I've been working on this for years, and until now haven't had enough hours in a year to complete it. But now, its almost done!
What I've done is take a lot of cues from newer games like Diablo 3, TERA, and a lot of other online and console games. My intent is to:
*increase the bone count in a model series to create a more fluid character
*replace body part models with an underlying skin mesh
*reduce the use of danglymesh on actual body parts, and increase their usage on cloth and other materials
*reduce a group of animations to a single, smaller MDL file
*allow for better constructed armor parts without having to work in skin textures and the like
*reduce model pass-through and unwanted clipping errors
So what this model set does is fully replace the male and female human base model series, from PH(m/f)0 back to PH(m/f)0_casts. All bioware animations are included in one file, and all unused and overwritten animations are removed to reduce file size.
The model includes functional shoulder/clavicle bones for proper shoulder movement, and contains adjusted animations to make use of them.
The model has a breathing system animated in. It is not perfect yet, but it may be shortly. It looks pretty realistic in most animations. In others, the breathing is not correct for what is going on in the animation (ie. breathing in when swinging a sword or taking a hit). Working on it...
The models contain nodes (bones) for female breasts, for the sole purpose of reducing danglymesh usage to portray breast jiggle (in some cases, a hideous act). The bone makes the skinmesh as realistic as possible, and since its a skin, you can modify the skin (like with robes) to make use of a percentage of the jiggle. Female breast movement was calculated and animated using a very simplified elastics system which greatly improves upon danglymesh. Male breast "jiggle" is also in the works, and includes some muscle flexing show-offs for certain animations.
Because body jiggle is animated into the model series, it allows for the user to have a separate danglymesh on torso items so you can now have, in effect, two danglymesh tightness values on a single armor part.
These models are higher poly than the standard robe, but lower poly than a combined set of model parts, AND they allow you to still add the model parts over top. They do require a new full set of model parts, which I am happily working on. This allows for more focus on that specific model part without having to add the skin portion.
The way these skins are built, additional animation keys help reduce pass-through of one model node into another. It also helps in lighting so that models don't look so blocky in-game.
Upon final release, the following separate skins will be available:
*Nude (nothing too vulgar)
*Nude without anything sexual (no nips etc)
*Tight fitting underclothes, comic book style (think Star-Trek TNG)
*A variety of female-only squishies, such as corset push up, push in, push down, pull apart and combinations thereof.
When complete, the replacement model parts will better fit the character model with lower poly counts.
Package includes gmax scripts for the following:
*modify jiggle in animation
*modify breathing in animation
*elastics and gravity processing
*model merging
*math, string, array, object, vector, point3 and rotation libraries (which I should put somewhere else on the vault...)
This is a work in progress, and so won't be of any use until the replacement body node stuff is complete...unless you just want some low-texture naked people running around in your mod...
Flexible booty, without squaring off while sitting, and without bunching while lunging forward.
Pushy version, one of many alternative files which contains pre-calculated push up, in, down or apart, and combinations thereof. Perfect for form fitting female model parts.
Nude spandex without any sexual artifacts. This alternate skin is perfect for really loose clothing, yet does not offend some player's senses.
Superhero spandex version. This version has a form fitting underwear look. Great for portraying classic comic book character outfits.
Working a bit still on the thigh where it meets the pelvis, but the pelvis weights seem to be keeping the butt more accurately formed when flexing in or out.
This frame shows the curvature of the region between the torso and the pelvis. The final release will have less skin nodes, but it looks really good on both male and female skins right now. In game, good muscle definition can be seen in this region with minimal addition of polygons.
Shows movement of new shoulder nodes. These nodes are attached not to the bicep, but to the torso. These nodes are still factored by the movement of biceps, at approximately 50% bicep movement. The shoulderX nodes modify a region half way down the bicep on up to the clavicle center, back to the shoulder blade, and forward down to the pectoral muscles. This frame shows the shoulder effect on female breast position, which is similarly duplicated in the male model.
Another shot showing the good use of weights between pelvis and thigh, as well as torso. The butt stays well formed even at this extreme angle. However, there is one animation where the character bends in such a way that I cannot script the skin around it. This animation I believe is for picking up ground items. The movement is such that bones move incorrectly in relation to a human body. I may end up changing the base bone animations to fix the issue.
