Animations

[chronomaster]

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recently done:
- [character cleaning] pidgin rerigged. re-animated.https://www.dropbox.com/s/fzsq6rulu7bqo4g/0000-0208.avi

pidgin2.68a export.blend

(620.88 KiB) Downloaded 316 times

- [basic animations] pidgin deformation ("disappearing") corrected.

pidgin2.5 - fix.blend

(600.01 KiB) Downloaded 319 times

done:
- [characters cleaning] mouse character re-rigged, better deform/ease of animations (added IK's). rerigging resaulted in the previous few animations to be deleted. but the rerigging also enables easy(=fast) animating.
*in any case, do not delete the old blend file untill the character is flawless.


to be done:
-characters cleaning (and improve animation quality/capability)
-basic animations - fixing/creating/improving them

others:
-nockouts animation (wuzzy's suggestion - viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5054)


*basic animations = steering right/left, winning/loosing a race animation.

[Wuzzy]

See first post of viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5054

[Funto]

I added a feature which I called "speed-weighted animations", which allows to have objects whose speed and/or "strength" (=morph ratio from the static pose to the animated pose) are affected by the kart speed. Textures can be animated this way too.
Currently, this is used to rotate the rotor for Xue, to animate the carpet for GNU and to animate the caterpillar for Sara.

I know Hiker isn't a fan of the "fancy" win/lose animations. This includes:
- Tux: losing=go to a terminal, winning=have a necktie appear
- GNU: losing=go into a magical lamp, winning=do some weird dance

From what I understood, he would be in favor of having simpler animations, in the style of Beastie's, i.e be happy and jump when winning, be crying, hitting the kart, angry etc when losing.
I agree with this opinion and would be in favor of simpler animations too.

Opinions?

[chronomaster]

Please don't be impatient. It often happens to me to open a thread and wait quite a long time to have an answer but that's not a problem for me because i know that people can't be there 24/24h.
Moreover we don't live in the same countries: there are problems with timezones (I also forget: Stk isn't a big team).

you completely missunderstood me. i was never impatient, i recommand reading my post(s) more thoroughly. after you mentioned that the reason i dont get a response is because they are busy i only pointed out that throwing ideas in a thread doesnt take time.

Yes i was talking about "disapearing" of the kart. And yes, it disappears in-game .

inside blender it doesnt disappear.
i need to contact a person that is implementing these animations in the game to see what is the reason.
do you know who?

I didn't say it is bad, i said it is weird

weird in this context equals bad. good = desired animation. bad/weird = undesired animation.
bad in it's concept, not in the actual physical movement.

I didn't find the way to delete the animation thread as you asked me.

not the animation thread....the first post.
any user can delete his posts.


btw your icon and visual drawings are loveable.

[Auria]

Yes i was talking about "disapearing" of the kart. And yes, it disappears in-game .

inside blender it doesnt disappear.

This is about Pidgin right? It does disappear in blender, see attached screenshot


And generally speaking, what we want as animations are animations that aren't too fancy. Mostly, characters waving, etc. Using a little prop like nolok taking out a toy gun is okay, but we prefer not to have "major" props like some animations currently have (for instance, when tux loses atm it gets stuck inside a flying terminal; that's a bit too much, the characters should still look like they're sitting in a kart)

[chronomaster]

sorry auria my bad.
i got confused with another model that flies too.

I agree that would be in favor of simpler animations too.

Opinions?

what we want as animations are animations that aren't too fancy

its ok i kinda figured out the style of the game. ill generate whatever i feel like and with feedback we'll see from there
i agree too about winning losing simplicity...but generally speaing, when appropriate, fancy stuff is obviously good
like if will be decided on a script and cutscenes, or a game-animation-intro with all characters, or special feature/event inside the game that is scripted for animation...i am keeping these things in mind when when i now go through the characters rigging.
...but all that is only after the current missing basics will run.

See first post of viewtopic.php?f=17&t=5054

yes. regular nice idea. added/updated animations↑↑↑

*specific suggestions like WUZZY suggested are exactly what i wished for. and fun and helpful

*mouse (xue) character finished rigging

[chronomaster]

pidgin deformation fixed.
but not rerigged, and not reanimated. animation is still clumsy.
i just removed the problem. for now.

pidgin2.5 - fix.blend

(578.91 KiB) Downloaded 321 times

https://www.dropbox.com/s/1oled660yy3q128/0001-0305.avi
how can i upload files to the repo?

[Auria]

Nice start! Please be sure to let us know when you consider it complete, then we will look at integrating it into the game

How we usually proceed is that you would give us a couple contributions through the forum. Then, when we see you are serious and do good work, we can give you write access to the repository, assuming you are familiar with SVN (doesn't require a big test really, it's just that we can't make it public and writable by everyone for obvious reasons)

[chronomaster]

auria it doesnt really matter, eventually the files would be put by SOMEONE into the SVN anyway...i only wanted to make it easier for the developement.

