Animation info request

Modeling & Animation
#1

A couple of years ago I made this:

I recently brushed off the dust and started reviewing what I had but noticed that many things now did not work.

It appears time marches forward and things change.

So I see there is an additional bone or two. I am looking at you ATTOVERCOG and Toes of all things!
I also note the addition of Scale attributes, moods etc.

But before I get dug in to updating my utilities I would ask a boon from those in the know. (@sdee, @malley )

Would it be possible to sketch out, in the simplest terms, what has changed in the animation pipeline.
The sleep anim for example has markedly different values than before (circa '14) and results in awesome hearthling yoga when i try to process it through my maya utility.

I am mainly concerned about fundamental changes in origins, base positions, different Quibicle export settings et al.
Any help appreciated.

Tobias

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#2

hey there @TobiasSabathius, awesome to see you back on the discourse! :jubilant:

iā€™ll also page @Hyrule_Symbol for you, as he tends to know a lot about the animation stuff

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#3

Thanks @8BitCrab !

As far as i know (and iā€™m not a Dev) the whole system itself has not changed, all the previouse animations made by Modders and the Devs should still work perfectly in the game; in fact iā€™m still using the old Voxel pirateā€™s Blender add-on to export my own animations and it still works

The ATOVERCOG and Toes are new matrixes added to the Hearthling model(which does mean old animations made for them are obsolete, but updating isnā€™t that hard) the Toes are, well, Toes, if you open up the latest SH files the Hearthling models will all have Toe matrixes for each bone

The ATOVERCOG on the other hand is a new helper bone, i Believe(and donā€™t quote me on this) it is used for the Speech-Bubbles and such for the hearthlings so they can be dynamically animated according to the animation

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#4

Hoooo Lyyyyyy Cowā€¦ that is an amazing script. Puts mine to shame for sure : /. You made that two years ago? Makes me sad I never heard about it : (. Thatā€™s super cool! Is it available for me to look at what youā€™re doing in it?

So Hyrule is right, Toes are Toes : ). You should be able to use them however you want, but I have them set up in a way which controls them through a reverse foot rig - something like this: Creating a Character Rig - Part 19: Reverse foot rig

ATTOVERCOG is not implemented yet, so currently its just a bone that sits there doing nothing. Eventually it will be used for attaching something above the head of a character. In particular, I added it so we can fix the issue with looking at health hearts above peoples heads from top down. Once we reconnect the hearts to this bone instead of the Head bone, we wont have hearts sitting inside mountains or monsters or whatever. (Reminds me I should bring that back up and get it finished.)

Beyond that, Hyrule is correct, there are no changes that would make anything not work. We have added scale to the game (Chris did it super simple), but I donā€™t have any examples of it yet because of a complication on my part.

I have added a rig to the pipeline of our animations along with referencing - just to keep the information separate and allow changing of multiple files easily. Unfortunately I set it up without thinking about scale, so I will need to go back and re-do a lot of it. I also still need to check with the boss people about whether or not I can give it out to everyone (Iā€™m sorry to anyone waiting for it, I forgot).

And thatā€™s it. Please let me know if you have any questions : ).

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#5

WAAAAAAAAAIT, Scale works now?!

Oh please tell me it actually works now and we can look forward to using it, Pleeeeeeeas

#6

Yup, scale works from an engine point of view, but from a rig or asset creation point of view its a little strange. I need to remake my rigs to take advantage of it, and Iā€™m not sure if the no-rig solution will have drastic issues (I kinda assume that they will). If you want to mess with the scripts, give it a try : ).

(My plan was to get it working on my end, and then send it out - if possible).

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#7

Yes! Now thereā€™s so much more Posibility!
Though, i bet this only exites Animation freaks like me(and maybe you too)

I wouldnā€™t want you to get into trouble, iā€™ll give it a whirl when itā€™s moreā€¦ ā€˜availableā€™

#8

Hehe, you wonā€™t get me in trouble, please try it out. Just donā€™t be dissapointed if its not working as youā€™d hope : ). (And please share what youā€™re able to accomplish as well).

#9

@8BitCrab @Hyrule_Symbol Guys thanks for responding and apologies for my late reply

@malley Thanks, that was exactly what I needed.

Looking back at my script makes me cringe a bit so I will clean it up before sharing it ( may take a short time :))
It was written using pyside and pymel with the UI created in QT designer.
You have probable seen most of these but:

  • Nathan Horne has a really nice old set of tutorials
  • more recently Nikola Kovacevic has what i think is the last complete tutorial using pyside & QTdesigner 4.8.something (before it all got changed to pyside2 and qt5 for Maya 2016 onwards.)
  • Fredrik Averpil has Maya 2017 and QT5 covered on his blog

Currently I am not using a boned rig, which is challenging for animating :slight_smile: and I think is the first thing I will change. Also just realised while thinking about what my utility actually does I will probably need to document it now as all my ā€œthis will be self evident and doesnā€™t need to be documentedā€ assumptions proved to be false two years down the road.

Anyway long story short: I can now forge on knowing all the errors are mine and not the result of hidden esoteric activities of Stonehearth itself.

Cheers

Tobias

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#10

OMG I know what you mean, except for me it was like two weeks later and I was already thinking ā€œWhat the heck was I thinking doing this??!?ā€ ; ). My messiness is also why I havenā€™t pushed hard to get it out to people, but I really should clean it up and try to get it out there : /.

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