Gen.Kenobi

Bumping for the sake of a bump. I'm planning to start manning the sieges soon. (At least the Rams, as they are the most simple animations.). A question to Michael, when the rams are engaged in hand to hand combat will the mens do out and fight untill die, so the rams could be captured, and maybe manned by other guys and teams? (Like CoH) And If yes, how is the number of men per garrison per ram per faction? I'm going to start sketching something soon. (I brought a camera, so I can start making funny tests in my free time - recording me doing funny stuff) If someone could take a look at the blender code, It would really be nice. BTW I remembered that I had uploaded the fisherman_paddling animation. If you guys want to give it a run to try the code, please be my guest. (As I can't try, since i'm not home.) Fisherman-test.zip

So. I gave it a try on codding the Blender armature into the skeletons.xml file. But since I'm not at home, I can't try to get an animation ingame. So I'll post the code here, if anyone could try it and see if it works, it would be really nice. <skeleton title="Blender biped" target="biped"> <identifier> <root>Armature</root> ;;(???? ==- Dunno what do to here) </identifier> <bone name="Armature"> ;;(??? - Neither here) <target>root</target> <bone name="hips"> <target>pelvis</target> <bone name="spine"> <target>spine</target> <bone name="ribs"> <target>spine1</target> </bone> </bone> </bone> <bone name="shoulder.L"> <target>l_clavicle</target> </bone> <bone name="upper_arm.L"> <target>l_upperarm</target> <bone name="forearm.L"> <target>l_forearm</target> </bone> </bone> <bone name="shoulder.R"> <target>r_clavicle</target> </bone> <bone name="upper_arm.R"> <target>r_upperarm</target> <bone name="forearm.R"> <target>r_forearm</target> </bone> </bone> <bone name="neck"> <target>neck</target> <bone name="head"> <target>head</target> </bone> </bone> <bone name="thigh.L"> <target>l_thigh</target> <bone name="shin.L"> <target>l_calf</target> </bone> </bone> <bone name="thigh.R"> <target>r_thigh</target> <bone name="shin.R"> <target>r_calf</target> </bone> </bone> <bone name="hand.L"> <target>l_hand</target> <bone name="Biped_Lfingers"/> ;;(Dont have fingers in that test armature) </bone> <bone name="foot.L"> <target>l_foot</target> <bone name="toe.L"/> <bone name="heel.L"/> ;; (Added just because it had) <bone name="heel.02.L"/> ;; (Added just because it had) </bone> </bone> </bone> <bone name="hand.R"> <target>r_hand</target> <bone name="Biped_Rfingers"/> ;;(Dont have fingers in that test armature) </bone> <bone name="foot.R"> <target>r_foot</target> <bone name="toe.R"/> <bone name="heel.R"/> ;; (Added just because it had) <bone name="heel.02.R"/> ;; (Added just because it had) </bone> </bone> </bone> </bone> </skeleton>

That sucks mate... Have you sent me your rig yet? I didn't look my inbox @Jason: Are you working on the Human Rigs for Blender? Hmm... Are you importing the rigs that are already made? Hmm...Because I made a new one (I guess you saw). Wouldn't be better if we just code the new rig into the skeletons.xml? (I'm talking like a total stranger here. Dunno. Whatever you do, I'm prety sure it'll be better. hehehe)

