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Devs / Re: Exit: Passing between worlds
« on: May 07, 2022, 01:36:00 AM »
EDITED: Just for whom it concerns I think I've decided what I want to do next is to take some time to add some nonlinear animation and animation curve fitting facilities to the MM3D model editor. This is something that's been weighing on me for a while, and I still need to update some of the animated models to shave 1 frame worth of time off the end of their run-times, so if I do this project first I can also rebuild their animations with real keyframes (currently they have a keyframe for every frame that makes any movement, which you can't realistically make edits to) so that that can be rolled into the same SVN Update. I.e. "2 birds 1 stone" (the 1 frame of extra time thing doesn't really impact the existing animations that much, so it can wait a little while longer.)
I also don't like how the shield/weapon animations I made for my demo move, and I think nonlinearity will help that and help me to simplify these new animations. Chances are the original kit that was used to develop SOM's models had nonlinear animation facility, but I won't know for certain until I can analyze their data.
I'm also going to be fussing around with VR for a while, off and on. I have a new Nvidia video card that should allow me to resume my work on that front.
P.P.S. I did some of that work on COLLADA-DOM yesterday (Reply #15) and it hit another blocker for CLANG, so I may put it back down for a while. I also had a horrible time with Microsoft's Remote Desktop because it just doesn't want to work to let my new PC connect to my old PC over my local network. Windows seems to be developing unaddressed bugs these days, like it's sliding backward into its old reputation of being an endlessly frustrating experience. For me it feels awful to spend the afternoon banging my head against an impenetrable problem. And I hate that I can't reliably access my old PC easily.
Incidentally this COLLADA project is my best reference for nonlinear animation. My main job will be to adapt its code (a lot of it written myself) to the MM3D system and figure out a suitable UI for it. For the record, I don't intend to add nonlinear animation facilities to SOM. The "hard" animations have data for every frame, so they can approximate a nonlinear animation with a high number of samples. The "soft" animations can't do this, so they would require new data in the MDL format. The real blocker however is Assimp's model representation, which can't represent nonlinear data. So for now this will be limited to the hard animations. I'll have to be rid of Assimp to progress beyond this, another day.
EDITED: Also, some might like to know that KF2 uses "soft" animation for everything, however many if not most of its animations don't really require this, and I feel they'd be improved to be converted into "hard" animations. It's one of my goals to do this. So far I've had to do it for the arm model for technical reasons. And I've done it for a number of "objects", like the drawbridges and doors for example. It just makes them more manageable. I'd guess the original art files were not animated this way but were converted so the game could use a consistent animation system. Although some of KF2 animations (like treasures chests and some doors) are accomplished more like how SOM's events are able to move objects. In that case there's usually multiple objects, like the lids on its treasure chests are their own objects (as is their lower, box half) for example.
I also don't like how the shield/weapon animations I made for my demo move, and I think nonlinearity will help that and help me to simplify these new animations. Chances are the original kit that was used to develop SOM's models had nonlinear animation facility, but I won't know for certain until I can analyze their data.
I'm also going to be fussing around with VR for a while, off and on. I have a new Nvidia video card that should allow me to resume my work on that front.
P.P.S. I did some of that work on COLLADA-DOM yesterday (Reply #15) and it hit another blocker for CLANG, so I may put it back down for a while. I also had a horrible time with Microsoft's Remote Desktop because it just doesn't want to work to let my new PC connect to my old PC over my local network. Windows seems to be developing unaddressed bugs these days, like it's sliding backward into its old reputation of being an endlessly frustrating experience. For me it feels awful to spend the afternoon banging my head against an impenetrable problem. And I hate that I can't reliably access my old PC easily.
Incidentally this COLLADA project is my best reference for nonlinear animation. My main job will be to adapt its code (a lot of it written myself) to the MM3D system and figure out a suitable UI for it. For the record, I don't intend to add nonlinear animation facilities to SOM. The "hard" animations have data for every frame, so they can approximate a nonlinear animation with a high number of samples. The "soft" animations can't do this, so they would require new data in the MDL format. The real blocker however is Assimp's model representation, which can't represent nonlinear data. So for now this will be limited to the hard animations. I'll have to be rid of Assimp to progress beyond this, another day.
EDITED: Also, some might like to know that KF2 uses "soft" animation for everything, however many if not most of its animations don't really require this, and I feel they'd be improved to be converted into "hard" animations. It's one of my goals to do this. So far I've had to do it for the arm model for technical reasons. And I've done it for a number of "objects", like the drawbridges and doors for example. It just makes them more manageable. I'd guess the original art files were not animated this way but were converted so the game could use a consistent animation system. Although some of KF2 animations (like treasures chests and some doors) are accomplished more like how SOM's events are able to move objects. In that case there's usually multiple objects, like the lids on its treasure chests are their own objects (as is their lower, box half) for example.