FreeGameDev

I want to try and rig a random meka model with one of our animated skeletons (chicken walker or human walker). Firstly its an experiment to see if it is possible to get a resonable result, and secondly how long it would take. There is a post in the art forums suggesting 18 to 20 hours (I hope not!) The third reason, and this is only if it does work, we may include it in MekArcade.

Requirements
A mesh of an original mek design
Release the mesh with a CC by SA 3.0 licence
Happy to have the animated result released with MekArcade
Preferences
Textured or at least uvw map

I was going to pick a meckwarrior mesh for the experiment, but if it worked I could not use it, so it seemed a better idea to use an original mesh. So send us your meka....

Bonus points for making the Mek modular (like vanity items in RE, but so you can build your Mek).

A meka with a monocle or a mo? I think not.

You could make use a bland generic chassis and tag all the external elements like armor and weapons, so the external appearance would be formed mostly by the tagged items. To do a game with mek building/customization you would have use this approach. You could also tag things like a defensive shields, damage effects, or even footsteps/ground interaction.

cdxbow {l Wrote}:A meka with a monocle or a mo? I think not.

You could make use a bland generic chassis and tag all the external elements like armor and weapons, so the external appearance would be formed mostly by the tagged items. To do a game with mek building/customization you would have use this approach. You could also tag things like a defensive shields, damage effects, or even footsteps/ground interaction.

No, definitely not monocles and moustaches. Whole point of expanding the attachment system was to give you your Mek builder. So I suggest a bunch of generic models you can put together to make a Mek.

Hmm, I have this one: viewtopic.php?f=6&t=1712

Which I could probably fix and make a release of in the next couple of days. No UV-Map at this point though, and I am not sure if I will be motivated to do one.

It is already pretty modular in design too

Can you post the rig so that I can adjust the proportions to it already?

Edit: for a quick test you can maybe also use this mesh of mine: http://opengameart.org/content/mcu-43-gryphon-mech

Thanks Julius.

What format? - these are natively in ms3d/mm3d format but can be exported as smd/md5 if you want skeleton, animations and mesh, if just the mesh then obj files are easy to export.

I will try both. We have both gait styles.

Remember this is a test.

Ahh, ok... as I don't actually have Milkshape (and there isn't a Linux port AFAIK) the rig would not help me much then. Maybe you can just post the already working mesh (in .obj) of a Mek and I can try to adjust the proportions to that one indirectly.

Julius re model: I've already imported it and scaled it. I needed to stretch the skeleton in places, but it fits OK. Autorig, unfortunately did not work very well, but it did give me a look at the leg motion, and it seemed OK, so I think it might work. I will try to manually rig it tonight.

Julius re milkshape: There is a complicated milkshape exporter for Blender but I have not tried it. Misfit 3D does milkshape files correctly about 98% of the time, and if it is one of ours it will work 100% of the time because they will have come out of Misfit 3D. The major limitation of Misfit is it doesn't export any skeletal game ready formats, which is why we made Misfit cubed, which is a md5 exporter for the linux version of Misfit, (or a windows exe with the exporter rolled in) You can get it here - http://sourceforge.net/projects/misfitcubed/files/ I find Misfit works 'better' on linux than windows.

Sorry, didn't get around fixing the other mech on the weekend... maybe next WE if you still need it.

Julius {l Wrote}:Sorry, didn't get around fixing the other mech on the weekend... maybe next WE if you still need it.

We can work on it together after the RE release if you'd like. Once that is all out of the way, I'd like to get MA up and playable; starting with the player model.

Julius: re Gryphon & other meka

I noticed the legs looked much like Gabriellas chicken walker model, so I got out the fusion cutter and sliced the gryphon in half and added her legs. Instant 50% working animated meka, in the same spirit, I thought maybe I could autorig the torso and knock off the other 50% of the animations, but it didn't work well. So much for 2 minute instant meka. I have packaged it up as milkshape, misfit and smd format. The smd should import OK in Blender. I don't know if you want to work on it more, but I don't have time at the moment. My priority is to try the same to one of Walters chicken walkers next.

With the fusion cutter hot in my hand, and the joy of dismemberment in my heart I sliced off the arms and legs of your other meka. I'm sorry i didn't ask but at least it was painless. The feet looked too light for a substantial meka, but that wasn't the real reason, what I wanted to do was keep the feet & the guns on the skeleton and I thought I might be able to get away with an autorig just of the torso parts, but again it didn't work well. Next I tried to rig it by hand but I found the mesh hard to work with because it wasn't quite as modular as I thought it might be. The rigging is not satisfactory yet. Again it is in milkshape, misfit and smd format. I did a little work on texturing it, the 2 on either side are 'random skins'. It got fatter some how and lost its arse. I would like to try an smd export of your original if you could.

I have to work out how far to modularise the meka, weapons are the easiest/obvious but it may be possible to do more. It has a few implications for building as you can imagine, but potentially a lot of benefits if done properly.

Quin: yes start work on MekArcade. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeese.

Ahh nice, the Gryphon turned out nicely I think. You should include it in MekArcade

As for the other mech... well the file I released a long while back was really only a mesh sketch, I am surprised you even spend that much time on it given its sorry state. But as with all of what I release... no need to ask to remix and modify it!