Shows the built in squishing effect caused by new nodes in the biceps. These nodes tell the chest base nodes when and how much to flex inward. Pardon the nips. Not many frames in the animation actually use this effect, but it certain makes for a more realistic human body.
And just in case there are questions about it actually working in-game...
Well it looks like some of my comments are not making it to the thread, so I just wanted to *try* updating again.
I now have a project page for this idea located on the bioware. Look me up on social bioware.com or search there for the project "NWN1: Robes as base model".
I'm asking for a lot of specific people, but I encourage anybody with a bit of modeling know how, or artistic ability, to lend a hand. The project can be bigger and finished faster if I get some help with textures.
Sheesh, I hope this posts. Sorry I don't have an actual link. This thread seems to delete my posts automatically if they include a link.
Posted by Joern Preine at 2013-03-16 09:10:44 Voted 10.00 on 03/16/13
Just voting in advance, betting that it can not turn out worth anything less than 10.
Ok, again this project is in no way shut down. In fact I have been honing the project a bit, trying, doing, and finding out what can and cannot actually be done. I've got a project outline well on its way, and I was thinking of asking for some texturing help. I'll put up a project link as soon as the outline is good enough for viewing. In any case, this skinned character idea has some huge potential.
Armor parts will remain, but I intend a COMPLETE rendition of all body node parts for ALL races and a new half-dragon race (not 4e style dragonborn). I am not yet nailed down to exact specifications yet, but what I hope to do so far is to have a two part main clothing system using robe and cloak. All other armor parts then go OVER the robe and potentially UNDER the cloak, except in special cases.
I've but a lot of work in, and so has OTR and many others, trying to get skins on body nodes, but they simply are not coded the same. Physics seems far different in their world. But in trying, I've put this project way way behind my intended schedule.
As for your neck question, well the answer is up in the air. Ive been reading a lot lately and I think I do need a neck node for animation (so the skin looks good), but it DOES NOT have to be the same neck node we attach armor bits to. So I think your answer you want can be NO, its open for use elsewhere. However, I was intending to use the neck node for placement of standard 3e/4e item node stuff like necklaces. While necklaces don't normally add appearance changes, I was thinking of scripting it in. Then again that is not on my main to-do list.
If you'd like to read up on some past experiments about the topic, you can research "Facelifting NWN", I believe in the bioware forums, and definitely as packaged in the "NWN Omnibus". You can also experiment with some of OTR's (Old Time Radio) stuff. Check out his bioware following and all his great videos!
My only experience with the neck node so far is that it would not be (easily? still not convinced never...) available for skinned additions, but would be great relocated to another function, as you had suggested.
New custom nodes can be added, and easily animated, but they do not provide, as far as I can see, any additional placement location for body parts. I wish that were the case, but then that wouldn't be NWN I suppose.
Truthfully, what we really need is a clone of the aurora engine so that the community can modify it opensource style and add our own stuff in without having to make front-ends and hacks to circumvent the normal executable. We really need a team of 3d world coders to create such a NWN-style engine and content construction toolkits.
Truly outstanding work so far, from the looks and screenshots alone. You sure will have a tons of "worshippers", err fans, once this project comes to fruition ^.^
From what I've gathered in the on-going discussion on the BSN, armor parts will still remain, yes ? I think they do. Or will outfits be a single skin-mesh (limited to the number of robes) ?
Another question please, is the neck node really necessary for to realistically animate the model ? I am looking for an extra "useless" node for customizing/modelling purposes, and from what I could see in my experimentations, the neck geometry could be perfectly attached to the torso without major hindrance, to be replaced by something else (hair, beard, ears, whatever).
More progress: Now I am working on getting individual model parts cast just like robes. I saw that the whip and flail weapons were actually animated, so I figure all model parts can also be animated. With this new part, I plan to turn every body node into a possible robe node, which will allow you to make thigh-high boots attached only at the shins. You might also make chainmail shirts that fit not only the torso, but already have sleaves, and also dangle down much like a skirt.
