good to know =3

I'd love to openly accept that compliment... but eh... FF's animations feel a "lot" more natural (notice the enfasys?) hey, at least mine laughs at the end :D
anyways Thanks =D

on 3ds, press "n" on your keyboard, (activates auto-key-framing(status bar goes red), wich in it's default state will save diferent positions of your objects in a particular selected frame(time), move your time-line back and forth and set these diferent positions, you'll do better if you press "k" (that forces 3ds to save a frame on the current time-line (cuz in auto-key-only mode the frame-saving is done automatically everytime you make a change), 3ds will interpolate the frames betwen key-frames, also, keyframes will only be displayed on the time-line once you have selected their objects (keyframes set wille selecting the model's head will not show when you select the model's torso). Make sure your auto-key is ON whenever you want to make a motion (or you will mess the model's default position, wich will affect permanently all the animation, so it's also a good idea to save a diferent file before doing animations...). I hear a lot about XSI doing it better (in fact, mod tools might do it at least as good as max (if you exclude rendering)...)
All-in-all, it's pretty much the principle of any of today's animation programs, "key-frames and interpolations", 3ds, xsi, flash, even Adobe Image Reday does it that way ;)
(this is the basic tho, it'd help if I could understand how to properly relate bones and their movements (IK solvers & controlers))

thanks ;3
since there's "not a chance" that I'd use JKA's custom humanoid skeleton, there's no reason to hold back either...

manganiac, add me to MSN, and i'll see if i can help you some with your animation.

eh... wille it'd be interesting to have such a support, doing Bahamut isn't the kind of think that I'd allow myself to be helped, I bet you know the feeling Gir ;)
eh, Bahamut is one of the reasons why I started modelling, wille I am no longer the kind of fan I was years ago, I pretty much still owe to the character. I wrote on the readme of my first submited file that i'd try to come out with Bahamut eventually ( GrayDragon, Jedi Knight 3 Downloads, Jedi Knight 3 Others ) , not sure if I'm ready (or have the skills/guts) to do so, but I'm not gonna wait forever either...
Just hope I can get the correct directions :D

Whatever it is you don't have, my good man...the good folks here can certainly help you find it :)

Far as XSI animation goes, I just learned how to do it today. Here's a link on a tutorial:

XSI Animation - Valve Developer Community

I've broiled it down to a few steps, which I can post if needed. However, I can't get the anims out of XSI and compiled into Carcass. I keep getting errors. That's posted in the Mod Tool 6 error thread, so I won't go hijacking this one! :)

Doing it yourself? Good for you.... and I can't wait to see what else you do. I know what you mean about not wanting to be helped, being the way I am I can get like that sometimes too depending on what it is I'm doing.

However, as long as you post your progress, me, Gir, and anyone else.... we're gonna crit your work to the best of our ability, telling you whats good, and what isn't in our own opinions. Its your choice to take the advice, but we won't be telling you how to do it, just helping you so you can do it the way you want, and that looks good.

well, the monitor on my "creative" machine (i have 3 pc's... 1 for gaming 1 for modeling, and this one which is like... well it's like the ingrown hair on the ass of the pc world) went 'asplode! so the help i'm offering is purely critical, and advicive (like, i'll be able to tell you which frames you do and don't need, how to make it look more flowing etc.)

anywho, i'll get a new monitor ASAP, and when i do i'll take screenshots of what i've done so far (be aware that primarily i'm making mine for unreal 3, so it's very high resolution at the moment.), when i'm completely finished, i'll think about releasing the low poly mesh + animations, so someone else can texture him.

HELP
I'm not yet done with uvmaping the model (wich btw has been a headache, too many distortions on the texture maping), but I wanted to test animating it with constrains and helpers, problem: can't get max to mirror the bones and constrains properly:
Not a single axis makes 3DSMax mirror them in the world/grid axis, allways seens to mirror bones localy, it also doesn't mirror the helpers (dummies) position on world axis, tryed changing that parent/local/world/viewport/grid thing for every mirror attempt but still no proper mirroring...
(I'm almost sure that mod tools will do this without much trouble (since XSI gives better animation support) and that I'll be able to animate it properly only after exporting the file to xsi. (Just want to finish this model & Laguna's before moving to XSI).



