things like the mythical head-tracking while in a skin mesh worked fine. I would say OldMansBeard's approach, while seemingly limited, does have an awful lot going for it, especially with his purported enhancements to the bones, bringing back something like dangly for hair and breasts.
Having come to the conclusions I have, it's difficult to imagine a world where I do these as anything but robes. The compatibility is high, whereas other approaches seem to run into roadblock after roadblock and also require what is probably a full re-do of the entire armor system. Not saying it's not do-able, because I've seen enough to believe that it technically is. It's just the tradeoffs. At least that's the way I'm looking at it, today. The tradeoffs along the way seem to have eaten at the usefulness of the dynamic armor/skin mesh idea to the point that I look at robes and they look like a better deal. Again, that's just my arithmetic.
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 05 février 2013 - 05:38 .
#67
Posté 05 février 2013 - 05:58
henesua
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Your odyssey with skinmesh for NWN has been very interesting to watch. I've learned a great deal.
In some ways despite the wooden doll shading problem there are some advantages with a parts based model that NWN unfortunately never took advantage of. Its the interchangeable parts that enable great variety.
These skinmeshed models however do look a great deal better.
I suppose NWN needs aHAK engine level hack that enables on the fly mesh manipulation so that we can customize these wonderful creations of yours. I wonder if PLT swapping is possible too.
In some ways despite the wooden doll shading problem there are some advantages with a parts based model that NWN unfortunately never took advantage of. Its the interchangeable parts that enable great variety.
These skinmeshed models however do look a great deal better.
I suppose NWN needs a
Modifié par henesua, 05 février 2013 - 05:58 .
#68
Posté 05 février 2013 - 07:13
painofdungeoneternal
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Interesting, that is kind of how NWN2 does it, with each being appearance being similar to the robes shown here. I really prefer having the options of both parts and robes in the same game, but it comes down to your desire for better appearance, or giving the players more options. Be nice if we could take the various NWN2 clothing appearances and export them so they are usable in NWN1 since they look like they are already basically doing what you are describing.
( I've always wished we could redo the model exporting tools so we could actually export an appearance to multiple games without the modeler having to really understand more than how to use the exporter, with the goal of actually getting a larger single modeling community whose work can be used by a lot more players since they are not limited to a single game. Just imagine a person doing a classic monster, and being able to see that monster in NWN1, NWN2, Kotor, Dragon Age, Jade Empire, or whatever similar games that support semi-similar formats, if a new game shows up like a real NWN3, there would just have to be a new export plugin setup and then the modeler could export all their models to that new game, thus making the content easy to migrate, yet still capable of supporting ancient games. )
( I've always wished we could redo the model exporting tools so we could actually export an appearance to multiple games without the modeler having to really understand more than how to use the exporter, with the goal of actually getting a larger single modeling community whose work can be used by a lot more players since they are not limited to a single game. Just imagine a person doing a classic monster, and being able to see that monster in NWN1, NWN2, Kotor, Dragon Age, Jade Empire, or whatever similar games that support semi-similar formats, if a new game shows up like a real NWN3, there would just have to be a new export plugin setup and then the modeler could export all their models to that new game, thus making the content easy to migrate, yet still capable of supporting ancient games. )
#69
Posté 05 février 2013 - 07:27
OldTimeRadio
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@Heneusa - Well, I don't want to give you the impression that things are as borked as they might seem. All this stuff I'm doing is based around a very specific goal of mine, which (although this was done with TQ models) was originally centered around using materials from the Sims 2 modding community. The hope was to try to kill a bunch of birds with one well-placed stone and produce something which wasn't just an improvement, but something that was modder-friendly for customization by other folks.
The technical base is actually pretty straight forward to accomplish:
1. Make a robe using exsiting individual body parts.
2. Edit armor parts so only the armor-looking bits remain, not the body portions.
You just shuffle all the PC body parts to a robe and shuffle the armor from the robe to the customizable nature of the multipart system, leaving some or all of the body parts visible in the parts_robe.2da:
Boom! That's it. I've simplified it a little bit but not much. That's Ashtefere's system, just done in a shady (read "dodgy") way.
The two problems are A) It looks as bad as existing NWN models do (because you're using existing body parts to craft the "nude" or "jumpsuit" robe) and
It exposes the next step of the process, which requires scripting and also a sort of all-or-nothing commitment to replace big chunks of the existing armor parts so everything works with the new paradigm. Environments where things are invisible unless they're wearing robes, a toolset which only displays the human normal phenotype when crafting armor...the little problems start to stack up and make whole new problems.
I have a splitting headache for some reason (not usual for me), but I just ran through this in Max and in-game and I don't think I'm missing anything in what I describe.
The technical base is actually pretty straight forward to accomplish:
1. Make a robe using exsiting individual body parts.
2. Edit armor parts so only the armor-looking bits remain, not the body portions.
You just shuffle all the PC body parts to a robe and shuffle the armor from the robe to the customizable nature of the multipart system, leaving some or all of the body parts visible in the parts_robe.2da:
Boom! That's it. I've simplified it a little bit but not much. That's Ashtefere's system, just done in a shady (read "dodgy") way.
The two problems are A) It looks as bad as existing NWN models do (because you're using existing body parts to craft the "nude" or "jumpsuit" robe) and
It exposes the next step of the process, which requires scripting and also a sort of all-or-nothing commitment to replace big chunks of the existing armor parts so everything works with the new paradigm. Environments where things are invisible unless they're wearing robes, a toolset which only displays the human normal phenotype when crafting armor...the little problems start to stack up and make whole new problems.I have a splitting headache for some reason (not usual for me), but I just ran through this in Max and in-game and I don't think I'm missing anything in what I describe.
