4876211

Character Animations and Stances

April 27th, 2009 10:11 PM

I've looked all over and only found the Dragon tool for animations and stances. Is there a way to make new anims without it, or do I have to use that?

I tried using it but it refuses to run, so now can I just not make JK2 animations?

4876221

Re: Character Animations and Stances

April 27th, 2009 11:01 PM

I'm not sure if it's feasable to do animations for jk2 at all. The bone hierarchy of the base jk2 humanoid skeleton is kinda messed up, so you can't use that with dragon (without major headaches, that is).

Other alternatives for creating animations are XSI ModTools (which is free) or maybe 3ds max (which, however, doesn't have a free version that could be used for animations AFAIK).
But you'd need a jk2 skeleton prepared for either of these tools, and I haven't been able to find one that could be used with ModTools. I'm not sure about 3ds max, though, as I don't have it.
Even if a skeleton could be found, I don't know whether it would be possible to work around the screwed bone hierarchy with those tools.

4876451

Re: Character Animations and Stances

April 28th, 2009 08:10 AM

Well, I do know that at least 3 or 4 stances files have been made. By my research, though I could be wrong, you create stances by editing the animations. The only tool I've found is Dragon.

At least 3 other people have done it for JK2, so it can't really be THAT screwed up. Can it?

4876540

Re: Character Animations and Stances

April 28th, 2009 10:28 AM

Most stance mods just re-use existing animation frames for different purposes (like stances) by altering models/players/_humanoid/animation.cfg (which is just a text file). You can tell the difference by actually looking into the pk3. If it contains a .gla file (usually models/players/_humanoid/_humanoid.gla) it does in deed add / change frames; otherwise it's only re-mapping.

4876636

Re: Character Animations and Stances

April 28th, 2009 12:08 PM

I had a quick look on jk2files and found two mods that do actually contain new animations, both by a certain tFighterPilot:

Han Solo Shooting Animation
New Briar Pistol Animation

The readmes say they were made using 3ds max. Over at lucasforums, a guy called psykosith drops in every now and then, and he might have some information about animating for jk2 with 3ds max.

Meanwhile, I'm gonna experiment a bit with XSI ModTool and see how far I get.

4878923

Re: Character Animations and Stances

May 1st, 2009 12:32 AM

Good news, I've managed to prepare a ModTool scene than can be used to do FK animating for jk2. It's still very experimental and may actually not work too well with all models (in particular if a model is weighted to the face bone, since I had to add that one to the skeleton provided with the jk2 SDK, and it ended up not quite where it should be).

The scene is called CRUFTFORGIL.exp (it's pretty close to the actual BOTH_1CRUFTFORGIL stance, but not completly accurate at the feet, yet) and can be downloaded from here.

Animation can done by selecting bones, rotating them (rotation tool is invoked through pressing 'c'), keying each rotation (pressing 'k' immediately after rotation is done - while the rotation tool is still active) and then advancing to the next key frame.

At the end, save the scene under a different name, then invoke File / Export / dotXSI, accept the preset export settings and save the xsi file somewhere.

To convert the exported xsi to gla, you'll have to use the carcass.exe which is included in the jk3 SDK (the one from the jk2 SDK just won't accept xsi's created by ModTool, even v3.0 xsi's).
I've prepared a little batch file that makes compiling single xsi's to gla a bit easier than using Assimilate (can be downloaded at the same place as the scene).

Uhm, there's one more thing you have to know: the weighting of the polygon mesh is slightly different from that of the actual Kyle model, so don't rely too much on how the deformations look in ModTool. Modview can be used to check them right after exporting / compiling.

4886498

Re: Character Animations and Stances

May 9th, 2009 01:58 AM

I noticed the BOTH_CRUFTGORGIL1 stance isn't really practical to start making animations from (it isn't even grounded). I guess I could also replicate BOTH_STAND1 and the saber ready stances, but are you even interested in this any more?

4887091

Re: Character Animations and Stances

May 9th, 2009 11:41 PM

I'm still interested. But I've only used Mod Tool very little for basic 3D modeling. I've also just done the desk lamp jumping tutorial for animations. If I played with it some I could get it figured out.

Pretty much though, I just need to know now how to open the animations in Mod Tool and whether or not I have to weigh the mesh(es) myself after importing or if it is done already?

EDIT: Also, for my modding purposes, I will be using a new character mesh (a female Twi'lek) so I will end up weighing the model on my own anyway. Anything special I need to know to get the main character's animations lined up right? For example, will I have to reanimate my Twi'lek to walk or can she use Kyle's animations if weighed properly?

4904055

Re: Character Animations and Stances

June 1st, 2009 03:10 AM

i've seen tons of saber stances for JK2