This might also lead into animated head models with built in pigtail nodes so any head model can grab and use them, much like how capes work.
I'm almost finished with a script that takes an animation model apart and assembles it backward. For example, if you want a gauntlet that fits the hand node AND the forearm node, you need to know either from the hand where the forearm is at all times, or know from the forearm where the hand is. If you want the gauntlet to attach to the hand model and affect the forearm, this script adds animation nodes onto the hand base node which mimic backward how the rand moves in relation to the forearm.
Its funny to watch because you can choose which node is stationary and make the rest of the body move accurately. Make a dude stand on his hand in torch-up position and walk upside down.
Anyway, its only got a tiny glitch so far, and that's the rotational direction. -90 should be the same as 270 kinda, but I want quality directional movement, and negative should mean negative. So -90 and 270 are NOT the same. I'm having a hard time getting gmax to follow me on this one. I may need to create intermediate nodes to help with orientation.
I'll post some more in-game pictures as soon as I have something that behaves correctly.
Great news on progress! While I've been putting most of my time into January's Custom Content Challenge (being my beams package and rollout script), I've still been able to tinker with some pheno stuff with this one. I got a successfully working petite, normal and stocky pheno working in-game and it looks pretty good. Male shoulder nodes are also finished. This will become my main project after the current beams content is finished and released.
I can't wait to start putting some armor bits on these so very many dolls. Er wait, not dolls, action figures!
Here's what I find: If you make a new animation set and test it as a robe, which is linked to another animation set (which was not my intent) then, absolute yes, animations will conflict, even if those animations are of the same speed and framecount. The head was sliding off the shoulders because the head is ultimately linked to the original animations, even though the robe I was testing has head nodes. The arm was going up via the robe's animation nodes, but any torch was NOT going up because there was a conflict of node-tree naming.
Having a skinned model as a separate base, instead of as a robe has a few benefits, and a few drawbacks.
Benefits:
*Animations are readily available while skinning your model
*The skin appears no matter what your character is wearing
Drawbacks:
*The engine draws "light" on mouseover for ALL mesh nodes, including those parts that the skin does not use, and for parts who's shadow and render are turned off. This is not cool no matter how you look at it.
Anyway, still working on male shoulder stuff, but basically I am already moving onto multiple phenos. I've cracked down a list of what I want to make, and what I think is reasonable given my time constraints.
M/F of each: petite, normal, stocky
M/F animation variants of each: normal, stealthy, brute, crone
Not sure how I will number these phenos yet. Input might be useful here.
The petite pheno will be great for male wizards and athletic females. These are not children, or even teens, they are just frail or less meaty. I won't be doing children models, as I think they should be done as creature models.
The normal pheno will be slightly meatier than the images shown above.
The stocky pheno will look less obese than bioware pheno1, and more like blocky characters in Pixar's "Brave" and Disney's "Tangled". I won't be doing obese phenos for players. I personally think obese characters should be modeled separately as creature models.
The brute pheno will appear more like a hunched ogre. The crone will look more like a spindly goblin or hag.
The stealthy animation mod will give a character different rogue combat animations.
The brute pheno and animation mod will give a character different two handed weapon animations.
I'm also doing the following alternatives you can just pick into your appearance 2da: nude (no genitalia), skin tight clothes (superhero appearance), normal (no jiggle), additional (for female).
The most interesting discovery about this is that you can animate clothing parts. I do have to add additional animated portions to individual part models, but it beats trying to make part models conform to upstream animation nodes. When its done, you will see that characters can have thigh high boots attached to the foot model that conform all the way up to the thigh, and or attached to the thigh that conform all the way down to the foot. There's so much you can do when you add skins!
Think I figured out the head and speed issues in my packed single model...at least the head. I was testing the whole package as a robe overlaying the original PFH0 tree instead of running it as a separate tree as I had with the overwriting tree set. The head issue and most of the speed issue seems to go away if I do a replacement again. Must have been some speed difference and some placement fighting between the two trees.
All this means is that....its about time for initial release to the public! Time for some doll clothes now...