Basically each axis mirrors the bones & helpers in a desastrous way (the bunch of bones at the models left thigh (viewers' right thigh) is one of these desastrous ways).

ok, i used to remember how to mirror them properly, but as a quick fix:

mirror them as you are right now, but before you do, right click the bones you want to mirror and click the little box next to "move" and copy the figure you see for the x axis (assuming you're mirroring the mesh along that axis too). Then, mirror them, right click the new selection, move, paste, and more importantly, if the number you pasted is negative, make it positive, if positive, make it negative. your bones will now be mirrored exactly.

you might have to re-link the top bone though, i can't remember if cloning bones keeps the parent link intact or not.

oh, and never ever clone as an instance ;)

hm... weird enough... seens... max can't handle it's own constrains & helpers?... really only got to properly mirror both bones and helpers when I deleted the constrains betwen them... and still doesn't get to mirror both at same time (had to mirror the group of bones first, and then the group of helpers... cuz max doesn't let you group bones & helpers all in a single group) and now I'll have to set the constrains all over again...

OK, I'm going to sound like a total noob, but just making your own skeleton for this is purely impressive! However, one thing to consider when doing so, is that you will likely have to edit/create every single animation for JKA, which is in the realm of 21000+ anims. A lot of people have thought "hey, why doesn't someone make a new skeleton for capes?" Problem being, you have to add those bones to the animation set in order for them to work properly with the other animations. Otherwise, you'll get a crappy error message from JKA saying "bad bone or animation sequence" and your model will be Kyle.

Again, maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, and it could just be a matter of naming the bones the right things so that the program at least percieves that the bones are in order.

Oh, and you may want to wait on UV Mapping until you get it into XSI. Sometimes the maps don't translate so well when you move from 3DS. And, you don't have to export it as XSI to get it into XSI, .3DS will do (though make sure you apply your smoothing groups before you export ;) ). Another thing I just realized is that the bones will turn to nulls on import, so it seems you can either continue to make it in MAX and just do everything in max, or export the mesh into XSI and build your skeleton from there. Or you could just weigh it using the nulls...hell I did that for a while, and its a pain, but it still works.

Big B. here is not turning out to be as "wild" and pissed off as the original in Final Fantasy X, but I sort of enjoyed that he didn't, so anyways, mesh is around 95%done, uvmaping around 70% (missing wings, tho will be one of the easiest (2 much plane...)... textures: just started (chest has pretty much the front & top... still missing... rest) I pissed myself off tryng to figure out Max's IKs/controlers some more stuff related to animating (actually it's easy to set an IK, but making it do what I want... is a mess), anywyas, i'll leave that to the very end now...

http://img524.imageshack.us/img524/6964/bahamutxgo1.jpg

I'llbe the happiest person on Earth if this ever reaches the in-game =D

EDIT: ps.: no that's not a yellow heart, just a slaped brush to resemble some golden scales he's got starting there...

is it just me or he actually feels somehow... younger?... (don't ask me, just a thought... (again, I kind like it...)) Edit: =3

yonger?, btw great model :) (rate 10/10)

it's down to the "brow line" and his jaw, that make him look almost playful, rather than fierce. try angling his eyebrows down a bit more, and making his jaw look like less of a smile and more of a roar.

once again, sorry i'm not working on mine yet, my monitor (actually it's a 37" 1080p tv that i use as a monitor for modeling) is away for repair probably until the end of the week. once it's back though i'll be hauling ass ;)

p.s. SPEC MAPS OKAY?!

currently: http://img254.imageshack.us/img254/2199/bahamutxiu7.jpg

eh... wish I had done more, guess the whole texturing should be done by now, anyways, i'd say textures are still around 60~70% since pretty much the only one fully finished is the head, everything else lacks certain details

did a little improvised change with the head's textures, as you said, pulled the eyes down a bit and tryed to give more enfasys to the skin in-betwen the cranium and the jaw (thought it wasn't enough visible) (thing is... I really like how it came out the first time :D so, didn't save the changes, but still might consider pushing it towards the fiercer look a bit)

http://img260.imageshack.us/img260/8...hamutx2ad7.jpg

eh... ew... I guess I better give a lot of focus on spec maps when all the textures are ready... :lol:
(won't push it much either, although it's quite a few fancy scales, it's still part of his body, so, won't push the bright all the way to metal... (try to keep it like scales and... wet sea turtle shell (instead of metal))

Manganiac, your work is simply beautiful. I can't think of any crits offhand that you haven't already come up with...so please, keep up the good work, as you are basically doing what no one thought possible in this game. I'm looking forward to seeing the finished textures, the in game shots and new animations (and if you built a new skeleton, which in and of itself is a feat for this game).

