CLAIM: Crucial Animations

[Ibsen's Ghost]

We currently have 2-3 creations that could really use some animation work.

1. The top priority is to get the Sarpa properly textured and animated (see attached pic). KP sent textures a while back but they fitted strangely: TMJ's Garuda Race . However, if we could get him animated then that would be a major bonus. If not, we'll have to use Drake's Dragon Wings. However, perhaps tips could be gained from Drake himself. The dev thread is here: http://www.bethsoft.com/bgsforums/index....ic=1016468 . This should help to include flying animations. Finally, the last big task would be to help get our Sarpa to speak...this sounds exceptionally tricky...but any help would be very gratefully received...I can then develop my voice set for it a little more...
   
2. The second task is to contribute to work on 'Anaster Marrowmir'. LR has experimented with a few clothing options but we could use some animations. I particularly liked the idea of making him larger and animating his walk like that of a lich so that he 'lurches' around the place. I have a base file featuring Anaster in a test cell so far but nothing more.
   
3. A third possibility is to convert a 3ds creature model I had planned to use inside the dead rootworms. With luck, it should conform to dog anims but I'm not so sure. Let me know if you have the skills, time and inclination to do this and I'll send you the files.
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[nick_op]

Originally posted by Ibsen's Ghost
This should help to include flying animations.

This will definitely be the trickiest bit. I've looked into creating flying creatures sevral times now, and all ideas have had enough drawbacks to make them unusable. I did have a brief discussion with SaidenStorm at one point, but if he can't manage it, then I imagine it can't be done.

Also, before anyone mentions Saiden's Akatosh mount - it's controlled by the player, which is why it can fly.

[Ibsen's Ghost]

I'm pretty sure Drake has had more success....but I have no idea about the technical details....

[Koniption]

http://thewormhole.nfshost.com/forum/ind...256.0.html


He's working on some really interesting flying ideas. He has a video of his progress within the thread I linked to above.

But he doesn't say anything about having an NPC fly alone - the NPC must be mounted on a creature that flies.

I was thinking just briefly and thought of a possible idea though (very, very, rough idea - may not work and not fleshed out all the way):

What if the sarpa do have to mount something in order to fly, but not in the usual sense? What if the mount is actually just a pair of flapping wings that are aligned to where the sarpa's usual wings are? When the sarpa mounts the wings (somehow make the mount wings invisible until they are mounted - might need to have invisible mount wings follow the sarpa NPC's so that those NPC's can mount those wings at moment's notice - have to do via script), the sarpa's usual wings (and wing skeleton bones) are scaled to zero so that they disappear and the flapping wings take over. The rest of the sarpa's body doesn't have to really move while flying, neither, or you can pose it into a Superman position. Then with QQuix's ideas implemented, you might get NPC's to fly realistically.

Koniption

[Ibsen's Ghost]

Interesting...although a little over my head on the technical details...

I don't want to burst the balloon but TMJ's Sarpa were originally designed to be the 'fallen chosen ones' of the Hist and as such don't really need to fly that well. They could just use the imp animation which I think was the last suggestion made before the whole subject of Drake and his mod arose.

The big problem to me is how to get the facial animations working for speech....I know it's possible for them to speak without lip movements but it would work much more effectively if there was some kind of animation there.....and animations are the big, big difficulty for any mod of this type that has ambitions with new races.

[Koniption]

I've never worked with facial morphs and getting them to work exactly when the NPC speaks. So that's an unknown area to me.

Maybe get them to simply open and close their beaks and move their tongue a little when talking? But I can't think of how to implement that right now, due to my lack of experience with talking morphs/animations.

Koniption

[llamaranger]

for the "failed" sarpa, why not have them fly instead of running? sort of glide along at around head height?

[nick_op]

As I understand it, the bulk of the work of getting facial morphs done for a new race is actually creating the morphs themselves - the implementation shouldn't be too tricky. I've never actually found the time to do this myself, however.

The community's resident expert regarding new heads is throttlekitty. He's actually got a tutorial on TESNexus for facial morphs. I've also got a text file from a conversation I had with him over at #TESModdersDen with some details on how to get them working.

[Koniption]

Originally posted by nick_op
As I understand it, the bulk of the work of getting facial morphs done for a new race is actually creating the morphs themselves - the implementation shouldn't be too tricky. I've never actually found the time to do this myself, however.

The community's resident expert regarding new heads is throttlekitty. He's actually got a tutorial on TESNexus for facial morphs. I've also got a text file from a conversation I had with him over at #TESModdersDen with some details on how to get them working.

Ok, I found the "Adding Eye Morphs to FaceGen" file on TESNEXUS, and have downloaded it. No clue when I'll be able to go over the instructions, though. Thanks nick_op.

Btw, is it possible for me to get a copy of that text file between you and throttlekitty, just in case? If so, please PM it to me.

@ Ibsen: I think The Modax Jago is doing the skeleton rigging and animations for the sarpa (that bird person). But he doesn't log onto here too often, so it's hard to say what is going on. I think doing facial morphs should come last after TMJ is done. Otherwise TMJ might end up doing a change in the vertex count of the sarpa head that would fubar morphs, if I attempt to make changes before he's done.

Koniption