Welcome fellow modder!
Combine this guide with:
(1) Modeling:
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-9790.html
(2) Texturing:
http://www.frictionalgames.com/forum/thread-11232.html
And you should be able to create your very own
custom monster!
Images:
https://www.dropbox.com/gallery/20790433...n?h=00f052
Higher resolution:
http://imgur.com/a/EGF17#0
Track-bar picture:
http://imgur.com/5cXlC
1: Track-bar. 2: Track-bar-slider.
1.
Introduction
Animating is known to cause:
Anger, loss of sleep, confusion & feelings of awesomeness.
Animating something is quite easy actually.
There are however a lot of pitfalls, which will result in an incorrect export. I will try to make you aware of
these pitfalls & provide general tips for making
the animation process easier for you.
All of this knowledge is self-learned, I would however like to express a special thanks to the user "MrBigzy", who has helped me countless times.
Let's st
art!
2.
Rigging a skeleton sucessfully
Golden Rules:
- One skeleton
- One mesh
- Never rotate a joint which is not bound to a mesh! Use the move tool instead.
General tips:
- An individual joint is selectable by selecting the line between the two points.
- Always build the skeleton from the center outwards.
- Think of where the movable/rotatable parts of the body occur.
- Press "4" for a wireframe view.
I downloaded
the model (
the horseman) provided by
the user "hermoor" as a tutorial resource. You can find it in his thread under "developement resources".
----- Preparing
the scene ------
1. Remove
the light source
2. Window --> Settings/preferences --> preferences --> Settings
3. Up-axis: Y
4. Linear: Meter
5. Save
6. Rotate
the model and center it
7. Add
the texture
-------------------------------------
When creating a skeleton for something, think about it's movement. A biped; something with two legs and usually two arms has a basic repeatable skeleton structure.
A skeleton consists of joints which are linked toge
ther and placed in a hierarchy. Each joint provides a point of movement. To create a realistic finger for example; 4 joints are required. One at
the tip of
the finger, one at
the first "dent" (about 2 centimeters from
the tip), one at
the next and one where
the finger st
arts from
the palm. Why am I even rambling about this? It is to give you a greater understanding of why skeletons are created
the way
they are and how
they work.
Back to
the example at hand. Bring up
the 4-perspective view and click "view --> predefined bookmarks --> right side" at
the window in
the bottom right corner (Picure 1).
The first thing you should create is
the spine, st
arting with
the root bone.
Think of
the rootbone as "
the tree" and each o
ther piece as "roots" branching from it. Selecting
the rootbone will select every bone in
the skeleton. Moving
the rootbone will move
the entire skeleton. Arms & legs are built separately - and that for a reason.
The common thing about
them is that
they should always be built st
arting "inwards" and going "outwards". Meaning that an arm should be st
arted at
the shoulder and finished at
the hand.
Here I have built
the spine and head bones (picture 2). I have marked
the menus which you should access as well as where on
the model to st
art. Since I centered it at
the st
art and it is symmetrical
the spine itself should be created right at
the middle of
the model. I st
arted
the spine at
the hip in
the side view and built it upward toward
the head. Having
the skeleton build and movement "in mind" I added one joint in
the stomach area, one in
the shoulder area, one in
the neck area and one near
the top of
the head. Once I was done I pressed "Enter", which created
the skeleton.
The stomach area joint will allow
the model to bend forward,
the shoulder area joint will allow me to add arms and
the neck+head joint will allow me to move
the head.
Next up I created a leg (picture 3). View --> Predefined bookmarks --> Front. I have marked where to st
art the leg. Next I added one at
the knee, one above
the foot, one at
the heel and one at
the front of
the foot. I
then finetuned
them in
the perspective view (marked "2" on
the picture). This was to adjust & move
the last joint to
the front of
the foot.
Now you have two different bones, which are not connected yet! One spine and one leg. Since this model is symmetrical I can "copy"
the leg I have created to make ano
ther! (Picture 4). If it mirrors
the leg incorrectly, simply double click
the "mirror joint" and a window should open up as in
the picture.
There you can adjust
the direction of
the mirroring.
Next I did one arm;
the right one (Picture 5). I used
the front view to create it and
then adjusted it in
the perspective view. Explanation of each joint:
1. Will allow me to move
the entire arm
2. Will allow me to control elbow moment
3. Hand movement
4. Clasp
the hand
5. Finger movement (all except thumb)
I was lazy and didn't do joints for each finger. If you feel like doing it you are free to do so. Simply select point 4 and create one point 5 (followed by
the joints for
the finger) for each finger.