That looks great... just keep going the way your going.

yay it looks cool ^::^ Ill be wantin this when its done!

on facepunchforums is a cool behemoth model but i think its ported but this 1 looks really alike 2

Of Facepunch forums, there are many ported models, so it wouldn't be a surprise if what you saw was ported as well... That place is full of fools anyway, from my experience, so I stay away from there unless there is something in particular that I get interested in because of a certain friend...

sorry for reposting, Imageshack went bitch on me and bugged this image, since it's been quite a wille ( ;P ) that I posted the last message, I can't edit/update the link to the image:
this image should be on the last post right at the beggining:

http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/4219/bahamutxxo6.jpg

grrrr i want my big monitor back for my modeling machine >_< i'm SO pumped about modeling my own Bahamut now :P

yey, got good and bad news...

the bad... 3ds is making this really hard, basically the problem is that in-game it stretchs SO much and the vertices go to really ridiculous points becomes a colorfull web... still without even moving (yet on the root animation), but everything's hierarchy is just good to go and the weighting is also doing fine. I checked the xsi file on Mod Tools, and wille the mesh is still intact the nulls (some helpers and bones) aren't symetricaly placed around the mesh... my only guess is that 3ds is really uncapable of properly mirroring bones and IKs for exporting (spent pretty much the whole weekend checking a lot of tutorials tryng to correct this wild bone placing, made enough tests to be sure that the problem IS the placing of bones during the compilation), I may give one last attempt at doing a whole new skeleton (at least can import the weights), and if that doesn't work, than it will only continue when I manage to understand mod tools (till then... modelling tutorials for xsi ;P )
eh... of course, the good news... is that carcass compiles it fine (despite of having around maybe double the number of bones that of the humanoid skeleton), wich is great, and carcass also ignores the IK solvers (archor thing that makes animation easier) so it keeps the animations and discards the IKs (whatever, at least they dont get in the way), if it works, will probably look like this: (more amateur test animation ahead) (maybe better if I ever get the hang of xsi, (allways beleaved xsi is better for animation))...
(didn't know you could do this in forums xD)

:dropsjaw:That looks awesome! The animation for the wings looks really cool.

veeeery mechanic looking animation. when you walk, you don't just move your legs. you're litterally losing, and correcting your balance.

you lift your foot up, and drop all your weight onto it, which causes your spine to adjust, along with your arms, and head, and then straighten your leg to bring back your full hight.

i know you've done well so far, but you have a very very long way to go yet.

oh, and my last piece of advice would be to work on actual looping animations. like just walking, just flapping wings, just standing idle etc. once you can get those looking natural, then work on complex combinations.

yes, of course, eventually...
it's just that after finally finishing the textures, weighting and burning a few braincells tryng to figure where and how each IK solver would work, came to conclusion that the whole skeleton is useless, cuz it won't work properly out of 3ds, don't know what I did wrong in it (carcass even compiles it, just looks like a bunch of trashed polies in-game), guess the only option left would be remove IKs, bones and helpers and try again on Mod tools WHEN I figure out how to do it... =.=http://img358.imageshack.us/img358/8...hamutx2zc0.jpg

skeleton looks fine to me, could just be that jka won't handle it. some games have bone limits, but jka has more in the face alone than that entire skeleton (lolz).

PM me and give me your MSN. I'll do what I can to help you get the hang of the program. Just import your root.xsi into the program and you should have everything all set, including weights. Mod Tool 6 is a little buggy with JKA, but I've been able to compile without issue lately, as long as I'm not dragging something from Mod Tool 4.2 into it. But Mod Tool 6 is a LOT more user friendly than 4.2, and allows you to use GATOR to take the animations from one model and transfer them to another with a few clicks, which is pretty sick.

Not sure what to do about the skelly though, as once you import it into mod tool as is, you'll likely just get a bunch of nulls. The skeleton will likely work properly though, as for the longest time I was using a null skeleton to weigh everything that came my way, up until about 8 months ago. In fact, if you load the .xsi animation files on filefront, you'll get a bunch of nulls there too.

Here's a good link for creating a rig, as well as some basics of weighing in XSI:
Rigging your Custom Character - Valve Developer Community

Hope all this helps! I'll try to get some info on creating bones out of nulls as well.


