Pain in the neck

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <looking over his shoulder...>

Sylvi'a's newest (mis) behavior: She stands there fine. She enters and leaves combat fine. But if you click on her to start a conversation, her head flips around 180 degrees (The Exorcist) and she stares at you through her long dark hair (The Ring). I mean really dark hair. It was spring green, but when I corrected all her animations, somehow it's getting rendered almost black.  So is the rest of the head & crown. Related to the Linda Blair thing?

I've got the vague guess the head swivel thing is related to the engine trying to point her down at the PC and running into some range of motion constraint.  It is very much as if it flips a cosine or tangent or one of them geometry doohickies...

Any ideas?

<...and running like blazes>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Zwerkules]

               The head turning around could only be caused by the animation. For the black hair there could be a few reasons. First you should check if the ambient and diffuse are set to white. If you make a mesh and don't add the aurora trimesh modifier, one of them is set to black (can't remember if it was ambient or diffuse).
If the transparent hair has two visible sides and the vertices of the inner and the outer side are all welded, the hair might appear black because of smoothing groups. It's much more likely that your problem has to do with the ambient and diffuse settings, but if it doesn't, check the smoothing groups of the hair.
Another thing: Don't turn on shadows for transparent meshes, they won't be shown correctly.
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Zwerkules, 07 septembre 2011 - 07:14 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <smacks his head...>

D'oh! Forgot to add the trimesh back in after the big shake up :-( Thank you.

As for the head... it animates correctly up until you try to talk to her.  Then it gets turned around backwards and stays backwards even if combat or other actions who's anims were fine to start with...

What anim does the engine use in conversation? I thought it just turned to face the speaker and tried to align the head to "look" at the speaker...

<...for fun>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

                <squinting...>

Yup, fixed the texture...
but the head-twist thing...
I dunno.

Put the mdl on the project page. (sans the very large, un-optimized textures :-P ).

Anyone want to see if they see something? Besides Fibber McGee's closet full of anims - most of which I'll be weeding out :-/

<...from the glare>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Master Jax]

               Are you the "the horror of wearing pants" guy?
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_WebShaman]

               I love those treant guards of hers...
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <looking like a...>

WebShaman wrote...
I love those treant guards of hers...

Those "Treegiant" models came from the CEP, as did the "Treant1" models further to her left.  I really like the multi-layered foliage effect, and there are some great anims on them both.  You're peeking into my _test area, which is a sort of visual To-Do list of things I want to customize.

The Forrestals (from left to right - Dreamwalker, Elder, Strider, Walker, Runner) were created by the High Ones to *balance* the Troll problem (Trolls being genetically modified super-soldiers dating from the Fall of Man).  They specifically need a diet rich in Troll to reach maturity. Though Trolls are literally incapable of fear, they have (through a darwinian process) learned caution around Forrestals... But the High Ones made the sugarboles of the Forrestals highly addictive little PCP treats for Trolls... so the Trolls just can't seem to stay away...

Which means neither my Trolls nor my "treants" behave along standard fantasy lines. Specifically, Forrestals are not "Good", but true neutral, and the Trolls are neither "Evil" nor hostile, but their own Trollkin faction. Still, they *are* insane...

Sorry :-) I'm very proud of the complexity the Troll<->Forrestal dynamic adds to the forest :-)

<...proud papa>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 08 septembre 2011 - 08:38 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Fester Pot]

               Rolo, do you know the link to the hak package that is stand alone for those treants? Who is the author? I can't find it on the Vault.

FP!
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <shaking his head...>

In a word <or four>, no.  

The younger Forrestals will be based off the DLA Treant, but the Elder and Dreamwalker are going to be based off the zcp_treegiant.mdl found in CEP2_core4.hak. It uses a texture file named ccp_ancientgrn.tga, so I believe it's from the CCP, but I can find nothing on their site to attribute the author.

I asked before... I do like a lot of what they did. But, no. I don't know where to find it other than CEP2

<...to clear out the fumes>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 09 septembre 2011 - 03:33 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <putting down the axe...>

Well, the broken neck thing has something to do with swapping heads.

Loaded the Giant Nymph mdl I used as base. Head worked properly. Cut off her head and saved it as GMax object. Loaded it back in and relinked it (still showing Trimesh modifier). Head whiplash again :-P

So, ok. I can deal with that. just use the nymph head_g, cut off all her hair and subdivide her face...
But it sure would be nice to know what info I'm losing when I swap parts around...

(Edit: Put new screenshot on the project page)

<...and washing his hands>
               
               

               

                     Modifié par Rolo Kipp, 09 septembre 2011 - 04:58 .
                     
                  

            

[Legacy_Bannor Bloodfist]

               I *think* that you are breaking the animation links when you replace the objects, OR breaking the hierarchy of what is linked to what.  

I do know, for absolute fact, that NWMax and any OTHER export util for 3ds that exports for NWN, can break animations.  Combine that with re-importing and causing further issues, and that could explain your issues.  

When working on such complicated creatures, objects, whatever, Export for testing in game etc, but ALWAYS save the original as a 3ds .scene file using the standard file-save option.  Don't re-import anything once exported, just go back and re-open the original max scene.

Believe me, I spent over a week creating moving water fountain animations for the "Hanging Gardens" group in Babylon, and lost/trashed those animations more than once by exporting and then re-importing them instead of going to the autosave or original max .scene file.  I kept forgetting to save it twice, once as nwn mdl file and the standard 3ds max scene file, and it bit me in the buttocks more than once.  Still does when I forget I am working with animations.

There is something about how nwmax and the other utils, "read" the max scene then export the objects, they all seem to read by last access time of the object, where they export the oldest first and work their way to the last accessed item in the scene.  This can cause major issues with animations for some reason but also with objects that use alpha and/or are parented to the "a" dummy.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <nods in understanding...>

Yip.

Means unique names before export, too, 'cuz importing something with the same name, even if you delete the original later, sure seems to screw things up :-P

Anyway, *think* I have that issue under control. Now I have to link in her bones and foliage again... but I'll take the time now to optimize her bones. Don't need all that mesh, since they play peek-a-boo with the foliage. :-) Besides, I don't really want to use the skeleton bones... I want her ribs to be two branch-hands cupping her pulsing-light heart... =)

Anyone experiment with animating the t-verts to get some expressions on the face? Does NwN honor t-vert position keys?
(I'd think so, since you can animate textures for effects...Though that is keeping the t-vert geometry rigid and just moving it...)

<...but he might be faking it>
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Pstemarie]

               Thanks for the tip Bannor. I've never had a problem with animation exoprts/imports except with emitters (guess I've been lucky), but I'll definitiely start using that precaution.
               
               

               
            

[Legacy_Rolo Kipp]

               <drawing a fine line...>

Rolo Kipp wrote...
Anyone experiment with animating the t-verts to get some expressions on the face? Does NwN honor t-vert position keys?

Short answer (if anyone is wondering): No.

At least, they're not exported from GMax in any straight-forward way...

Sokay, Plan B  <you're on "F" now, boss> er, Plan F.

Wait. <eyes Bother suspiciously> F? Are you trying to be funny?

<...through another intriguing scheme>