Making new animations .... how is it done!

[Vercingetorix]

e) They are in skeletons.dat...

[SigniferOne]

Verci, have you had any luck with your updates for Animation editing in XIDX? You said you'd make a new option to make skeleton editing easier....

[Vercingetorix]

I know I know have patience with me...

[SigniferOne]

Just trying to get an update on progress, not intending to put any pressure :) Thanks for the update :)

[quadrille]

Is this an update that will make it possible, like Bwian has asked about, to change skeletons? That is crucial for the mod I'm working on! More than crucial, many many factions are impossible without us being able to change anatomy. (It's Warhammer TW if you were wondering). Simply no way an orc or an ogre could look right without broader shoulders, proportionally shorter legs a.s.o.

I just want you to know that if you fix this Vercingetorix you're our hero (once again). No pressure though, take your time man. Just great to hear that there might be a way.

[SigniferOne]

Please review screenshots from the Blue Lotus mod. They are already creating dragons and such.

[quadrille]

On an elephant skeleton Sure looks amusing, but it's apparent it's not a new skeleton. And the four armed sword fighters have two static arms from what I could tell, likely weighted to the torso.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the information I've gathered in this and other threads it appears no one has actually managed to do any anatomical modifications yet. That's where I was hoping Vercingetorix would come in to the picture.

[Bwian]

Quadrille...thats pretty much my reading of the situation. I have used a similar trick to make a 'Scout Walker' type robot. I basically just used the rear leg protion of a camel skeleton, and only weighted teh bones I wanted. It works OK...but you are limited to the camel proportions.

I also abandoned a fantasy based Myth total War project purely on those grounds. You just can' t make the fantasy creatures look right. You need Ogres to be bulkier, Dwarves to be stockier, etc.

I saw the screenshots from the LOTR mod, and their Dwarves looked like children. It was a good try, and the best that could be done...but it still just didn't looke right to me.

There are many improvements that could be made to the basic skeletons, that would open doors for fantasy mods ( my Robot one included ) The ability to lay out completely new skeletons in completely new patterns is all that prevents us!

[hoggy]

so far I've just been using existing skeletons on Blue Lotus, camels, elephants and such with different scales. Units like the 4 armed warrior are there in hope of future development (or otherwise I'll just weight them to the existing arms) Is it possible to use current skeletons but have the animations move the bone origins? ie. If you did a troll say with very long arms could you use the human skeletion but make all his animations specifically positioned for long arms?

[Bwian]

Hoggy....as far as moving the actual pivot locations go, no. Thats what we hope Vercingetorix can do, and is essentially the last step needed to actually make a new skeleton.

At present, if you try and move the pivot location in either the animation or the base model, it is ignored in game. Vercingetorix has confirmed that the actual pivot locations are defined in skeletons.dat, but we currently cannot edit it.

What I hope, is that the hints around us being able to supply a 'reference' skeleton and have that read into a new animation editor version to create a new skeleton actually becomes possible.

We may end up being limited ot the same number and rough hierarchy of bones, but I could live with that just fine! Most of the 'things' I want to build would work ok with re-sited pivots.....

[wlesmana]

hoggy> you can entend the mesh and for some limited movements it could work ok. But in most cases, especially when there's a joint involved, the warping of the skin can look very bad.

[Vercingetorix]

Thought you might like to know I updated XIDX. http://www.twcenter.net/forums/showt...145#post480145

[SigniferOne]

Well, I posted a reply in the TWC thread. I am really excited! I think we're almost there!

[Encaitar]

Excellent! That will be a great help.

[Bwian]

I can't download the newest version of the IDX tool ( not a Trivium member ) but it does look interesting. I will keep an eye on progress

[SigniferOne]

You don't have to be a Trivium member, just member of their forums. I've downloaded it, and it's nice!

[Bwian]

OK...joined up and downloaded the latest XIDX.

Gave the skeleton unpack a whirl, and got a list of 'files' with no extension, and a list. This does appear to be a list of all the animations ( certainly looks like it to me ) but I can't figure out what to do with them now I have them!

Is there any way to actually edit the files that are extracted?

[SigniferOne]

Yea, hex edit them. That's how I released my latest animations pack mod. Just rename all of those paths to animations, to point to a different folder (but keep the total length the same, so you'll have to delete an equivalent number of characters from the actual file name of the animation).

[Bwian]

Ah..OK.

What can the tool actually do that the old animation editor couldn't ?

I can see that you can copy and re-name a skeleton, but is it actually a NEW skeleton, or is it just a copy of the old skeleton with new animations possible once you hex-edit the file to re-point it to a folder full of animations?

[SigniferOne]

Basically, think of what we have now as an NON-BUGGY version of the old AnimPacker. And today Verci has released an even further improved version of the packer, removing from you the necessity to hex editing anything. But since he's in the groove lately, and since he is much happier with this program (better coding and easier to expand) than the old one, who knows how far he will take this. It's already beyond the old program in terms of having the same functionality but 1) making it unbuggy, and 2) making automatization optional, so you can get down and dirty into skeleton editing yourself, giving you a more hands-on access to the game's inner workings. So, just enjoy what we have now, and I think we're to see a lot more good things from Verci in time to come :)

[Bwian]

Thats good to know! Verc may be a great programmer, but he is a lousy readme writer ;)

I see what we have, and will get to grips with using it. I never really liked the old anim packer, since you quickly ended up with messy 'test' work .... and that was on top of the bugs!