#70
Posté 05 février 2013 - 07:51
henesua
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OTR, I fully understand what you are presenting, and I agree with the advantages. With 2DA work for the robes (so that the robes do not replace anything), and remaking as invisible the default models for the parts based bodies it all makes sense as a very interesting approach.
But what is very interesting for me as a builder making creatures is the ability to stitch together monsters frankenstein style. So I was simply pointing out that each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages.
Lately as I hear the call of Unity more strongly these days I am considering the zombie game I've been wanting to make for awhile. It will definitely use a rag doll and a parts based approach. The ability to lose body parts on the fly or to swap them in and out is just too tempting for that kind of game. Its actually a fundamental part of the game play, but ... thats the future for me not the now.
However like I said I definitely understand the value of skinmesh aesthetically. It seems to me however that to fully take advantage of it you'd need the ability to apply procedural modification to the mesh and/or the texture. So it would be interesting if some of the technical wizards are able to create this for us.
But what is very interesting for me as a builder making creatures is the ability to stitch together monsters frankenstein style. So I was simply pointing out that each of these methods has its advantages and disadvantages.
Lately as I hear the call of Unity more strongly these days I am considering the zombie game I've been wanting to make for awhile. It will definitely use a rag doll and a parts based approach. The ability to lose body parts on the fly or to swap them in and out is just too tempting for that kind of game. Its actually a fundamental part of the game play, but ... thats the future for me not the now.
However like I said I definitely understand the value of skinmesh aesthetically. It seems to me however that to fully take advantage of it you'd need the ability to apply procedural modification to the mesh and/or the texture. So it would be interesting if some of the technical wizards are able to create this for us.
#71
Posté 05 février 2013 - 08:14
OldTimeRadio
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Okay, think I might have misunderstood what you were saying. Just to be clear, my last message shows a different method (Ashtefere's dynamic armor system) than the message I posted before it (normal robes).
I'm sure Unity has many more features along those lines but Virusman did came up with a great way to switch textures on the fly using NWNCX:
I don't know if it works with PLT's, though. As far as the mesh deformation, there's regular body part removal using scripting with a dynamic race, of course, but unfortunately I think it would be quite difficult with skin mesh.
I'm sure Unity has many more features along those lines but Virusman did came up with a great way to switch textures on the fly using NWNCX:
I don't know if it works with PLT's, though. As far as the mesh deformation, there's regular body part removal using scripting with a dynamic race, of course, but unfortunately I think it would be quite difficult with skin mesh.
#72
Posté 05 février 2013 - 08:21
OldTimeRadio
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They're not mutually exclusive, but with the materials I have chosen they sort of are. I have a little more flexibility when it just comes to textures and there could be ways of using better textures to hide the lower quality of default NWN player models. The shaidng thing would still be present, although quite a bit less using the Shuffle I have the screenshot of. But, again, that leads to other issues, LOL.painofdungeoneternal wrote...
Interesting, that is kind of how NWN2 does it, with each being appearance being similar to the robes shown here. I really prefer having the options of both parts and robes in the same game, but it comes down to your desire for better appearance, or giving the players more options.
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 05 février 2013 - 08:22 .
#73
Posté 05 février 2013 - 08:35
painofdungeoneternal
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Can i get what 2da work is needed to implement and support these, are they one time changes or something needed to support each robe on an ongoing basis. ( I have what is basically a simple scripting language to store what changes need to be made to 2da files for a given package )
Just curious as to if my systems could be used in conjunction to what you are doing here, i also have integrated usage of skywings script compiler, to basically build what is needed based on what happens to be installed. ( i already have some ideas from RWS related to automated generation of tilesets 2da files based on available models )
Just curious as to if my systems could be used in conjunction to what you are doing here, i also have integrated usage of skywings script compiler, to basically build what is needed based on what happens to be installed. ( i already have some ideas from RWS related to automated generation of tilesets 2da files based on available models )
Modifié par painofdungeoneternal, 05 février 2013 - 08:36 .
#74
Posté 05 février 2013 - 08:45
Rolo Kipp
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<dropping a line...>
Pain, re the automated generation of tilesets, Merricksdad has a lot of stuff in storage that he's dredging out.
Thread in Regional Mods
Thread in the Jan CCC
Don't mean to hi-jack this thread, lots of chewy details here I love :-) But I'd be happy if you scanned those posts.
@ OTR: I'm following this with rapt attention :-)
But...*sigh* ...back to work.
<...of pater>
Pain, re the automated generation of tilesets, Merricksdad has a lot of stuff in storage that he's dredging out.
Thread in Regional Mods
Thread in the Jan CCC
Don't mean to hi-jack this thread, lots of chewy details here I love :-) But I'd be happy if you scanned those posts.
@ OTR: I'm following this with rapt attention :-)
But...*sigh* ...back to work.
<...of pater>
#75
Posté 05 février 2013 - 08:55
OldTimeRadio
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Not much 2da work required. The first method would just have parts hidden in part_robes.2da, the second wouldn't- in order to allow the armor parts for traditional armor to "show through". No idea which of them will get the most love or when they'll be released, but I'm thinking my work on these Titan Quest community models is going to culminate only in regular old robes. MerricksDad and Failed.Bard are two other modders who sound like they might be actively working on the more complex system and so keep an eye out for their posts, too.
Edit:
@Rolo - No worries!
Edit:
@Rolo - No worries!
Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 05 février 2013 - 08:57 .