Need to work on the knees and ankles a bit. Starting to work on texture methods for the base skins. I'd like to make use of the PLT and TGA on the same model info that I got off of OTR's blog.
Posted by baba yaga at 2013-01-13 00:29:02 Voted 10.00 on 12/31/12
the last screenshot shows the real difference between the pinocchionized and a smooth skinmesh lit look. Totally awesome and you´re doing a great work. About the animation question... I dont know! I´m just happy when my own skinmeshed model anims are baked correctly and exported without a toolset crashing bug...
...having some issues with my compiled single mdl file:
*occasionally, but not always, skin is running at different animation speed than head model part. This happens mostly when changing from animation A to animation B, say for example, when finishing a run to target and starting an attack, occasionally the head model follows the route of movement the weapon should be taking. Other times this is not happening at all, and in the same session. Any clues?
Also, I have an issue with torch holding. The arm goes up to hold the torch aloft, but the torch stays where an offhand weapon should be. While running the animation bug continues. Additionally, if I switch out the torch for anything else, the arm stays up and the weapon stays where it should have been. What gives?
Neither issue was happening when I simply modified the a_Xa animation series, but in my compiled model we get some hiccups.
Otherwise, compiled model is great. Load time is good, and since it appears that any one model is only loaded once by the engine, I have 5-10 of my gals beating the daylights out of each other without any other issues.
But anyway, here are some new screenshots showing animation nodes.
One other thing: I had read that there was a max of like 16 or so bones on any given skin. This is NOT the case. I am successfully using 23 nodes. I did modify the export scripts so that the 4 bone per node rule is broken, which seems to make the compiled model crash NWN toolset, but it runs otherwise in game (minus the two issues listed above).
Aside from the listed errors, female robe as base is complete. Additional skins will follow. Human male robe as skin is a bit behind while working on new shoulder nodes.
Posted by baba yaga at 2013-01-08 10:18:09 Voted 10.00 on 12/31/12
they are lit differently because every part is like "one single mesh" for the light source. So leg, shin and foot are all lit as 3 separate parts as an example and the ligth cant illuminate it smoothly like a skinmesh. The not visible polys of the bodyparts where they intersect are lit as well and so you have this pinocchio look. _________________________ Baba yaga´s art blog/
I agree, the character parts do look terrible when blocky. Bioware did so much better with sprite characters in BG1-IWD2, and even better than that with PS:T. But I have no idea why they didn't skin all their stuff in NWN. For the bunch of them, it should have been simple to get the product out skinned.
So, just an update on this gal, I'm almost finished with female nodes. Of course male nodes are so much easier being more blocky and less curvy.
Here's something I've been working on: phenotypes.
So far, I've been trying to figure out how to do them in a coherent way that everybody can both understand and easily use. I think the answer is in an external phenotype manager program. The community can take and modify my bodies as much as they want, with spikes, tails, swishy hair nodes, whatever. But in the end that makes for a crap-ton of possibilities. An external manager could easily take care of phenotypes for races by keeping data in a separate folder and just pasting in model x to overwrite file p[sex][a-z][#] either in override or in a chosen folder you can hak pack to distribute.
Alternately, I was thinking of class-specific phenos too. NWN online has a nice crouching rogue, an upright warrior, a straight-spined cleric, and even their wizard looks more active. I thought I would do a "bent" humanoid pheno so I could redo goblins with it. Maybe make a "brute" pheno so I could use it for orcs and ogres. If nothing else, those two are on my to-do list. Of course stuff like that needs more anim frames. So they might take a bit until I can get scripts written to do that work for me.
Does anybody have the answer to why sectional parts are lit differently than skins? That would be nice to know so I don't have to upgrade my area lightning to account for the more realistic lighting on robes. Am I imagining this?
Posted by baba yaga at 2012-12-31 04:18:16 Voted 10.00 on 12/31/12
That is pretty amazing man. It always bothered me at times how the pc parts are lit in dark areas... that pinocchio look can be so terrible destroying the whole feeling!
I'll be linking this from the CC Maker's reference as soon as MD comes across :-)
Believe it! _________________________ Rolo Kipp Humor is the only viable response to pain
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