Titletitle
by Adam · 08/14/2006 (7:51 am) · 33 comments
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About the author
#2
08/14/2006 (8:16 am)
great post Adam... now how do you rig the facial expressions of a character that is staring at a sandwich and really wants to eat it, but his animator/artist is already chowing down on it.
#3
08/14/2006 (8:23 am)
<3 
#4
Just a quick heads up to anyone who reads this and instantly thinks "I'm gonna use morph animation all over the place!" I'd just like to point out that doing really complex things with morph animation can start creating really HUGE dts files :D Complex being many points and many frames. If I see anyone with a full character animations done soley in morph animation I will hunt you down and throw cabbages at you from afar :D
You have however given a stellar example of when to use it: facial expressions and using blend animtions. Kudos again for great .plan.
[quick edit]
Just viewed vid of the explosions, more Kudos for you :) They look great.
08/14/2006 (8:27 am)
Great stuff Adam!Just a quick heads up to anyone who reads this and instantly thinks "I'm gonna use morph animation all over the place!" I'd just like to point out that doing really complex things with morph animation can start creating really HUGE dts files :D Complex being many points and many frames. If I see anyone with a full character animations done soley in morph animation I will hunt you down and throw cabbages at you from afar :D
You have however given a stellar example of when to use it: facial expressions and using blend animtions. Kudos again for great .plan.
[quick edit]
Just viewed vid of the explosions, more Kudos for you :) They look great.
#5
I love the artillery explosion :) Great tut
08/14/2006 (8:27 am)
If "La fontaine" of Duchamp would have to insult a Warhol campbell soup it would probably say: "Vous copiez mon ready-made de 40 ans plus vieux que vous, spice de boite de conserve!" Or something like that...I love the artillery explosion :) Great tut
#6
Thanks much!
@Benjamin
hahaha oh man. I completely forgot about the sandwich photo. Good times good times.
@Koves
Right back at you, sweetie.
@Craig
YES! This is an excellent point and I'm glad you made it. And thanks for the kind words.
@Ben
Hahah, Ben I don't speak french and the babelfish translation is hilarious.
08/14/2006 (8:29 am)
@SurgeThanks much!
@Benjamin
hahaha oh man. I completely forgot about the sandwich photo. Good times good times.
@Koves
Right back at you, sweetie.
@Craig
YES! This is an excellent point and I'm glad you made it. And thanks for the kind words.
@Ben
Hahah, Ben I don't speak french and the babelfish translation is hilarious.
#7
08/14/2006 (8:32 am)
I am but a simple programmer, and your talk of this "art" confuses and frightens me.. 
#9
08/14/2006 (8:57 am)
Nice work Adam. I know a few people have asked about doing something like this and we have always told them "just setup a face rig and use blend animations", now it will be good to show them a few extra examples even as screenshots. 
#10
08/14/2006 (9:00 am)
Great stuff Adam. Really like the explosions. 
#12
So what about simple items, like cloth that moves and flows when the player is walking or running. you could rig it with bones and the animation for a cap blowing in the wind. or dress geometry pieces that move with the motion of the hips. I wonder could this work with Milkshape. :)
I been altering some of my meshes that I purchase from some fine content packs, but things like caps, and dresses or robes dont move like they suppose too. Rigging a flat plane and giving it bones and animating the motion sounds a lot easier than having it do it dynamically. and just mounting the pieces on the main body a la Warcraftish like.
08/14/2006 (10:01 am)
@AdamSo what about simple items, like cloth that moves and flows when the player is walking or running. you could rig it with bones and the animation for a cap blowing in the wind. or dress geometry pieces that move with the motion of the hips. I wonder could this work with Milkshape. :)
I been altering some of my meshes that I purchase from some fine content packs, but things like caps, and dresses or robes dont move like they suppose too. Rigging a flat plane and giving it bones and animating the motion sounds a lot easier than having it do it dynamically. and just mounting the pieces on the main body a la Warcraftish like.
#13
Thats a great question and probably fodder for a whole tutorial onto itself, but I'll lay out my basic views on capes, cloth, and the like here.
Basically You have to look at how something moves. Things like a face, for example, are really free moving. There isn't a logical chain of action. Its a bunch of single points that move in different directions at the same time.
Capes and clothes and the like do have a logical chain of motion. if the bottom of a robe is moving, it means the middle is moving too, albiet less than the bottom. The top is probably moving too, but less than the middle or bottom.