EDIT: Quick Tutorial on making bones in XSI:

http://www.computerarts.co.uk/__data...etstarted3.pdf

Ok... I intend to try modtools soon or latter but my priority right now is finishing these models (Laguna and Bahamut), rushing into Mod Tools NOW can be a really exaggerated option for something that might have a faster easier solution.
So facts:
- Model is correctly weighted, previows animation show that.
- Hierarchy is correctly set (previows screeshot also), plus Carcass compiles.
- Carcass compiles both glm and gla files, you can even see the model without distortions in-game if the whole mesh is weighted to pelvis.
- by greatly reducing the number of bones and weighting diferent portions of the mesh, I'm sure of one thing, the ONLY bone that remains in it's correct place is skeleton's direct child, pelvis, everything else is tossed around (wich causes the monstruous vertice stretching)
- animations are also exported into a gla file, but since the bones are messed up, all you see is a bunch of stretched planes... stretching more...
- Carcass actually shows one error message, that it could not creat the animation.cfg file (tho I don't think its that important since I probably would need to manually write it, plus by that the time this message shows both glm and gla files were already compiled), I assume that's due to the fact that max 7 doesn't divide animations as in layers nor give them some sort of label.
- huge ammount of bones doesn't seem to be a matter since I tryed compiling it with a lesser bone count (half that of humanoid) and the stretching was similar.

from my perpective it seens to concern bones' orientation since all bones except the pelvis are missplaced (not just their direction, some bones actually go way beyond the original height & width)
Wish I wouldn't post this, cuz it's just too ridiculous/pathetic to be seen by anyone, but I ain't getting anywhere either... ImageShack - Hosting :: bahamutxfx4.jpg

SO, before giving up on game modelling on 3ds and start a long process of learning xsi modelling/weighting/animating ... any suggestions to fix this? (not sure if skip modelling is a good idea (haven't made the best choices lately ;P ))

have you tried using the same naming method as raven did? like using real bone names.

for things like the wing, i would do something like "r_clavical_02" and "r_clavical_03". it could just be something as silly as the game not recognising improperly named bones? i remember that even some mesh parts like capes and stuff occasionally (randomly in fact) won't work if they are named wrong =/

I've experienced problems when i named the bones like the game ones, for example, giving the raptor thoracic bone the name thoracic(like the game skelletons) made it look like the model you've posted, so i just changed the name to "thor" and voila, it worked. Anyway I don't know why it happens and I animate my models in a very basic way (I don't even use IK and helpers), well I hope it helps something, and pretty good job on the model ;)

Edit:
and if it helps this is the skelleton of my dragon

about to go pick up my new monitor. i'll be modeling leik, hardcore when i get home. so expect some pics tonight (mind if i share the thread?)

Throwing out a collab project?

Interesting.

wheee ^::^ cant wait to see GiRs model! *anticipation*

sure, let's make JK3's modelling forum look like Lucas Forums in Psyk0's time ;)
(some searches led me there ;P )

LightNinja
I'm not sure if i'm building this model correctly, basically I added stuff based on Psyk0's standard skeleton and some tips from the vehicle tutorials
so I beleave the basics for it to work are
bones
skeleton_ model_ & mesh_root helpers
stupidtriangle_off (mesh weighted to thoracic)
correct hierarchy & weighting...

tryed giving bones original names and similar one to the humanoid skeleton, not working...
weird thing is that, this error seens to happen when the file is compiled (looked at it in mod tools, and both mesh and null objects (bones) are still on their correct places (except for mirrored bones)...

I'm gonna sound like a total NURB here, but have you tried freezing and resetting your Transforms/Xforms? That would be my guess, as its likely that the skeleton is just fine, considering it showed up in game, modview and the other programs. You could export your weight maps in mod tool before you do that, freeze, reset, then import them back in, but I'm not sure if that would fix it (but would save you a lot of time if it did). It may be that you have to reweigh everything from scratch after you freeze and reset. I'm not sure if you have to pull them out of the hierarchy to fix that as well, but I haven't had that problem in some time. That's my best guess. :)

dude, D&D is kick ass. btw, keep up the good work, it looks really good...

