bleh, animation issues, code or qc?

[Nuttzy]

ok well, im doing animation work for a mod,

the previous set of animations was the HL animations, which ill add didnt fit the model at all, the models for this mod are somewhat of a cartoon proportion and the arms didnt match up at all, and made the attachments and 3rd person weapon models look pretty crappy together,

so i deleted the old skeleton, built a new one, made a few animations, and made a bunch of dummy animations to fill in the ones i hadnt replaced yet,

my first problem was that while in third person, it would only play the aiming animations of the weapon i was holding, in this case a baseball bat, and when i walked his body WOULD twist and turn like the esf models do to make a smoother more realistic animation when looking around, but it wouldnt play the running or walking animation at all, so i assumed that the blends were working properly

then after making some edits to the qc file, (making it more like the default qc, i thought maybe i wrote something down wrong in there) after that the running, and walking would play properly, however now the aiming animations werent playing on torso of the model like it did with the previous animation set, (half lifes default)

so i came to the conclusion that the code of the game tells it which bones to apply different animations to, cuz my new skeleton doesnt have the same bone names as the older one, but im not 100% sure,


im only asking the experienced animators, (the few here) hell darktooth, your input here is more or less the primary thing im ookin for cuz you obviously know your way around HL animating like its nothing, but any animators in general that can answer this question,

is the problem casued by the code or the qc file, or rather is it something that i can fix from my end, or do i have to sort this out with the inteam coder,

 

[Sadner]

True, the bone names need to haev the exact same names as the default skeleton otherwise it wont work.
The game reads the bone names.
You can either change the animations names or start your version of C++ and change the coding.
off topic: Why is FFTE still down? it aint dead right?

 

[Nuttzy]

you guessed it, i dropped the team, and zereth did shortly after, a mod with no leaders aint goin nowhere, it was better that we dropped the mod before we had anything done, than to have stuff done and have our work gone to waste

 

[Sadner]

Damn, that sux.
With a little motivation you couldve come far, ....to bad.
What are you gonna do with Cloud?
Would be nice to release it for 1.2 as a trunks replacement.
It's a long time ago that you released a model for ESF.
well greetz.

 

[D.C. Darkling]

I say change most joints to there old names. Onyl joints which are extra should have other names.
Works for me on my vegeta atleast, maybe its also a go on any other mod.

 

[Nuttzy]

there are no, "old" names, i idnt modify a skeleton, i made one from scratch, i doubt it would be as simple as just changing the bone names, cuz i have one more spine segement then the normal HL skeleton which it previously used

 

[Sadner]

You dont have to use that spine, you can delete the spine in the QC file and then use it ^_^

 

[Nuttzy]

i think your talking about something else entirely,

DC recomendd that i make all the bones carry the same names as he original HL skeleton, so that maybe the animaions would blend together, what good would deleteing the spine, (hitbox or bone controller) from the qc file do?


also renaming the skeleton brings about the problm of having to remake the animations i had already made, which i really REALLy dont wanna do,

(or i can go through the sequence smds one at a time in notepad and change all the bone names there i just discovered, ill try that out next, might take a damn long time though,

 

[D.C. Darkling]

Thats why I, even with a customized skeleton, made sure that most were named like ESFs ones.

It is however, no problem putting in extra joints. I tested this. you indeed only need to have matching anims.
we can open smd with notepad? LOL. things we learn

 

[Nuttzy]

yeah thats how you add bones to existing skeletons without milkshape adjusting it and screwing all the other animations

 

[D.C. Darkling]

hehe.. Why you think I did custom anims?
When I edited the vegeta skeleton to contain more joints I expected that since the old joints were not altered it would not mess anims. It did.

Ah well, its ok. I now know how to animate and made anims for some events I think suit vegeta better.
I still think animating is the coolest part of modeling.