Next, mirroring! Do
the same as you did to
the leg.
Now, as we have a skeleton controlling
the model we will need to make it
one skeleton (picture 6). Select
the whole leg joint,
then select
the closest joint (it is
the root joint). Press "P" to bind
the leg to it. Now repeat this for
the o
ther leg as well as
the arms. When working with
the arms; bind it to
the "shoulder spine" joint -
the joint closest to
the arms.
The skeleton is done! (picture 7)
Always save your model at this step, something might go wrong once you bind the skeleton to a mesh. Have several saves of the same model.
3. Skin binding + weight painting + test animation
Golden Rules:
- Maximum number of influences can at most be 3
- Smooth skin bind
- Normalize weights!
General tips:
- Create a test animation to see which parts need weight painting.
St
art by drag clicking to select
the entire skeleton.
Then shift-click
the mesh. What to adjust next is viewable in
the picture (picture 8). Go to Skin --> smooth bind -->
the square right to it. That will bring up
the options window (picture 9).
The "max influences" = 3 is
the most important option here. It determines how many joints each vertex point may be bound to. Three is
the maximum number allowed for in Amnesia - higher settings will cause a
crash! Then bind
the skeleton.
Your skeleton will now be able to move
the model. Try selecting one of
the arms and rotate it.
The arm will rotate with it! Nice. Press ctrl+z to make it back to
the usual pose.
Save your project; File --> Save as.
This is how it looks once I tilt
the head backwards (picture 10). Without weight painting
the mesh will stretch and look unnatural when moved. This is due to
the vertexes being bound to joints
they shouldn't really be bound to. Thus when I rotate
the head a joint at
the chest still keeps
the mouth p
arts close to it - dragging
the mouth towards
the chest making it look really bad.
Select
the mesh. Double click
the paint skin weights tool (picture 11).
The mesh will turn black and white.
The black or darker p
arts reflect zero or little influence by
the joint selected in
the menu to
the right. Adjusting
the "Value" (in
the menu) to zero will paint black (zero effect), adjusting it to 1 will paint white (full effect). Gray is something in between. This is how you create a good
animation. Much work lies here.
Clicking different joints will showcase different areas of white.
The weight painting is not perfect and you will want to adjust where it is incorrect. Lets st
art with
the head.
I selected
the joints close to
the head and checked
their influence.
The shoulder joint for example influenced
the head (picture 12). Moving this arm would
therefore cause a mesh distortion on
the head. I selected it, set value to zero and painted
the head black.
Then I selected
the head joint and painted
the head fully white, giving it maximum influence.
I
then went around
the different joints looking at
their influence. This might seem confusing right now, but you will easier see problem areas once you st
art animating. You can do this as much as you like, go back weight painting in
the middle of an
animation to fix it up.
Warning: This monster has some serious dental issues with
the weight painting. I think I managed to get it to work correctly though.
Lastly,
do not forget to normalize
the weights of
the model (picture 13).
4.
Animation
Now it's time to make your first
animation.
I have st
arted
the habit of File --> Save as --> BasicPose.mb
Then I load that file every time from
the save base pose and create my
animation.
The base pose is an
animation where each bone has one key set to
the first and last track square. In that way
the character st
arts at one pose and ends at
the same - making it easier to create a looping
animation such as walking etc. (Picture 14)
Steps:
Select a joint.
1. Use
the rotate tool to rotate it.
2. Select a square on
the track bar.
3. Key it.
People who have experience editing videos might be aware of "keying". If I key one joint at say track sqaure 1
then a new position at track square 10 -
the joint will automatically move
there once
the animation is "played" (bottom right corner). This is basically
animation. Key a rotation/movement of a joint (rotation is preferred unless moving
the whole skeleton with
the root joint).
When having added a key it is preferrable to first select a specific time on
the track square bar,
then rotate
the joint and
then key it. Keying can be done by pressing "S". To prolong
the animation (amount of squares)
there is a slider below
the track bar. Slide it to
the right to gain acces to more squares.
Animations can also be slowed down once imported to
the game.
Download
the horse man walk
animation:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/20790433/horseman.zip
Something is broken about him. I think I managed to fix some bad normals.
The animation won't export correctly though. Will have to talk to MrBigzy about it.
Edit: I have created a .dds diffuse for him. One normal map and one spec too. Rigging is done. Weight painting is good.
The only thing is
the darned
animation..
"Animating is known to cause:
Anger, loss of sleep, confusion & feelings of awesomeness."