===[COMMITTED]=== Rotary Mill

[Stan`]

check out what Pureon did with the mauryan farmstead's grindstone, I always thought that was clever

It's integrated into the framing of the structure

Yes this guy is awesome Nevertheless, with the current state of the building i can't do something like that ^^

[Stan`]

Tested Animation, not sure if exportable though

[Sighvatr]

Why is the grinding stone part of the framework of the house on the Mauryan structure? Thats not very clever. First of all, that takes away the point of not exposing the grinding stone and the work to the elements. Two, if the owner has to replace the wood, he has to figure out a way to hold up the rest of the house from collapsing to cut the wood. Three, the work of the grindstone is going to shake the entire building.

[LordGood]

but... it looks cool...

[Stan`]

but... it looks cool...

That's a good point

[Enrique]

Looking nice. Maybe placing the hay props closer to the building on the walls to reduce the footprint of the structure, and probably making the mill rolling stones smaller, they look very big at the moment, but definitely looks better.

[Stan`]

Okay will fix this, probably this afternoon.

[Stan`]

Small Update :

[Stan`]

Okay, so I added foundations, lowered the hay props, and removed the donkeys because it feels like having animals that don't move is quite weird. We will add them when the animation will be done. The model just need the separation for the helmet prop and the decal on the ground, apart from that its ready for export. Here is the blender file

RotaryMill.7z

[FeXoR]

That's a good point

I am amused and like it, too.

However, this "argument" conflicts with historical accuracy and in many ways with my taste of a well designed game (not graphically but in general).

So... I tend to disagree (though in this case I don't really mind because it doesn't hurt performance in any way ... and look cool ^^)

(Just feel that favor style over performance is a bad idea)

I like stanislas69's approach very much.

Edited January 28, 2014 by FeXoR

[Stan`]

Happy you do =) Will be my third model in the game thanks to enrique =D

[Wijitmaker]

Per our PM conversation. This is basically how you would set it up with the prop points.

celt_sb_animated.zip

Edited March 15, 2014 by Wijitmaker

[Stan`]

About the rotary mill donkeys animation:

There's a way to animate the rotary mill (although this is not the thread to discuss it) and avoid making the full 360 circle animation which would be a very big animation data file. It should be as follows:

- The actual part of the mill that rotates should be a prop attached to the main structure.

- This Mill rotating thing should have two prop-bones where the donkeys will be, these prop bones must be parented to the bones that makes the thing rotate.

- Make a small looping walk animation for the donkey.

- Apply the donkeys where the prop-bones should be and give them the walk animation loop, so they will play the walk animation while the rotation of the parent will make the illusion that they're walking. Of course the speeds will need to be tuned so there's no slide-effect going on.

The problem I was talking about in the IRC is that prop-bones do not record animation . This means that you can animate them in the armature, but the engine will not read its movements. The only way to make them move is parenting them to "normal bones" or "deformation bones" and they will follow its parents movements/rotations.

Bringing back to Cesar what belongs to him.

1. Okay I'll try this.

2. Just as it is right now, So i'll move them in the new file

3. Does the donkey have an animation ?

4. Okay.

The biggest problem was that blender didn't recognize my armature. It just said that it was a bunch of objects parented, which was wrong.

I attached the file here if someone's wants to have a look.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/38yfdarl2iyoz8e/Rotary.blend

[Stan`]

Here is the drop propped mill.

I'm working on the pivot thing But blender is converting the mesh to an armature, and the armature to a mesh --'

Drop Propped Mill.7z

[Stan`]

Here is the animated pivot. Ready to implement if the game has the walking donkey animation.

BTW if someone is interested I just forgot to convert object to bones.That's why it didn't work more info here.

http://docs.autodesk.com/3DSMAX/15/ENU/3ds-Max-Help/index.html?url=files/GUID-E08D0050-23FF-4F6D-9A7F-A4651FABA22B.htm,topicNumber=d30e53982

Rigged Grinder.7z

Edited April 8, 2014 by stanislas69

[Enrique]

That animation rotates the whole thing! and it doesn't rotate evenly... it goes underground and gets crooked :/ The bone called "donkey" rotates the base in that crooked fashion.

In addition, if you're posting the blend file, you don't need to bake the animation, its impossible to modify the animation that way.

This is not usable in this state.

[Stan`]

That animation rotates the whole thing! and it doesn't rotate evenly... it goes underground and gets crooked :/ The bone called "donkey" rotates the base in that crooked fashion.

In addition, if you're posting the blend file, you don't need to bake the animation, its impossible to modify the animation that way.

This is not usable in this state.

Oh.... I didn't see that yesterday. Well the rotary thing was baked in max. Sorry bout' that. Here is another file. Rigged only. No animations whatsoever. Is that beter ?

Rigged Grinder.7z

[Radagast.]

In addition, if you're posting the blend file, you don't need to bake the animation, its impossible to modify the animation that way.

Can't the bake be freed? Perhaps via Free all bakes? Not sure myself, sometimes this is buggy.

[Enrique]

Can't the bake be freed? Perhaps via Free all bakes? Not sure myself, sometimes this is buggy.

IIRC baking to the cache is only available for physics/cloth/fluid/particle/smoke simulations and such, baking an armature action just inserts a keyframe on every frame with each position of every bone.

So you remove the keyframes by hand or start the animation from scratch.

[Radagast.]

How could I forget that?

Of course, that's baking. Is it required to make the animation work ingame?

I've tried to prop a animation (consisting of an armature only -- with a root, and three moving bones for the juggler's balls). And it failed ... ha, mismatch in the endtag. Ah help, now the ball prop's dae is not loading ... ok, got just lost in the path maze, it was /props/ball.dae instead of meshes/props/units/ball.dae.

Why this inconsistency? In animation and actors we also have <type>/props/units/ball.xml and ... oha, it's even biped for the animation? Must be because animations can be applied to bipeds but not to quadrupeds? Can't biped animations be assigned to elephants too? How do they do it in IceAge then? .. theoretically it should work if we have the same bone count? Excuse my noob questions. And take your time. You are have hardly time for art projects anymore just because of our questions. *Radagast will stop asking and just use trial and error ...

Edit:

ERROR: art/animation/biped/merry-go-round_vertical.dae: Didn't find any objects in the sceneERROR: art/animation/biped/merry-go-round_vertical.dae: Couldn't find object to convertERROR: Could not load animation 'art/animation/biped/merry-go-round_vertical.dae'ERROR: CSkeletonAnimManager::GetAnimation(art/animation/biped/merry-go-round_vertical.dae): Failed loading, marked file as bad

Okay, I will insert a dummy object to the armature. Edited April 11, 2014 by Hephaestion

[Stan`]

I included the file without baking... in my last post.

[Stan`]

[LordGood]

not a continuous animation? we could run that slower and the donkey's walk cycle won't be slowing down inexplicably every now and again

[Stan`]

Hey,

Well, that's what I've been trying to fix, but I don't know, how to. Duplicating keys doesn't work. If you wanna try I'll be glad

Rigged Grinder.zip

[Enrique]

Open the IPO curve editor, select all the bones, go to the first and last keyframes and:

select al the points in the curve for that frame -> "V" choose "vector.

This removes the "ease-in, ease-out" velocity of the animation using curves. I'd explain it with images but I'm running low of free time lately :/