334 réponses à ce sujet

[Eguintir Eligard]

I did what the tutorial said. Can't say I have the vernacular perfected yet.

 

So here's my guy in the actual NWN2 engine and I did my textures (wool pants, cloth t shirt, leather boots):

 

https://lh4.googleus...tty_in_game.jpg

 

As you can see they don't so much show up at the distances you view in game but they are definitely there, even when HUGELY zoomed in and they add the variety to the colour. I think the only reason my fatty stands out from the stock models is that he is a little plain... they have wrist wraps and boot straps and so on. Other than that I would say he fits in nicely other than some skin variation. I want to make him a belt add on, a vest (I suppose as a cloak?).

 

But for now in his plain state he looks fit to animate to me.

[IAmDeathComeForThee]

I suggested crazybump so you can actually get a proper AO that will give you the detail in your folds etc. that you are looking for, seeing as a heightmap is a weak replacement for a proper AO that you get simply by loading the program.  Up to you though, if you're happy enough with what you've got, then good enough.

[Eguintir Eligard]

oh I see. I didn't actually use the heightmap in the end. It wrecked the picture too much it was nothing but black marks. All I did was keep the AO, use the normal map in the bump map slot only, and let the in game lighting do it's work. I think I am ok with the subtle ripples on his shirt as they are. Out of game they were completely invisible which bugged me greatly.

[Eguintir Eligard]

Well I got my skeleton about half done:

https://lh3.googleus...y_half_skel.jpg

 

Figured I should have the theory down before I complete it and start weighting it to the body.

 

I like where I am at with the model; his texture is complete enough to continue on. The mesh is %100 complete, no changes. So if I decide I want to change detail I can go back and edit the gimp layers on the texture, but I am free to move on at this point which is great, and the textures are in a working, complete state already.

 

I did try importing the in game skeletons but all their bones were tiny little Xs and I couldn't tell them apart.

So I do have some general questions, some of which I have made assumptions that may or may not be right.

 

First of all I need to establish what my fatty will do. He is a creature model, to me. He should have capabilities more in line (if not exactly in line) with an ogre, not a player race model. He doesn't need to move his mouth (can't remember anyone using lyp synched flappers anywhere but myself) so his head is more or less static.

The one thing I might be interested in doing is having him blink. Not sure how they do that... is there really tiny little eyelid bones? The eyelid must rescind into the skull or something. If he doesn't, no big deal, as the humanoid creature models don't blink either as far as I recall.

 

Animations planned: walk, dead, sleep, sit, idle unarmed, twitch(s) while idling, hands up casting animation (could be used just to give him life).

 

(I wouldn't mind doing a few little custom ones but not sure if anyone would know how to use them if they were non standard animation names.)

 

 

So how does the whole Skeleton head and body thing work?

I assumed they use the exact same skeleton and are weight and exported separately. Any animation I do is automatically applied to both since they will share the skeleton. They rejoin in game when I select the right head.

 

Is my skeleton currently adequate for a head that will only turn and look up and down as one solid object?

Not sure if these "nubs" were necessary but non NWN2 tutorials seem to like them. That little bone above is not for the head, the larger one below is.

 

Is there anything else I should know about this skeleton specific to NWN2 or do  I proceed like any animation once it's done?

I am always suspecting some kind of trick to NWN2. Only one i know of is 3 bone weights max on a vertex.

[Lance Botelle]

Hi E.E.

Just dropping by and supporting the project ... Good to see "fatty" 62% done.

Lance.

[rjshae]

Just wondering how good ole Mr. Chunky Monkey is coming along. Any progress?

[Eguintir Eligard]

Well as per my campaign thread I just recently returned to civility. So this can continue soon. Last I recall I was finishing his neck since I didn't do the entire portion of it that I needed to make it attach on the skeleton. When I have that done I can finish the skeleton arms.

That will big a big stage. Once everything moves properly I texture head quick, and start animating. Very close I guess to beta

[Eguintir Eligard]

I have a question for the modellers who view this thread, an issue that is sure to come up when I do accessories for fatty:

 

What do you do when you need to go from a low poly area and create a higher poly extrusion. For example:

 

 

You can see what I am going for... a flatish lower poly surface to a protruding tentacle type extrustion that will require more poly density for it's shape to be cylindrical.

I know there are tricks to create quads in weird shapes to maintain continuity but I've only experienced that in same density poly models.

 

What would you do here??

[rjshae]

Like selecting the mesh lines centered on each side of the extruded shape then scaling them out in two dimensions until the shape is roughly cylindrical? Or maybe creating the shape separately then applying a bridge modifier to join them together? Sorry, I'm only familiar with Blender.

[Eguintir Eligard]

I know. I figure semper will show up. I know all that stuff but the point is to keep all polygons four sided.

I could do a huge edge loop around the whole mesh but it will add a lot of undue poly count

[4760]

What would you do here??

