Reality Factory

Hey guys,
I was using the Neil model from one of the fighting games for my player and recently decided to use the old Virgil model as a base for all of my pawns.
My problem is now that I have made all of my pawns (and I spent forever doing so) use the old Virgil skeleton my 3rd person weapons can’t be used with my pawns and my player animations don't match up.
What I am requesting is that somebody who is good at animating please remake some of the old Neil animations with the Virgil skeleton.

All I really need is the wounded/pain/injury animations, the shooting AND aiming of all THE DIFFERENT WEAPONS while standing, crouching, walking, running, strafing right, strafing left, walking backwards, crouched walking, crouch walking backwards, crouch walk strafing left, crouch strafe walking right, ect... and the reloading stuff (while crouching and walking, standing, ect...).

I don't know if somebody already has these for the Virgil skeleton but if they could give me a file with the .mots it would keep me from loosing my mind over this seemingly simple thing and make my job much easier.

Plus if it was posted then anybody would be able to improve their 3rd person games without having to cut down on features of their game because they couldn’t get milkshape to work.

There were animations from everything from rocket launchers and ninja swords to cell phones and double desert eagles and I was using just about all of them. it would also be a great help if somebody could animate punching, kicking, sword swinging, an all that matrix style stuff so that it works when walking and running and jumping.
I was planning on having the melee attack animation change depending on how the character was moving and in which direction. It would also be cool if the player held different types of weapons differently just while standing or moving about, that would make some weapons look like they might be heavier and would cause the armed pawns in games to look more realistic.

I am trying to use my pawn models as my new player models and I want to have a standard animation set for all of my different pawns and playable characters, so I already have an APJ with a set of very basic animations for the Virgil skeleton, its just that I want to have some scripted sequences that would require animations of characters reloading their weapons, shooting straight forward, using their scoped weapons, tossing grenades, and stuff like that.

Also if anyone wants to try to tackle a current problem with RF while there at it, I am sorry but the jump shooting animations just aren’t right and the walking/running backwards animations look exactly like the walking forwards animations.


It would be a great contribution for somebody to take this on and it would help the RF community greatly.
Thank you very much,
FPS

Here's all the virgil .mots I have, I think you can get all these
by decompling the act file in milkshape though.

http://terrymorgan.net/virgilmot.zip (1.1MB)

Also a virgil at http://terrymorgan.net/download.htm, don't
know which version he is.

is there a program for editing mots more easily that the buggy milkshape?

Fragmotion can edit ms3d files. You will still need Milkshape to import/export back to mot.

Milkshape has a 30 day trial and Fragmotion has a 20 day trial. That should give you enough time to edit all the animations.

I believe Misfit Modeler will also load and save ms3d files and supports bones. It is free. I just got that one so I don't know how good it is yet... It probably won't be as good and user friendly as Fragmotion though.

Someone needs to write some bdy/mot plugins for Fragmotion. It supports weighted vertices, but the conversion back through Milkshape will loose that because Milkshape doesn't support weighted vertices. Also Milkshape is s l o w and very hard to use...

Coty

fps wrote:is there a program for editing mots more easily that the buggy milkshape?

whats so buggy about milkshape... its always worked fine for me

Someone needs to write some bdy/mot plugins for Fragmotion. It supports weighted vertices, but the conversion back through Milkshape will loose that because Milkshape doesn't support weighted vertices. Also Milkshape is s l o w and very hard to use...

what would be the point in creating an exporter for another modelling program that is not free? also, rf/genesis don't support weighted vertices at this point so it doesn't matter whether the info is lost when you export to milkshape...
milkshape may become slow with high poly models, but it is definitely one of the easiest modelling programs I've used...

ive had problems with animations SMD to MOT overwriting parts of 2 different animations over each other,
Ive also spent upwards of 30 hours going through converted animations and moving them up to the proper level animation by animation and frame by frame and bone by bone....its a major pain in the butt [Edited by AndyCR, there are underage users on the forum].



My problem is that i want to make a good quality game but i have a 3 man team and i am doing most of if not all of the scripting, charector animation, gear modeling, 3rd person weapon conversions, sound editing, music, 2d art, ect...

It would be really helpfull if i could get the virgil skeleton based animations finished more easily.

Thanks,
Fps

I suggest you to try another animation pack to replace virgil. Now I've ripped the standard male animations from HL2. Using some tools (cannofoodder, vtf explorer) you can easily grab them from the HL2 demo. I also found some replacement for the standard civilian (the model that I'm using) and I'm writing a new improved version of the scripted player with theese features:

- third person perspective. With some source modification, I've re-arranged the mouse-control priority. Now when you move the mouse to the right, the camera rotates to the right and not to the left like the 1rst person view (I aways found this an odd, flight-simulator beaviour). You can also rotate the mouse to look around and to tilt the camera in the same time (not allowed in the current release) and use the middle mouse to zoom (another source modification that works also for the pawn).

- Stealth action control system (thief 3, splinter cell). when you don't hold a weapon you can look around and moving relatively to the camera orientation in the 8 direction (Forward, Backward, Left, Right, and combinatoins) using 8 different animations. When you hold a weapon you can ook around and move forward in your current direction, so you fire in your facing direction (exactly like splinter cell).

- No more minus than a step. It's time to have a non-skizophrenic charater that blend in the air between unfinshed motions. Now there is a threeshold to invert the commands that control the pawn. If you press forward and immediatly stop the command the pawn makes one (only one) step.

- Ladder, hanging and other. I'm working on different solution to have a climbing character.

The major issues are on firing and climbing. I keep you informed...

if your making a scripted player dont forget about reloading in 3rd person, jumping controlled by physics, meele with weapon, climbing ropes (like in opposing force), hand to hand combat system, and vehicle compatibility.
I had some other sudjestions but i forgot them, i will post them if i remember.

You said to use a different "animation pack", what is that?


Hey!!! I just thought of somthing.
would it be possible for me to take a neil skeleton based animation and rename the bones and delete the extras so it reads a virgil skeleton based animation and i dont need to redo the whole animation by hand?



Thanks,
Fps

jumping controlled by physics, meele with weapon, climbing ropes (like in opposing force), hand to hand combat system, and vehicle compatibility.

...making coffee, having a shower, talking about bush administration, cleaning the cat... slowly, my attempt is to remove the current difficulties so to have a different approach to third person character. The current issues are on level exploration (climbing an obstacle and a ladder) and aim/fire system (that currently in third person view doesn't allow the pawn tilting the aim).
Thinking of a mix between actor system and physics system isn't realistic. RF is coming older fast, we have to find a compromise.

You said to use a different "animation pack", what is that?

I've ripped the animation from Half Life 2. You can do the same from Doom3. There are also on Fileplanet the XSI source for the Jedi Knight models.
Milkshape doesn't allow to exchange the animations from a skeleton to another one. The two skeletons must have the same bone name and the same position/orientation of the bones, so virgli and Neil are imply incompatible. Using 3d Studio Max and Bipeds you can have a chance but isn't simple. So the best is to have a coherent set of animation.

but if i can change the names of the bones would it work?


Thanks,
Fps