How to animate without using bones

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:50 pm

I was wondering if you could suggest some other kind of animation that i could use instead of using bones and the skin modifier.

I tried posing the mesh to export it in the diferent frames of the "running" animation, to try to simulate the animation by rendering the "first frame" mesh, then the second one, and like that with the rest of the running animation, but without using a skeleton is almost impossible to pose the mesh in any possition, i tried selecting different vertices' groups but it's horrible, it's impossible to even flex one knee.

I don't know if i explained myself correctly, it sounds a bit weird. I can try to explain better if you want.

I'm part of the team who were doing the zombie apocalypse game in this thread:

http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/ ... hp?t=30402

And as you suggested we investigated if the bones were the problem, and it seems they are, so i wanna know if someone could suggest me another method

JP · Post by JP » Fri Oct 03, 2008 12:58 pm

Well you definetly don't want to have a different mesh for each frame of the animation, that would be madness....

bones are the best way of animating and if you have too many bones can't you reduce them somewhat to improve performance? You can certainly get away with as little as 8 bones for a zombie, rather than your 20 (i think) that you had.

Anyway, if you need to know about other animation types then google them, there's the MD2 style morph animations you could look into but this won't give you as good quality animation as bones will and if you can't pose your character without using bones then you're not going to be able to do the morph animations as that's what you need to do.

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 1:03 pm

I'm not very skilled with creating bones, i've been using a biped as the skeleton.
Is there a way to edit the biped, to reduce it's bones to 8?

Because i can't erase any of them, if i erase one the whole biped dissapears

JP · Post by JP » Fri Oct 03, 2008 1:05 pm

All depends on what modelling program you're using... There should certainly be a way of deleting certain bones.. but bones are a hierarchy so if you delete a parent then the children will probably be deleted too.

It seems like you're not actually very skilled at animating? Maybe this is your first attempt at it? I'd suggest reading up on tutorials, should be able to find lots with google or the webpage of your modelling program.

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 1:12 pm

Yeah it is my first attemp, and i'm using 3dmax. The tutorials i found sucked big time, so i just tried using the skin modifier by my own.

Could you recommend me a good tutorials website?

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 1:17 pm

No biped is a max thing,

Dont worry about skinned skeletal animation... The bones and or biped is a tool for animating the mesh IN THE 3D APPLICATION.
This means, you can "preanimate" things in max, and save the animation timeline as part of the animation of the file right? Then its a "static" animation in the file and is not moveable in game.

The skin modifier is for meshes IN GAME to be moved, ie : ragdolls, skeletal animation (in game) and other USEFUL things.

Its not that its not possible, or not working. If you arent capable of learning then a) get a new artist b) learn harder or b) RTFM.

This may sound really harsh ,but i made a fully enveloped (yes the correct terms are available there too) and fully skinned mesh in a matter of minutes, using a biped in max, exported and working in game in less then 30 minutes.

Wanna know where i learned how?

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3dsmax6\docs

(6 at the time, as this was a long time ago, now i know it well enough to leave the docs alone)

Just spend some time man, its hard but if you wanna learn learn, dont drop entire well known,well proven,well documented, well tutorialised methods for non existant hopeful ones

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 1:39 pm

I've already animate a mesh using a biped with 3dmax, the problem is that the biped has too many bones to render 80 zombies at the same time, so i must use a much smaller skeleton, the max's biped has at least 21 bones and i need to use about 8-10 bones per zombie.

I want to continue using the biped but i want to modify it, so i can erase the useless bones (like the head, neck, toe, etc). I was asking if someone knew a good tutorial site to be able to learn how to edit a biped, i had a quick read of the max tutorials and i didn't find that "edit the biped" part, if you are sure that the max's docs have that part then i'll check again

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Fri Oct 03, 2008 2:31 pm

A quick read is clearly the problem.

Iv seen it countless times, even tutorials on making weird ass crocodile things using a "human" biped. Theres so much to do with things, add and remove bones.

its there, i promise.

Also, try normal rigging if biped is too many. its not as hard as it seems

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Sun Oct 05, 2008 7:12 pm

Ok, i read the max's tutorial as soon as possible and i let you know

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Mon Oct 06, 2008 9:32 pm

I've read the max's help tutorial, and it mentions how to add or modify bones (to/from a biped) but it doesn't say how to substract bones from it. In the biped's structure menu you can add or substract some bones (for example you can give some ponytail bones) but you can't for example, erase the toe bone (or set it's quantity to 0 to be exact).

I'd already "played" with this before reading the tutorials, and i couldn't solve my problems.

From your own experience, are you sure you can erase ANY bone from a biped?
If you don't know then i'm guess i'll try to create a bone's rig by myself, but if you are sure you can erase the bones, please tell me

FuzzYspo0N · Post by **FuzzYspo0N** » Tue Oct 07, 2008 8:06 am

Hmm, well seeing the documentation (looking again now) i can see quite a few things about the number of bones, but again this is (supposedly) not what you are after?

Character rigging is not as difficult as it sounds, and i urge you to look into it as it is the best form for games. Bipeds are made for animation (as stated all over the documentation) not for skeletal animation systems in games. This means it will be ugly (in terms of size) for games. Its similar to the meshsmooth modifier. It might make things easy and make things look good, but it will kill the mesh for a game.

Good luck in learning the bones, the tutorials are well endowed with information and a full blown introduction to making the bones "by hand"

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Sat Oct 11, 2008 1:14 am

Ok then, i'll try reading the max's doc first and if they suck i'll google a bit.
When i have some info i'll tell you about, thx for the help so far

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Tue Oct 28, 2008 5:56 pm

I couldn't try creating the bones myself yet but i have to do a different thing now.

We're gonna use .md2 files, and as far as i know they don't use bone-based animations, but some kind of pose-frames interpolation. I tried looking at the max's tutorials but i have no idea how to do that.

Does anyone know how that kind of animation is called so i can google a good 3dmax tutorial?

JP · Post by JP » Wed Oct 29, 2008 8:28 am

MD2 uses morph based animation. Note that you can only really safely use about 600-800 polys with an MD2 model before the animations will start looking really weird. This is due to the rather heavy optimisations in the file format. So it's not gonna be a very good format to use for you i don't think....

The Creator · Post by **The Creator** » Wed Oct 29, 2008 1:37 pm

I am a bit confused. Should i use more than 600-800 polys or less for a good animation?