Bone weights for Commercial

Hi there,

I have quite an odd request. I've seen that bone weights are finally available in A7 but they require A7 Pro . Normally, I wouldn't mind just buying pro, but my intentions are to make Bones Animation the primary animation method for my plugin, Intense X, but i'm pretty sure that the vast majority can't afford to buy A7 Pro.

I think that animation is one of those things that keeps Gamestudio stuck in the past. I don't know if any game in 2008 still uses vertex animation. As far as I know, most of them keep a folder of animation files (20kb-30kb each) like attack.anim, death.anim, idle.anim and they just apply those animations to each model by code.

I've been informed by my modeler that without weights, then bones can only really be used for mechanical/non-human animations. So, I guess what I'm asking for, is to drop the weight feature for Bones to Commercial, so more people will begin using Bones instead of vertex animation. Maybe you could move a Commercial feature to Pro in return?

One more thing. If I had bones, is what I said before possible with A7? I mean, is there a way to keep animation files in one folder (maybe dummy MDL's with named bones attached to them?) and then add bones animations by code to other rigged models that have no animations in their MDL file. What I finally want to achieve is, have all these 2000 frames of animation supported by Intense X, and my customers could just make a humanoid model, rig them with bones (and name those bones whatever I tell them), and then their models can magically play the same 2000 frames of animation as well (even if those frames are not in every MDL file of my customer's models individually). How easy is this to do with A7, even if it needs A7 Pro currently?

Finally, I think A7 should eventually start moving to this path as well. I dislike how everything is inside a humongous mdl file. I much rather would prefer if we'd do it the same like every game is doing it and have a folder with our meshes (badguy1,badguy2,goodguy,girl) a folder with our animations (idle,attack,die,sleep) a folder with our textures (badguy1,badguy2,goodguy,girl,girl_skin2) and a folder with our materials (human,machines) and just mix and match everything by code. I think this will be sooo much better for the RAM, than those big inflexible MDLs..).

Cheers,
Aris

This is already possible. Provide a general bones animation file for your users. They can import it in all their models. They don't need Pro for that, because weights are not stored in the animation. Weights are stored in the bones. So your weighted animation file will work with all models that have your standard skeleton, and with all engine versions, although it will look better in Pro.

I could implement loading a bones scene into the engine from an animation file or from a master model - but I see no real advantage in that. Bones animation does not consume any noticable RAM amount. The only advantage were that you don't have to import the animation in MED. But you'd probably want to do that anyway for testing the animation in the editor.

That said, I'm nevertheless very interested in supporting external plugins, such as your AI plugin. So if you need some features please continue to request them.

advantadge of extarnal bone files would be being able to use same animation files for all your models.(like in hl2, modders/modelers, only make model and rig it with valve skeleton, and drop it to game, it uses game's own anmations.)

larry have you implemented the bones for intensex ai yet if so will it be realesed for intensex copper 1.0.
thanks

Hello jcl,

Thanks for the reply and sorry for the ridiculous delay in mine.

Those are some excellent news, but it left me a bit more confused than before.

If I got it right, I guess you're suggesting the following:

Make a model in 3ds max (or similar) with 2000 frames of bones animation. Import than model to MED. Now export the model's bones from File->Export->Bones to ASCII. My customers can then import that file to their own models, provided they use the same name convention for their own bones. Is that remotely right? I admit I haven't started testing any of these yet, but I certainly will the following days.

Just a couple of questions, provided that what I just said is true..

1) Would I need Gamestudio Pro to export a weighted Bones file and do all of the above from my A7 Pro MED, or any version would do?

2) What exactly do you mean, weighted animation file will work with all engine versions although it will look better in Pro? Does it mean that non-Pro versions will play the bones but ignore all weights in it?

I guess what I'm trying to figure out here is, what exactly is the limitation in Non-Pro gamestudio versions as far as weighed Bones animation is concerned. I was very surprised to hear that I could use bone weights in all gs versions so I'm wondering what's the limitations I'll have to work around for Non-Pro versions.


@Quadraxas, It would be a very appealing feature to be able to mix and match entities like that by code (load mesh file, texture file, bones file, all separately) but my biggest concern is getting bones to work so i don't consider it that big of a deal.. I guess we could work with mdl files as well, since that's how the A7 engine is built.


@firelord, Not yet, but I've picked the whole issue up again. But it looks more like a Silver feature to me since copper 1.0 has been delayed long enough.


Cheers,
Aris

Yes, I think you understood it correctly. You can import and export weighted bones animation in any MED, the only difference is that the engine moves only one vertex per bone in the lower editions. It's the vertex with the highest weight.

We're also planning a feature to support this better: A new ent_animate function that can read the bones animation from a different model. This way, it's even not necessary to import the bones animation in MED.

I see.

I guess I'll have to test my models in my Commercial edition to see how bad (or good) it looks with the 1-vertex per bone limitation and if human animation is at all possible using Non-Pro bones.

Cheers,
Aris

According to our experiences, it looks ok. If it turns out to look really bad, let me know - I'll think about a solution then.

hi larry wats the situation on bone animation with intensex.