Since that's the case, I would deal with clothing like that by mostly rigging it to a generic player skeleton (legs, arms, whatever) and then partially rigging it to any number of secondary rig pieces (dressChain, robeChain, capeChain) that I would make to get the job done. This way, the clothing would move with the legs or arms or whatever as it needed to, but then Id also have a third chain or a series of chains to control the subtlety of motion, like a subtle blowing in the breeze or something like that.
08/14/2006 (10:33 am)
@JohnnyThats a great question and probably fodder for a whole tutorial onto itself, but I'll lay out my basic views on capes, cloth, and the like here.
Basically You have to look at how something moves. Things like a face, for example, are really free moving. There isn't a logical chain of action. Its a bunch of single points that move in different directions at the same time.
Capes and clothes and the like do have a logical chain of motion. if the bottom of a robe is moving, it means the middle is moving too, albiet less than the bottom. The top is probably moving too, but less than the middle or bottom.
Since that's the case, I would deal with clothing like that by mostly rigging it to a generic player skeleton (legs, arms, whatever) and then partially rigging it to any number of secondary rig pieces (dressChain, robeChain, capeChain) that I would make to get the job done. This way, the clothing would move with the legs or arms or whatever as it needed to, but then Id also have a third chain or a series of chains to control the subtlety of motion, like a subtle blowing in the breeze or something like that.
#15
This type of rig has been on my "want to do" list for a while. To take it to the next level, put the bones on splines that follow face musculature. Much like where this thread ended up going.
@Craig's concern: If I'm reading this right, we aren't actually using the 'morph' animation feature for this, so we actually don't get the same position-per-vertex-per-frame file size hit. :)
08/14/2006 (2:14 pm)
Well written Adam, informative and enertaining. Classic: "just like that last joke, no one understands it." This type of rig has been on my "want to do" list for a while. To take it to the next level, put the bones on splines that follow face musculature. Much like where this thread ended up going.
@Craig's concern: If I'm reading this right, we aren't actually using the 'morph' animation feature for this, so we actually don't get the same position-per-vertex-per-frame file size hit. :)
#17
Note to everyone else: thats an inside joke from when I was still at GG. Consider yourselves informed.
08/14/2006 (3:17 pm)
HAHAHAHAH! Nice one Matt. :)Note to everyone else: thats an inside joke from when I was still at GG. Consider yourselves informed.
#18
'Vertex animations' in TGE are records of vertex info per frame and create very large files. This may be what Craig F was referring to above.
Please let me know if I misunderstand what you are getting at. I really like the fact you point out about not having to use bones to animate your character: very useful.
08/14/2006 (4:54 pm)
I am confused on your terminology, are you calling the end bone positions for each expression/phenome a morph target? This somewhat makes sense to me, but morph targets usually refer to target positions of verticies, not bones/nodes, at the beginning and end in an animation... similar to your write up, but not the same thing. manipulating the end positions of verticies gives very fine control of your animations and many tools make them very easy to create and use. This resource is a great implementation of a true morph target technique.'Vertex animations' in TGE are records of vertex info per frame and create very large files. This may be what Craig F was referring to above.
Please let me know if I misunderstand what you are getting at. I really like the fact you point out about not having to use bones to animate your character: very useful.
#19
In either case though, this is a great idea (even some people doing movie type work have started to move over to bone controlled facial animation since it can be a whole lot more flexible in some ways, morphs are linear blends while bones can be set up to be animated along arcs etc for example). I did the exact same thing for some facial animation work a few months back, it works great (and looks totally sweet when hooked up to a realtime phoneme/viseme extractor... ehm =).
08/14/2006 (5:02 pm)
I have to agree it's a bit confusing bringing in the term "morph" in this case, since this has nothing to do with what that term traditionally refers to. What this is is just a regular bone setup with weighted vertices etc. In either case though, this is a great idea (even some people doing movie type work have started to move over to bone controlled facial animation since it can be a whole lot more flexible in some ways, morphs are linear blends while bones can be set up to be animated along arcs etc for example). I did the exact same thing for some facial animation work a few months back, it works great (and looks totally sweet when hooked up to a realtime phoneme/viseme extractor... ehm =).
#20
We may have to dock Adam a couple points for not making that distinction clear.
08/14/2006 (6:40 pm)
Yes, you are correct, this really isn't morph animation per se. But, in terms of what people are generally trying to accomplish when they ask about "morph animation" support, this is a better approach than using blend shapes the "morph" option in the exporter. We may have to dock Adam a couple points for not making that distinction clear.
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