I'd create the extruded part as a different object, then merge both meshes using the "Compound object" / "Boolean" option from the "Create" menu.

Pictures in that case are probably better than text, so here's how I'd do it:

• blue (white when selected) mesh is low poly part, green mesh is higher poly extrusion:

• With the first mesh selected, go to the "Create" menu, select the "Compound Objects" menu in the drop down list, click on the button "Boolean":

• then "Pick Operand B", select the extruded part, choose "Union" as the operation to do.
• when it's done, both meshes are merged together (see the number of faces: from 828 initially to 1538 after the operation is completed).

[Eguintir Eligard]

Sorry you had to do all the example work. I know how to do boolean too but does it maintain quads?

[-Semper-]

What would you do here??

 

in this case the easiest and most elegant would be to lower the densitiy of the "body" and delete the middle edges of the antenna. subdivide it one time and you can soften the edges of the extrusion. another way would be similar to what 4760 described, but without the boolean operation. there's no need to combine both objects. it's enough to attach both separate meshes.

[Eguintir Eligard]

so basically you would "attach" a higher poly part like a tentacle to a lower poly body, but they wouldn't actually ever be a unified mesh? And they are basically two meshes acting as one?

[Tchos]

I don't know about for creatures, but for placeables you don't even need to attach things.  Even the OC uses some multi-part meshes, even ones that don't move.

[4760]

As far as I know, having separate meshes for a creature only works if each body part has its own mdb (like heads, tails, wings). It should also work for a special part (like the abdomens for the spiders, which are called xxx_CL_Extra01 instead of xxx_CL_Body01; I believe that's a way to attach a secondary mesh to the main one without having to use the head, tail or wing slot, and more importantly without needing to add it into the corresponding 2da. But it will only work for Extra01. Extra02 and up will never be used as far as I can tell).

 

So, yes it's possible if you name the second part xxx_CL_Extra01 (where xxx is the name of your creature, and provided its body is named xxx_CL_Body01), but there would only be one second mesh.

[Eguintir Eligard]

So a new question as I attempt the animation stage of things...

 

Does anyone have a comprehensive list of the animations, how long they should be, what to name them so that the system knows to run them, and what they should do?

 

I tried making an IDLEFIDGET   animation using that as a sufix but I don't see any of my beasties fidgeting in game. They just keep idling (which does work, _IDLE).

 

I thought I saw one on the blog I had been viewing or rws but neither have a really complete list of info. I know the amount of time or frames that each one should use is a particularly critical bit of info.

[4760]

IDLEFIDGET (and most of the animations by the way) depend on whether the creature is armed or not, so you must have UNA_Idlefidget for unarmed, 1HS_Idlefidget for one-handed weapon without shield, 1HSS for weapon + shield, etc...

 

Frank Perez made quite a good tutorial on this (link), I even made a Word version of his html pages so I have it whenever I need to refresh my memory 

The part you're interested in is Part 6 (here). Note there's a typo in his table: for thrown weapon, the code is THRW and not THRN as indicated.

[Eguintir Eligard]

That's weird because the base animation I did was just idle without the una part and it works

[Eguintir Eligard]

Extra question can I have multiples of any animation such as the idle? Cuz I'm thinking more than one idol variation would be nice. Whoops when I said idol I meant idle fidget

[4760]

Yes, idle is one of the exceptions: it works with or without the UNA code. If you look into the lod_merged files (in <your NWN2 installation folder>\Data), you'll see there are a few like this.

[Eguintir Eligard]

And question 2?

[4760]

Extra question can I have multiples of any animation such as the idle? Cuz I'm thinking more than one idol variation would be nice. Whoops when I said idol I meant idle fidget

 

 

And question 2?

 

Didn't see it first...

Well, you could probably have two, as _Idle and _UnA_Idle could be completely different. But if you're thinking about Idle01, Idle02 (like combat, death, dodge), I don't know. I would say no, as even if there's only one combat animation it has to be named combat01. Since Idle has no number after, it probably means it's not supposed to have variations.

 

That being said, you may still try idle01, idle02 etc... and use PlayCustomAnimation in the creature heartbeat I suppose...

[4760]

Regarding the Expotron exception, I got it sometimes too. I never knew if it was because of 0 weight vertices in the mesh, more than three bones weighted to some vertices (because in each case there are options in the skin modifier to make sure it doesn't happen) or something else.

It's pretty late now for me (or very early in the morning), hopefully I'll remember how I sorted it out after a few hours sleep.

[Eguintir Eligard]

It was because I changed the skeleton somehow and didn't re export it before the Mesh. I hid that post.

 

I have yet to get this fidget to show up...

 

Would this be correct syntax:

 

monster_UNA_IDLEfidget   

 

? ? ?

 

I have the animation at 30 frames I notice his chart says less than a second. That seems awfully fast... and is it related to it not working or are these guidelines?