How to add custom animations into neverwither nights?

[Legacy_Vibrant Penumbra]

               

Estelindis wrote...
One more note on custom animations: Ninja Weasel Man's romantic animations are part of ProjectQ.  It seems most authors haven't done much with them, but Andarian's Sanctum of the Archmage series shows how they can give us some really tender moments:

Warm-fuzzy pic

Oh. My.
*feeling things she shouldn't*
I really wish "A Dance with Rogues" had these anims (my fave so far ).
Now I have to try Sanctum! [smilie]http://social.bioware.com/images/forum/emoticons/crying.png[/smilie] 
But I have so many mods on my "research evil" list!  
Is there a nice dark shadowy path for me to tread in Sanctum? Please?

Edit - I also wish I knew how to make that img a thumbnail '>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Vibrant Penumbra, 10 novembre 2011 - 05:44 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ragnarok_mr4]

               Seems our friendly neighborhood Weasel may be back in action as well.  We shall see.....
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_ragnarok_mr4]

               Double post??
               
               

               

                     Modifié par ragnarok_mr4, 10 novembre 2011 - 05:22 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy__six]

               

Fester Pot wrote...

ragnarok_mr4 wrote...

Heyyy!! Two of my favorite peeps!  Thanks for the warm welcome, Bannor and QSW!  Nope, can't forget my NWN roots '>

He's back!
He's back!
Mr. Ragnarok is on the attack!

If that was inspired by the Voodoo Glow Skulls I will fall off my chair. Promise.

Relevant note: ragnarok_mr4? Back? NWM? Back? awesum
               
               

               

                     Modifié par _six, 10 novembre 2011 - 05:39 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Frith5]

               It is very nice to see that name on this forum again, isn't it? '>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               @ragnarok_mr4 -Amazing to see you posting here!  I only know you from your comments on the old BioWare forums and your contributions- which are incredible.  I just recently used  a slightly modified version of your Bear Claw fighting style for a creature in last month's Custom Content Challenge.  Video here.  Your animations and NinjaWeaselMan's animations are inspiring to say the least.

I'm sure you're busy but while you're here I was wondering if you had any thoughts on the following NWN-related animation questions:

1. I'm just learning about character animation and I'd like to make basic animations for NWN player characters or creatures from scratch.  But my goal is not to have to bake the animations when I'm done.  If I have to, I have to.  But I'd like to avoid it at all costs.  For someone using a recent version of 3DS Max (2011) and without anything else like the CAT, what is the best way to rig a model for animation in NWN and what solver or combination of solvers should be used?

2. Sort of related to the first question- are you aware of any tools which will can take baked animations (say a .BVH loaded onto a Character Studio rig and then baked into geometry, 1 keyframe per frame) and intelligently reduce the keys in such a way that the result has much fewer keys- as would be the case if it were hand-animated?  So, for instance, a typical key reducer just drops keys every X frames.  Is there something out there that reduces keys more intelligently than that?  Hope that question makes sense.  Sorry if these questions show my ignorance- I'm just getting into this and it's very difficult to follow.

3. Kees Rijnen from BioWare was able to release PuppetShop for 3DS Max- the in-house tool BioWare used to animate.  Very powerful and now free. (!)  But I still have problems understanding it.  Have you ever used PuppetShop for your animations?  For what you know NWN to be capable of, is learning a big animation system like this "worth it" given the limited capabilities of NWN?  Or would it really pay off just to do more things by hand, such as the rigging in question 1?

 I have lots of fun animating inorganic movement like chests or airships but organic creature movement is a whole separate world of complexity and I'm kind of groping for solutions to advance.  Any kind of wisdom you can share would be appreciated!

'>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par OldTimeRadio, 10 novembre 2011 - 07:26 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_ragnarok_mr4]

               Hi OldTimeRadio!

Thanks for the warm welcome.  I hope I can adequately answer your questions.  Here goes...

1)   I use a very basic rig which follows the NWN1 hierarchy exactly.  I use FK almost exclusively on the torso and all its child nodes EXCEPT when i need to do intricate work with the hands, such as avatar-to-avatar interactions or making sure that the left hand is firmly grasping a 2-handed weapon.  

I use IK for the legs and bake the resulting animation since I find that hand-animating the legs and making sure the feet are firmly planted on the ground is more trouble that it's worth.  I use NWMax's baking tool (which has threshold-difference-based keyframe reduction) as my tool of choice for baking since it has options which I specifically asked Joco to build into it.

For secondary animation, I sometimes use noise controllers or reaction controllers to simulate more organic motion, especially for idle anims or emotes.

2)  (See above) - I use NWMax's baking and keyframe reduction tool almost exclusively for NWN1 animation.  Anything else I find requires kludges and workarounds to use effectively.

3) Puppetshot was not available when I was developing for NWN1, so we used NWMax, VelsTools and other in-house developed tools to do our stuff.  So... sorry, can't help you here '>

Well, there it is.  Cheers!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <tucking his money pouch...>

OldTimeRadio wrote...
...
3. Kees Rijnen from BioWare was able to release PuppetShop for 3DS Max- the in-house tool BioWare used to animate.  Very powerful and now free. (!)  
...

how do I find it for free, OTR? They want $99 for it on that site...

<...out of sight>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Calvinthesneak]

               Looks like scroll to bottom and use download button?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Calvinthesneak]

               What would it take to make these http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=6150 animations 1.69 compliant. I believe they were released sometime after 1.64 and before 1.69.

Regardless the base animation files included (a_fa, a_ba_non_combat) do not contain support for cloaks. Simply copying the relevant custom portion of the text out of the mdl and pasting it into the 1.69 versions didn't produce very satisfactory results. I know nothing about 3d animation per se.

Anyone willing to help or at least explain what else I'd have to do to get them working fully with 1.69?
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Calvinthesneak, 11 novembre 2011 - 05:36 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <raven laughs so hard...>

Calvinthesneak wrote...
Looks like scroll to bottom and use download button?

Gah! Scrolled just enough to see the media links, thought they were sitemap and didn't "look underneath", as Momma always told me to :-P

Thanks, Calvin.

<...she falls off the old guys shoulder>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_OldTimeRadio]

               @ragnarok_mr4 - Thank you for the infomation!  That explains a lot.

@rolo kipp - One thing to keep in mind when playing with PS is "What is my workflow to get this into NWN?"  I couldn't find a satisfactory answer that didn't involve me magically writing an exporter which basically squished NWMax and PS together using PS's API for animations and bones.

@Calvinthesneak - Wish I could help.  I only barely know how anything outside the standard a_ba chain fits in.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               

Calvinthesneak wrote...

What would it take to make these http://nwvault.ign.c....Detail&id=6150 animations 1.69 compliant. I believe they were released sometime after 1.64 and before 1.69.

Regardless the base animation files included (a_fa, a_ba_non_combat) do not contain support for cloaks. Simply copying the relevant custom portion of the text out of the mdl and pasting it into the 1.69 versions didn't produce very satisfactory results. I know nothing about 3d animation per se.

Anyone willing to help or at least explain what else I'd have to do to get them working fully with 1.69?

See this thread - http://social.biowar...1/index/8686245 - didn't want to hi-jack this thread.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Pstemarie, 11 novembre 2011 - 10:11 .