Other than that, I don't quite get what you are trying to achieve with all that auto-rig non-sense. Why not use some well (hand-) made rigs and apply the skin modifiers by hand also? The results will be vastly superior, and it doesn't take all that much time either. Or am I missing something specific about MekArcade that requires you to use a more automated setup?

cdxbow {l Wrote}:Quin: yes start work on MekArcade. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease.

FTFY

Julius {l Wrote}:Ahh nice, the Gryphon turned out nicely I think. You should include it in MekArcade

We would love to include it in MekArcade. Thank you. Do you want to work on it more?
It could make a good Light Engineer.

Julius {l Wrote}:As for the other mech... well the file I released a long while back was really only a mesh sketch, I am surprised you even spend that much time on it given its sorry state. But as with all of what I release... no need to ask to remix and modify it

I like its skeletal sort of look, but at the same time it looks well armored. I also like to work on something other than the same mek models I have been, I get sick of looking at them. It also gives me visual ideas.

Julius {l Wrote}:Other than that, I don't quite get what you are trying to achieve with all that auto-rig non-sense. Why not use some well (hand-) made rigs and apply the skin modifiers by hand also? The results will be vastly superior, and it doesn't take all that much time either. Or am I missing something specific about MekArcade that requires you to use a more automated setup?

Anything to save some time & repetition, but I have found the autorigger only really works well with simple models that are easy to rig anyway. I don't want to do character modelling, it is only by necessity, and it takes me away from other elements of the project. There is nothing special with MekArcade that requires autorigging

ballist1c {l Wrote}:FTFY

Is that 'fixed that for you' or "f*** this, f*** you."? If its the first, thank you.

cdxbow {l Wrote}:Is that 'fixed that for you' or "f*** this, f*** you."? If its the first, thank you.

It's the first, balli tossed in an 'a' in the "please" you had (except it was obviously w/out the 'a'.)

cdxbow {l Wrote}:We would love to include it in MekArcade. Thank you. Do you want to work on it more?
It could make a good Light Engineer.

I haven't seen much documentation on how you're planning things, but are you trying for more Android-like humanoid mechas, or for vehicle-like ones, or is it some kind of mix?

cdxbow {l Wrote}:With the fusion cutter hot in my hand, and the joy of dismemberment in my heart I sliced off the arms and legs of your other meka.

Did you ever get your plans for modular mechas worked out, speaking of which?

quintux_v {l Wrote}:I haven't seen much documentation on how you're planning things, but are you trying for more Android-like humanoid mechas, or for vehicle-like ones, or is it some kind of mix?

I don't have strong feelings but I lean towards the 'tank with legs' look of the MW series.

quintux_v {l Wrote}:Did you ever get your plans for modular mechas worked out, speaking of which?

I'm glad you brought that up, because I have been thinking about this, no, I have been troubled by this for a while, and I put it on the back burner (with quite a lot of other things). The first element in making them modular is the way the mesh is built. A one piece mesh is harder to modularise than a model built of 'bits' (elements in max speak, connected mesh in misfit, primitives in others, don't know what in blender). The easiest would be just to do the weapons and this is probably what we will start with. Some of the meka it is easy to take the fusion cutter to, others it is more difficult. You could go further, such as in Front Mission Evolved. The meka consisist of a torso, legs, arms, backpack and four weapon mounts. All of which are customizable, upgradable via player rewards. Excellant for SP games with a reward/credit system, perhaps more than is needed for MP. The down side is they are all the same basic design and size, this gives them a certain sameness. There no variation such as chicken walkers and qauds.

Currently I am finishing meka 7, 8 and 9. So with these I will do them without weapons and see how they look/work.

cdxbow {l Wrote}:We would love to include it in MekArcade. Thank you. Do you want to work on it more?
It could make a good Light Engineer.

What is exactly needed? It looks pretty much complete (save for finishing the rigging) already. Or are you talking about animations?

Julius: Just checking, you may have some fanatstic idea for it that you haven't done yet. Artists can also be a bit touchy about the fusion cutter & application to their creation. If it should become a light engineer the weapons will be some light energy weapons (?flamer & plasma) and mines. The energy weapons could be tagged to the arms, while the mine launcher could go on one shoulder. I'm not quite sure what a mine launcher should look like! The other shoulder would be as is, but I thought some form folded up arm, even if it doesn't work, would be suitable for an engineer. What do you think?

One of the burdens of modularising the meka is building the weapons, however we already have plenty of weapon models but are short on missile packs and shoulder stuff.See pic

Nope, not really super motivated to work on mechs right now... but I love the fusion cutter
I guess the Gryphon design lends it self quite well to weapon modularization.

For the engineer, why not some sort of weapon that shoots little repair/build bots?

I also always liked the idea to have a huge shoulder-mounted artillery cannon on mechs

Bots are a cool idea but may have to wait for the medium or heavy engineer. Here is the first go at making the gryphon a light engineer. The mine 'layer' is on the right shoulder. On the left is an arm sort of thing (from a fire truck)

One of the things I haven't been able to decide is about mellee weapons. Have them or not? Make them only for a class or two?For the light engineer something like the fusion cutter or plasma drill would make a suitable mellee weapon.

Not sure about that diagonal "thing"... it really clutters the design and it is totally unclear what it is for.

About the melee, well personally I think normal mech games don't led themselves well to melee (even less so that FPS) so I would leave it out. However the idea from the other mech I build was to have two blades below the weapon barrels so that one could strike down a deadly blow if the weapons fail (not sure if that part of the design was obvious by the mesh only).