sombunall wrote:Hey this is Bard's Tale. They're supposed to animate like that
Really nice work!
No, this is BTBuilder. Even now, it far surpasses what BTCS could have ever been.
My hat's off to the amazing programmer that coded this up and my finding him about 6 years ago. I want these animations to look GOOD! I want them professional.
These aren't all my models. The actual actors are a new figure set from Daz3D. All the keyframe poses are mine. The animations were done using dials in Daz Studio. That's why they look so non-professional. Daz is not animator friendly.
This is the conundrum I have:
Before I got back into 3d modeling seriously, I had a ton of 3d models for poser that I would render out, then paint in Photoshop for concept work. I still have them.
The models that I have made in Maya, are mostly cyberpunk and modern/dsytopia types, not high fantasy. It's painful, as Dulsi used to put it, to convert a Daz/Poser skeleton to my character rig which is constantly updated when I learn about a new technique I want to use. It's even MORE painful to try and BIND a DAZ/Poser model to my rig, 'cos the poly count for their models are in the million range, when you add in clothes, props, hair, etc. The absolute *WORST* thing to do, however, is animation in Daz Studio, 'cos there's absolutely *NO* IK/FK support. Everything is moved by dials.That's why these animations look so bad. Tweaking the inbetweens with no FK rig, using only dials, is like pulling teeth.
Daz, however, came out with a new model, that's sub-D based. It also supports some rather radical morphs, as you can see above, but have the same polycount, the same paint weight and can pretty much use any previous object ever created. I got to play with the base model, as it comes with the Daz Suite, so I bought a couple of morphs to play with. With this model, instead of creating a multiple models, I can just use this one, morph it over and over again, and everything is still the same. Also, I can export the Genesis model into ZBrush and create my own sculpts and morphs that will still comply with the above. The problem is, it's got the CRAPPIEST skeleton rig, I have ever seen and I have to use their naming conventions to use their paint weights.
Basically, I've discovered in the past few days, that I have 2 options here:
I can create a new animation rig of my own, and parent it to the Genesis rig or I can create a whole new rig, using their naming scheme and build controls for it. So far, my parenting the Genesis skeleton to my animation rig has been unsuccessful.......
1. I can export all the models I want to use, bind each one in Maya, rig them, animated them and render them.
or
2. I can animate a bound rig in Maya, export that animation to Daz, then use the same animation over and over again, for any Genesis character I create. With this option, I can keep a bound model to the rig, so when I animate, I have the ability to scrub the animation and tweak frames, on the fly, with ease. It also means I have access to potentially millions of different characters templates *AND* once I've created a few animations or on your whim, you would have the ability to download Daz Studio, create your own animations or static renders of your own NPCs. Also, any renders you create with even the Basic Daz Suite, are GPL compliant. (Daz Studio is free, btw!)
Obviously, I'm leaning towards the later, as it's a MUCH easier pipeline.
Dulsi,
I have 2 requests I'd really like you to make a priority, if at all possible.
1. I need the ability to save a separate wall for each tile in a dungeon. Unless you want the Wilderness set to have no doors, I need this. I know a few years back, you said that the engine already supported the ability to place a different texture on either side of the wall.
Essentially, I just need an extra folder in the images folder titled "walls." Inside that directory are directories of wall sets. Each wall will be separated by it's own folder. When you want to change a wall tile, the Editor defaults to the Walls Directory and you choose a folder for said wall. Then, the dungeon's xml has a wall override element for N, S, E, W, Top and Bottom for each square on the dungeon grid. If a square has any Wall Overrides, it uses those walls, otherwise defaulting to the map type.
I need this one, first and foremost.
2. 1280x960 support.
You get me these and I'll replace all the 48 preset images with completely GPL compliant images. They'll be static, but will eventually be replaced with animations of the same model. Oh, that's one other neat thing about the Genesis model. If I create a character that's a "human ranger", I can morph the same model, into a dwarf, gnome, hobbit, elf, male, female etc. (Yes, I already planned on this.) The characters would be the same, just gender and/or racial changes. The 2 animations above are using the same model, just different morphs and textures.