Topic: Character animations

Not something I intend to do any time in the very near future, I've just been attempting to plan a roadmap for my project.

For my game, I will need to animate characters. That much is simple. I've played with the animation stuff a little. What I was wondering was whether there was any way to split these animations up. For example, what I'm used to at work is having a "main" animation which applies to the whole skeleton, and then potentially multiple sub animations which will overwrite the animation from one bone down it's children. To be honest, I've not had an in depth look at the animation system yet, so I'm not entirely sure if it's possible.

Also, if it's not possible, and not easy for someone (could be me) to add at a later date, how difficult would it be to expose the animation stuff itself, so (and here I go again) I could get a 3rd party library and add it in a plugin.

I realise that 3D models and animations are likely to be heavily integrated so it's probably not very easy to extract and extend. As I said, I'm trying to plan a roadmap, seeing what's possible and how much time I would need to invest for each feature. I would _really_ like to be able to have independant facial animations and am prepared to spend a considerable amount of time getting it to work smile

EDIT: I realise that I keep coming up with new features, and I'm definitely not planning on taking this one on until I've got considerably further.

Last edited by Nistur (2012-03-27 10:04:56)

Re: Character animations

I guess what you are looking for is animation blending?

that could be used for example to make the character wave his hand while walking, instead of 1 at a time.

I'm unsure if it's supported. but you could just test by playing 2 animations at the same time through script, it might work.

  • anael
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Re: Character animations

I have planned a morphing system to be used additionally to the bone system, for facial animation, deformation etc.

The main code is done in "MMorphingData" but I never had the time to do the morphing data export in the blender plugin, so also never tested.

After there is also some solutions using the current system, for example by separating the mesh in multiple parts, or by using multiple meshs for the face and hidding/showing it by code or using a mma animation (with animating opacity to show/hide).

Re: Character animations

Thanks for the quick replies. I will have a look what work is involved with the possible solutions. I will maybe try and persuade the artist sitting next to me to throw together a couple of test models for me tongue To be honest though, I probably won't touch this for months tongue I'm still working on a small demo for my game. There are some features I will need for that, but I don't think facial animation is one of the most important things.

  • VeganDev
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Re: Character animations

anael wrote:

I have planned a morphing system to be used additionally to the bone system, for facial animation, deformation etc.

The main code is done in "MMorphingData" but I never had the time to do the morphing data export in the blender plugin, so also never tested.

After there is also some solutions using the current system, for example by separating the mesh in multiple parts, or by using multiple meshs for the face and hidding/showing it by code or using a mma animation (with animating opacity to show/hide).

Does that system allow for animation blending as well as noted by other poste here ?

That's a very big deal for gaming; if not is this feature on a todo list or terribly difficult to code if not ? wink

cheers
gm

  • anael
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Re: Character animations

Hi,

morphing is different than animation blending, it is used to animate vertex position for special effect like facial expression.
Animation blending is not super difficult to do but like all the other feature it requires time and budget I'm struggling to find. I'll add it to the wiki. When the TODO list is big enough I might try to start a donation campaign to be able to stop my other work for one or two month to focuse only on Maratis, lets see, it's difficult to organize.

  • VeganDev
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Re: Character animations

anael wrote:

Hi,

morphing is different than animation blending, it is used to animate vertex position for special effect like facial expression.
Animation blending is not super difficult to do but like all the other feature it requires time and budget I'm struggling to find. I'll add it to the wiki. When the TODO list is big enough I might try to start a donation campaign to be able to stop my other work for one or two month to focuse only on Maratis, lets see, it's difficult to organize.

Yes its often difficult to find time when other projects which are bread and butter get in the way wink

Never mean to come across as expecting things, though its easy to do, but as a mostly non programmer ( python is easy, lua, but the rest scare me , though doable : as for you its going to take me some time ) Im sorta at the mercy of those who can wink

Thanks for what is here of course, and good luck getting todo list done as you move forward.

cheers
gm