Ok, first of all, I've put the dragon ingame right now and it doesn't have any kind of skeleton_root or model_root helpers, it neither have stupidtriangle_off and i think that the models I've animated doesn't have them (look at them maybe it helps)
You can't mirror bones, a mirrored bone will cause the thing you posted (the modview screenie), what I do is copy them put them where they belong and then rotate them with precision, like if it was a manual mirroring

Light Ninja, I just noticed another... REALLY weird thing...
like one day ago (wille searching for fixes to this) I ended up in Lucas Forums' old threads about modelling and animating, there you said, max 6+ can't animate for JKA O.o (I'm using max 7.0, assumed it was no big deal since it was an old post and you didn't mention it here))
now, the WEIRD thing... is that I took an old 3ds model (that uses Psyk0's humanoid Skeleton and tryed compiling it just now without the gla file, well... same damn thing happened O.o thingers, arms everything stretching everywhere... now if I remember well the XSI export plugins for max 5 and 7 seemed VERY diferent (at least in their interfaces (I instaled the xsi export plugin for max 5 on my max 7 once(by mistake), didn't work but I saw it seemed way diferent))...
also, maybe it has something to do with some property on assimilate...?(there just isn't enough options to configure there, I guess I've set every thing there on or off for each compile attempt, except the 90 degreee thing, that's allways disabled) also, the model is displayed nearly the same way in mod tools as it is on 3ds (with the exception of mirrored bones, wille the mesh is still intact, the mirrored bones are just displaced copies) (so only goes weird when animated)
on assimilate basically I set :add files root.xsi choose make it's own skeleton and build... (already messed a wille with other options with no big change)

EDIT.: more tests... any children bone goes wild compiled, but if I set ALL bones as children of one single helper (without a correct bone hierarchy), the mesh reaches modviewer intact (even mirrored bones)... but of course, without a bone hierarchy it's nothing but a statue cuz it can't be animated then...

Mmmm if I remeber correctly 3dsmax6+ can't animate for JA because of the MAXSceneRoot that the program adds to the model, I don't know why..haven't investigated it but it happens mmm if you can import the model with the animations to xsi mod tool and erase the MaxSceneRoot do it and lets see what happens, if not if you want send me the .xsi, i'll open it in 3dsmax5 if it lets me, then i'll erase the MaxSceneRoot, compile it and send it to you (danadn@gmail.com)
BTW did you see any good animating tutorial?I've learned to animate by myself but I think I have to look some tutorials to make things properly :p

lol, i got all set up last night, then realised i've got 5 other projects i already started on... so i worked my fucking ass off to get them ALL finished last night.

(that's 5 completely modeled, textured, and rigged characters.)

bahamut starts toniiiiiiight. o/

ps. D&D kicks ass, cuntface! D:

need someonewith max 7 to make me this little test, try to compile a working model (a player model you already know that works fine) using Psyk0's skeleton into carcass without the gla file
creat a new folder, put your root.xsi in it
on assimilate set add file: root.xsi (instead of the _humanoid.gla), double click the file that shows on assimilate's list, check "creat it's own skeleton", remove anything it puts before .../models/play... (on the space with a path it shows) compile it and tell me if the model looks fine on Mod Viewer.

To do that in Mod Tool, open the explorer with the "8" button, select everything under your MaxSceneRoot, click the "Cut" button. then make sure nothing is under the MaxSceneRoot and you should be able to delete it without issue.

Let me know if you want me to take a look at it as well, Manganiac. I've made a couple animations with minilogo's biped rig in Mod Tool, but I haven't been able to compile them into animations yet, so maybe we can help each other :) I would just be curious to see what sort of model.car file you were using to compile with.

warning, the following post is only relivent in that it has little to do with the topic:

so anyway, i started on bahamut... and something else, which quickly took over. so while i have no screenshots of bahamut.

i DO have this:

SWEET JESUS!!! sorry, but if you don't mind me asking, is this for JKA or a different game. it looks like a different game. oh yeah, any updates on Laguna?

:rofl: 'Sif you could ever get that into JA :lol:

lol, that mesh is like 2.5million polies :P

thats what i was thinking.

Her mouth alone couldn't get into JKA. Btw, thats some nice work there Gir.

Seriously...That shape looks EXACTLY like a humans. If you look at the arms and the armpit. Also the neck..oh may gawd!!

yes, well, thats what you can do when you make something that hi rez. It cant go into any known game atm though. It COULD be used to make a normal map though. I think nothing could handle a displacement map based from that though... Btw, did you use any sculpting programs for that? or just 3ds/whatever you used?