Please be sure to let us know when you consider it complete

i am not sure what you mean, the pidgin -ix.blend file is ready to replace the exsisting animations.
i am updating a sticky post in this thread(second post in this thread).
my uploaded pidgin blend - fix, is not a new rig, it just fixes the disappearing problem...i mentioned it in the sticky post...so yea, integrate it.

if you would be so kind as to erase totoplus62's first post, my sticky would be more noticeable. (he agrees it to be deleted but didnt manage to do so).

[Funto]

Also always think of exporting the .blend to a kart, test it in-game and provide the exported version please

[chronomaster]

all my exporting to ogre didnt go very well.
i dont know how to handle it. my blender couldnt use any python that i unpacked
it is ogre based?
ill try but i dont promise anything.
i dont now whats wrong with my blender...or pc

[Auria]

Okay, thanks I've added the updated animation to the game.

I am however a little confused as to your mentions of exporting to ogre. STK does not use ogre, if you want to export the blend into the game, please follow the instructions on http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/New ... ting_karts

[chronomaster]

yea i read it already by now...
sorting in out


in another question, directed from the "soccer mode" thread, does a special animation for thunderbird required for retreiving the ball or is there good enough already? ()

[Auria]

Thunderbird retrieving the ball would involve mostly programming work, since we already have an animation of him flying for retrieving karts

[chronomaster]

yea, thats what i thought.
if only i knew programming :\

[Funto]

SERIOUSLY! The debugger tells me that's 221 bones O_o (Konqi kart).
"Yeah, skinning is our performance bottleneck, blahblah"...

If people want to improve animations, I think re-rigging Konqi with less bones would be a good idea...

[chronomaster]

current konji is nicely done and nicely rigged! what auria said about priorities is in an understatement.
unless version 1.0 comes out, there is no incentive to redo anything.

[Funto]

Chronomaster >> just having good visuals does not mean it's nicely made: Konqi has really too many bones, which really slows down the game with useless computations.

[chronomaster]

i need someone to test if the pidgin rig works in-game.
thanks.

[chronomaster]

updated pidgin file at sticky post. markers and full animation
please someone test to see if the animations work at the stk engine

[Auria]

chronomaster, can you explain what prevents you from testing in-game? I would much rather help you fix your setup, so that you can then be more autonomous instead of requiring back-and-forth at every step

[chronomaster]

auria you assume too much. i only need once for you to check it in game. then i can know i can freely continue.
i want to be sure about something related to my ik's setup. my autonomousy exsist except for this articular case.
setup problems is not related to stk software. resolving it is on my side only.
just chec it and report. (please)

[Auria]

Your blend is currently incorrect. First there is a huge quad, you should delete it or mark it as 'ignore' in the object panel otherwise it will be exported as part of the kart. Second, your markers do not have the right names - please refer to http://supertuxkart.sourceforge.net/New ... #Animating to know what the correct names are

Now you can see why I would prefer you to be autonomous in practice it very rarely is a 'one-time check'

[chronomaster]

1)you dont understand. i have already arranged a file to be ready to export and reuploaded. maybe yuou didnt redownloaded?

check if the animation functions correctly INSIDE THE STK ENGINE (like during gameplay or something). i said that already. please try reading my posts more thoroughly!
test if the animation you see in blender acts the same in the stk engine...that is all.

3) auria are you implementing these animations yourself?
4) names...bla bla bla bla...really not important now.
since you already brought it up and im still waiting... then:2)
other karts and half of them have a different animation markers names...the names that were put there are not mine. it is pretty clear i think ... since you already brought it up, so for consistancy purpose ill correct those karts that dont fit EXACTLY like the guideline...

...check the animations already...all i wanted is an stk in-game check...please!

[Auria]

I downloaded the latest version of the file, and the markers are now named correctly, except the last one, that should be "lose" and not "loose". Naming markers is not a matter of conventions, if misnamed then the kart will not export.

Otherwise the animations work fine in STK

i said that already. please try reading my posts more thoroughly!
test if the animation you see in blender acts the same in the stk engine...that is all.

I downloaded a file named "pidgin2.68a.blend" and it was incorrectly formed and would not export. Please understand that while I will do everything I can to help potential contributors, I am in no way entitled to be the one exporting and testing your karts. So rather than impatiently say "try reading my posts more thoroughly" please understand I was not even able to export at all because the blend was not in an exportable state at all then.

Also note that by convention, on the Internet, writing parts of sentences in ALL CAPS is considered to be equivalent to yelling.

3) auria are you implementing these animations yourself?

Sorry, I don't really understand what you mean here