New Animation System for Irrlicht

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 12:59 pm

the prob is keeping up the good work, and releasing as soon as possible, is not usually able to do...

Imho he's devoting a lot of time already on this free project...

though I understand your position.I guess you are needing melt of animations...you can have your artist do those melts, is a tad of work, but if you are so time pressed...

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 1:00 pm

(or you are maybe needing other advanced stuff...)

sudi · Post by **sudi** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 6:10 pm

it's the melting....
for example we got so many movement types and so many action poses that making everything by hand would result in a file that is so big......no good idea

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:13 pm

I am just trying to get a hold of what this project can actually do. So are you saying when you finish this you will be able to have models with bones and you can control those bones from within the program. Like say I could write the code in c++ to have one of my meshes walk across the screen?? Also can this be used for face animation. Like moving mouths and things.

roxaz · Post by **roxaz** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:43 pm

face animation is one of the most difficult parts of animation. i saw how famous companies make these. actor talks with special spots on face, cam records it and moves mesh just as those spots move. its definetly not c++ code moving your characters jaw

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 9:50 pm

But virtually couldn't you do that then. Like stick bones that move up and down where those spots are and then take video and hand edit the bone animation to match how the person talks or something?

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Mon Apr 30, 2007 11:28 pm

Maybe you can refer to these sites:

Some sort of animation systems:
http://expression.sourceforge.net
http://ivizlab.sfu.ca/research/iface

Articles about facial animation at Gamasutra:

http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000 ... der_01.htm
http://www.gamasutra.com/features/20000 ... der_01.htm

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Wed May 02, 2007 1:29 pm

Some more papers showing the concept of facial animation.
http://grail.cs.washington.edu/projects/realface

This is how Valve made theirs...
http://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki ... y_creation

Err... not sure what's this though but it's related to facial animation...
http://www.projectmessiah.com/x4/manimate_main.htm

hope this helps.

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Wed May 02, 2007 2:15 pm

I am just trying to get a hold of what this project can actually do. So are you saying when you finish this you will be able to have models with bones and you can control those bones from within the program. Like say I could write the code in c++ to have one of my meshes walk across the screen?? Also can this be used for face animation. Like moving mouths and things.

Yes, you will be able to control, the bones. And yes you could do facial animation the same way. Just moving the character’s jaw would be fairly easy. But whole facial animation would need some pretty complex code, working out where the bones should go, but yes it’s possible to do.

vermeer · Post by **vermeer** » Wed May 02, 2007 3:35 pm

projectmessiah is such a top rated animation tool...yet though, you can achieve bone based facial animation with Blender.(Ive done a bit) Of course, you mean to control that even by code...You(the artist) can allways do and export a collection of typical expressions, like you do have your run, walk anims...only thing needed then would be the already mentioning animation melting(maybe am talking bout that melting allowing 2 anims running at once, melted...)...so you could do a big collection of things...

imho , though, sounds like better is have the base of the system, then go adding whatever is wished...

Halifax · Post by **Halifax** » Thu May 03, 2007 1:28 am

Ok I got that. So then how would I control animations with irrlicht. Say I have an AI. I want to run a stand still and look around animation, but then he gets shot at so he runs away in a strategical way. Like how would I get that to happen because the tutorials only showed the girl running constantly with no other animations.

Virion · Post by **Virion** » Thu May 03, 2007 6:00 am

You have to code the AI yourself... or you get an AI sdk.

Frodenius · Post by **Frodenius** » Thu May 03, 2007 9:42 am

i think its the animation hes worrying about

well your ai has certainly some sort of fsm, so each state would have its own animation, which is activated on the entry in that state.

sio2 · Post by **sio2** » Thu May 03, 2007 10:22 am

A couple of layers (at least) would be helpful for blending between animations running simultaneously. I guess this is what people mean by "melting" (a term I've never heard of in this context).

You could make animations for the lower part of body (idle/stand/walk/run/etc.) and run them at the same time as upper body animations. You could then have upper body motions, such as "reload", which can then be used no matter what the lower body is doing (and vice versa).

Same concept applies to facial animation (phonemes and facial expressions).

Perhaps there should be three blending layers for LOWER, UPPER and HEAD/FACIAL.

Just some thoughts...

Luke · Post by **Luke** » Thu May 03, 2007 1:03 pm

You could make animations for the lower part of body (idle/stand/walk/run/etc.) and run them at the same time as upper body animations. You could then have upper body motions, such as "reload", which can then be used no matter what the lower body is doing (and vice versa).

Same concept applies to facial animation (phonemes and facial expressions).

Perhaps there should be three blending layers for LOWER, UPPER and HEAD/FACIAL.

I’ll also assume that melting means blending.

Yeah, I was planning on doing this for the beginning, but I’m not going to restrict people to just 3 blending layers.