@Phillip: Well, looks like the main probleman is with the oars geometry. Because right now they are made with two unconnected meshes (each one). Maybe with the geometry as one single mesh the issue with some vertexes behaving weirdly - (I tried to make a new oar with a single mesh, clonned them along the ship (top oars, just as a test), them I joined the geometry with the ship and run your script. For some reason it didn't work. - I'm assuming that to run the script you just need to paste the code, select the tip's vertexes, go to the object mode and press enter to run the script, right?) @Jonatham: I quite like yours. But wouldn't be better to try with IK solvers? I don't know. I made mine with IKs... Maybe I can try to use your setup with IKs. Didn't have the time to test it yet. And also, there's that annoying issue with the rotation of the tip of the oars, what creates a small distortion. In both metheods I guess we'll have some distortion, but it may be quite unnoticeable ingame. Unless we rig each oar - what would be easer - but not so easy, game-alike What about we rig one oar and animate it. Them we can copy this oar as a prop of the ship. Them we'll have just few bones, and we can randomize the animations whitin the different oar, and the oars can be randomized whitin the ship's oar "houses". Sounds like for me the most easy and perfect solution for the distortion (don't know if it'll be perfect for codding nor performace). What do you guys think?

Hmm... I'm travelling, So sorry for the lack of my participation. Anyways, I'll give it a try on Jonathan's way. @Phillip' ... Hmm, your way sounds interesting, but, I don't know... Wouldn't the oars bend in a strange way with different weights points? I'll give it a look too. BTW, the way to select the entire oar is to select at least one vertex in the end of the oar and press the "+" key several times untill you have the whole oar selected. Hmmm. I'll take a look. I think we're getting somewhere with the ship rigs

Yeah. We need to figure something out. In theory, what my IK bones did, was what I wanted, but for more reason the meshes didn't behave as planned. Unless we rig them all, I don't think we'll be abble to make all oars to rotate around the same pivot, but I'm eager to see what you have came up with. Blender allows you to set hierarchy and parents the way you like (Hotkey: Ctrl+P). But they wont work properly as bones - You wont get a "Pose Mode" and I'm not sure if they will deform. Although you have plenty of different deform modifiers to play with. (Haven't tried them all yet, just the Armature one doesn't works with meshes.) Blender allows you to convert curves from mesh and mesh from curves, but you can't do that with bones. Bones to mesh is impossible, but you may be able to find a way with some modifiers, I guess.

See if you got my response Actually, after taking a seccond look over my rigg (took a small break to have dinner and play some BF3) I realised that I did somthing wrong. Because I would need to rig each oar in order to get everything rotating around the same pivot. I tried to simplify the things, but it really didn't work out well in the end :/

"START FIGHTING or I'll find someone who can!"

Lucky? DOn't think so. Last year of high school here on Brazil is always rushed. You must attempt to get into an university/college by making exams version thousands of candidates. The competittion is always very harsh and hard. BTW, welcome iNyan! Hope you survive well your last year! Mine is starting in february

That sounds great! I'm not very good at rigging, so yours will really be better tham mine. Just one thing, I don't know if my WFG email is working well... Can someone send me a test mail?

So yeah. Today I started to work on a new rig for the ships. Specially for the Trirremes, as it's a very old request of the players I managed to get almost everything alright, but, for some reason, I ran into some problemans, that i'm unable to identify, nor to correct them. I tried all the possible ways that I know that it could be happening, but I was unsucessful. I know. A picture is worth a thousand words. I'm also attaching the .blend file. Maybe someone can give me a light here. rig-trirreme.zip

Hey Jason! I'm using Blender 2.6 (http://www.blender.org/download/get-blender/) I'm kinda in a hurry right now, but feel free to download it and give it a try. I'll try to take a look at the codding too, but if you could help, it would be awesome!

I don't know. I'm not very confortable messing around the skeletons.xml file (Still need to figure out what to do.) Any help would be really appreciated. Is there a reason for that limitation? With COLLADA now, shouldn't we try to let things be animated without the need for bones/rigs? I remember whem Modding C&C Generals, just the name you give to the object within the model - Like a Turret - it would move and act like a turret. If the game is to be mod friendly not all animations should be required to work with bones. Animating the prop-poins could really look interesting. I would even say that they are quite a priority. Let's say... what about a guy holding a riffle. Where his hand would be holding it, wouldn't be the place where the trigger is. (Remember the Musketeeer in AOEIII?) It's up to you guys, but for me it really should be taken in consideration. Unless there's a way to animate the prop itself (rigged) and just use the node as a relative position. Of course this would require much more tweaking and work to make it look right Hehehehe. I actually used the Gondolas as reference videos for the animation. Now a design question - I guess that you go for you Michael. How are we planning to man the sieges? Semi realistic, like EE II and AOE III. Or realisticaly like Total War?

