Character Animation - the spine
by Luigi Rosso · in Torque Game Engine · 09/06/2002 (5:21 am) · 5 replies
Hello everyone, I'm a programmer for the TGE based project Sons of Valor.
We've been on the hunt for a good modeller for quite some time and since we've had limited success in finding one, I've started to make "programmer"/"placeholder" art for the game so we can move onto our gameplay (which requires specific types of animations for melee combat).
I haven't used Character Studio since MAX 2.0 and I was delighted to find some new features!
I first started working with the Torque player example (the blue guy that comes with Torque) and everything went fine, I succesfully exported a number of DSQ animations.
When I started working on some particular types of swings which involve the entire upper body (particularly the spine nodes), I noticed that the entire model started pivotting on itself in the game as if the spine was somehow affecting the legs and everything else. My CFG file is setup correctly to only export the upper body and I've checked the dump file to make sure that everything is getting culled out properly. The animation type is blend and I have told it to ignore ground transformations.
I thought it was an issue with the segmented model so I made a quick single mesh character to test with, aligned the skeleton, enveloped the mesh with the com_skin plugin and successfully got him in game. I tried redoing the swing animation which involves the entire upper body, and once again the player rotates as if the entire thing was linked to the spine. While in 3dsmax I correctly see only the upper body rotating (the torso nodes are called spine on the biped). The other parts of the animation come through fine (arms swinging, head rotating). I have checked the weights and the vertices affected (just in case maybe one or two were getting influenced) and everything looks right on. Other animations involving only the head, arms, and so forth work fine, this only occurs when I animate the spine.
Has anyone else encountered this? Does the engine use the spine for some special purpose (doesn't seem like it from the player class, it's resolved up to the head but that seems to be only for use of the shadow manager)?
Thanks for reading,
Luigi
We've been on the hunt for a good modeller for quite some time and since we've had limited success in finding one, I've started to make "programmer"/"placeholder" art for the game so we can move onto our gameplay (which requires specific types of animations for melee combat).
I haven't used Character Studio since MAX 2.0 and I was delighted to find some new features!
I first started working with the Torque player example (the blue guy that comes with Torque) and everything went fine, I succesfully exported a number of DSQ animations.
When I started working on some particular types of swings which involve the entire upper body (particularly the spine nodes), I noticed that the entire model started pivotting on itself in the game as if the spine was somehow affecting the legs and everything else. My CFG file is setup correctly to only export the upper body and I've checked the dump file to make sure that everything is getting culled out properly. The animation type is blend and I have told it to ignore ground transformations.
I thought it was an issue with the segmented model so I made a quick single mesh character to test with, aligned the skeleton, enveloped the mesh with the com_skin plugin and successfully got him in game. I tried redoing the swing animation which involves the entire upper body, and once again the player rotates as if the entire thing was linked to the spine. While in 3dsmax I correctly see only the upper body rotating (the torso nodes are called spine on the biped). The other parts of the animation come through fine (arms swinging, head rotating). I have checked the weights and the vertices affected (just in case maybe one or two were getting influenced) and everything looks right on. Other animations involving only the head, arms, and so forth work fine, this only occurs when I animate the spine.
Has anyone else encountered this? Does the engine use the spine for some special purpose (doesn't seem like it from the player class, it's resolved up to the head but that seems to be only for use of the shadow manager)?
Thanks for reading,
Luigi
About the author
#2
If you have say 3 spine links.
Why not make a 4th? You would have to adjust the bindings but the one spine link giving you problems could easily be shrunk down and left idle as its bound to any verticies. :)
I don't know if it works I just thought of it when I read the post.
Stephen Cook
12/27/2002 (12:32 am)
Here is an idea that may prove to be quite interesting.If you have say 3 spine links.
Why not make a 4th? You would have to adjust the bindings but the one spine link giving you problems could easily be shrunk down and left idle as its bound to any verticies. :)
I don't know if it works I just thought of it when I read the post.
Stephen Cook
#3
12/28/2002 (12:53 pm)
There is some hacky spine code T2 cruft in the C++ part of the engine that is used to dampen or remove the affects of the spine on everything attached above it. It could be affecting your animations as a side affect.
#4
Just rename the "Bip_Spine" nodes to another name, I changed mine to 'bip_torso', and it now works fine.
Hope that helps :))
01/01/2003 (12:55 am)
this sounds just like the problem I had with my model fairly recently, when trying to make a sidestep that rotated the spine node of the biped skeleton. In the first person view, the Spine node is aligned to face forward normally, or something along those lines. Joe Maruschak showed me the light...Just rename the "Bip_Spine" nodes to another name, I changed mine to 'bip_torso', and it now works fine.
Hope that helps :))
#5
01/01/2003 (2:10 pm)
Thanks for all the help and suggestions! I'll be trying some of these out as soon as I can free up a weekend :)
Torque 3D Owner Luigi Rosso
The problem is still there with the single mesh character as I need the entire torso to rotate (looks very odd otherwise) and it still causes those strange entire body rotations if I animate the lowest spine node. Again, this looks fine in MAX, exports the correct bones, but looks very wrong in game.
Does the lowest (closest to hips) spine node have any special significance within the engine?