Hmm... I'm not very good with codding, but I'll give it a try. Anyways... I was wondering. Is it possible to animate the nodes for the prop points? I meant, an animation something like that, but with a spear would be cool as iddle: BTW, I just made a simple fisherman paddling animation (I think it'll be used of RotE mod) Now I need try to get it ingame. (I'll update the thread with the video once it's done) EDIT: My first animation ever

Hmm... I see. Thanks for the imput Jason! I'll take another look into the Rig, maybe I'll re-rig it. I also noticed that the hands are out of place, as well the elbows aren't working properly, must have been something that I deleted (since the model doesn't has actual fingers).

Here it is! My first rig ever - Actually, It would be unfair calling it mine, since I just used Blender's add-on. It is still a little bit rusty and unpolished in some areas, but I guess I'll be figuring out, as I learn more - the model didn't help much, anyways Here you go! (I hosted it in my server, I would reccomend uploading to somewhere more accesible ) http://www.ds3d.revora.net/0ad/daniels_blender_male_rig.blend PS: The Mozin Nagant is not included

Thanks for the answers Jason. I just received a word from Kimball and looks like that there's not a Blender rig around. I'll need to get my hands dirt them - the Blender's rigify add-on shouldn't be a probleman. I also noticed that the head is separated from the body model (working on dude.obj right now)... How would I animate it them? Would I need to rig the head separatly? So all I need to do is to animate the hand and the object will follow it, right? - That may be something study... abstract animation FTW About the boat... I understand it...but it would be quite hard to make something seamless, and looks like it's integrated betwen different objects. Something that I'll have to look into. Maybe i can dump them in the same scene and export them separatly... That could work... hmm... I'm atm rigging a generic male mesh, dude.obj. Once I'm done, I'll upload the rigg, and the probleman is solved

OKay guys. I really want to get some info about how it's done, because I want to do something in that field -> How this work, and what we should know. -> Rigs. Rigs. Rigs. There must have been some rigs already. I just can't seen to find them. (Hopefully they could be Blender format compatible - Rigging is a pain) -> Random Questions: --- A that soldier is holding a sword or a spear. I would animate it with the sword, or the empty or the coordinate where the prop would go? --- Is it possible to make integration with the animation of 2 different objects? I mean... A fisherman in a boat. Can I make the boat be floating in the water and the fisherman inside it trying to balance himself? Or I would need to rig the boat and animate it separatly from the guy, since he would go where "propped"? And If i do a new rig, I guess i'm gonna need to update the skeletons.xml, right? I'm kinda unsure about it. About the whole process of animation and how it actually works whithin the engine. Thanks everyone.

Just saying HI!

Oh They already have one? BUt I would re-work on that one, at least on the texture, with some tilled rocks, here and there And some aqueducts ruins would also be cool

I dunno why, but I really would love to see some of this ingame: Scenarios like Protect the Aqueduct would be cool for the Romans Or maybe just a simple easter egg.

Amazing job indeed... Well about the old computers hardware issues, I guess that's why the Minimium Requeriments for the game play are there for...sometimes a game will just not play into an specific hardware (It already has happened to me...)

Welcome mate!

Basically, our engine eats .dae files (Collada). You just need to export your model to collada and our engine will read and "eat" it. PS: Blender 2.5x's Collada esporting is broken. Try to use the 2.49 for exporting. PS1: Kimball can give more in depth information about that Hope it helps, -Daniel_S.

Looking neat, but maybe they would look better in High-Resolution? With shadows and everything else?