User talk:Bobbysoon

Iron Demon creation related

Model/Outline

Closest thing to a height comparison between Konoko and the original ID:

(I know, it's tiny)

The perspective there makes it hard to judge, but I'd say the current model is basically the same height. What do y'all think? --Iritscen 19:16, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Okay, EdT encouraged me to look at the trailer shot of the ID in the RSB lobby, and he even wrote a script to set the relevant shot up in Oni, so here's a more useful comparison:

Going by this, I would personally say it needs to be sized up by 25%-30%. P.S.: I just want to draw bobbysoon's attention to the textures, notice how they are more "weighty" on the old ID. I think it's a combination of being a darker gray and having more "shading" built into the texture to make up for Oni's anemic lighting system. I know you weren't probably planning on the current textures being final anyway; just wanted to take advantage of the comparison shot to point that out. --Iritscen 03:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

Ok, 127.5% it is then, and I'll render in shadows, and see about that darker grey.

http://www.filefront.com/14485651/ID%20TRBS%20dae%20TXMP_chest.rar (dead link) Most textures ended up on the wrong parts, idk why. Maybe export order of objects. Much clone/delete mesh/attach was involved. I'll shuffle around the TRMA and see. I tink I'm losing internet today, idk, so just in case I want to get el 127.5% out asap. Maybe I can get some animations (dae at least) done before then.

--Bobbysoon 20:45, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I found the problem with the mixed up textures. It has to do with the ID's parent-child relationship.

Re-ordered nodes, and fixed arm/biceps reference in TRMA: http://www.filefront.com/14488981/level0_Final.rar/ (dead link) (TRBS, TRMA, and a couple TXMPs) - not that I re-rendered for the color correction yet. I modified the mesh of the body a little. How does it look? --Bobbysoon

I like the animated display on the back, nice touch. Although it is partway in the ground until EdT adjusts the height again, the larger ID seems to be more imposing. However, while EdT and I were comparing the new size to the original ID, we noticed some other discrepancies that probably were always there in the model you inherited. To wit:

1. The first thing that jumped out at us in the first comparison is that the arms are further forward on the new model.
2. Also, the head is now larger and more square. In fact, the old face appears to taper in a diagonal line up towards the eye. This seems odd at first, but makes sense in terms of placing more of an emphasis on the eye as the foremost point on the head rather than just a circle set in a slab.
3. The forearms (the things with the barrels sticking out of them) are a bit thicker now.

   (new ID has its feet below the floor)

4. From the walkway, one can see that the forearms used to have a flatter curve across the tops and taper off at the back. We think they're also shorter on the old ID, but obviously the tapering off of the arms is probably adding to that impression.
5. The head may be a tad wider now across the top, but it definitely used to taper off more at the back, on the old model.

Do you think you can fix these issues? I know they aren't your fault, sorry to make more work for you, but I think the ID will look sleeker with these changes. And let us know if you aren't seeing something the way we are. --Iritscen 22:06, 8 September 2009 (UTC)

My bad - I didn't like the concave on the rear tip's underside, and so I lopped it. Looks to me, with a better look at that pic on the left, that it should have instead been fleshed out under the tail.

The foot-shield-shell thing (aka: calf) side housing needs correction too, behind and along side the shin guard where the flame ports are.

I see what you mean about it's face. I thought that was a smoothing glitch, before, but now I see what you pointed out - slightly pointy towards the eye. Less slabby is good, but it's head is basic rounded square, face-on.

Now it looks too big. Thing is, it's kneeling in that pose. It can't drop down much more from there - whereas, the original one is up and walking.

and I just exported animations for it too ): - youtube good exercise anyhow --Bobbysoon

The walking animation is awesome! Can't wait to try it in the game. EdT

Just to add a little more information, if you look at the following screenshot:

I positioned the ID as close as I could to the one in the trailer. From this point of view, the height looks correct, but, the ID's depth (From the front to the back) is too long, and the width could be slightly narrower. EdT

Nice comparisons, btw. Excellent feedback, all. This definately gives me something to work with

Now, about the scale... on a scale of original to 130%? --Bobbysoon

Don't know if anyone else can say anything about scale, but for me, because the proportions of the ID will change when those corrections are made, I don't think I will be able to accurately compare the current model's scale to the old one until then.

My general impression, though, is that the current model's top is too large, but that the feet are fine. So if one focuses first on the top, the whole model seems too large, but if one starts at the feet, the conclusion one reaches is that the head and arms are too big. I've been viewing things from the "feet first" perspective, which is why I listed a bunch of "make this smaller" corrections for the top half and none for the feet. The other approach would of course be to scale the whole thing down and then scale the feet up. But I figured, "Let's use the feet as our standard ruler and modify what is out of proportion to the feet".

P.S.: I take back what I said about the head width in #5, there's no way it's too wide across the top. But it's definitely longer than the old head. As I mentioned, adding some kind of tapering from underneath on the back of the head will probably help too. --Iritscen 18:35, 9 September 2009 (UTC)

I disagree with your taking back #5 - I think it is a bit too wide, and I think it's only thicker along the back half of it's top in the video. It does look to me like the wings/arm-shields are meant to appear as being part of the body - that the wing's base tapers into the body. --Bobbysoon 05:31, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Re: #5, you might be right about me being right before I said was wrong :D As for the arm-shields, you're right; I can see in that movie of yours that they angle into the body in the original model, rather than being straight panels (the whole shields are also slanted a bit more vertically). Hopefully we've finally figured it all out now. --Iritscen 15:01, 12 September 2009 (UTC)

Aknowleged.

I made this to get a better look at the trailer's ID clips: ID clips in slow-motion One thing I noticed is the 'dynamo'/fannypack should be shorter by about half. --Bobbysoon 22:46, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

Indeed, good catch. It will look better when it's shorter, too. --Iritscen 23:57, 10 September 2009 (UTC)

I really like this one. It puts to use the otherwise ambiguous tail tip thing on the ID's body, but it's clearly different from the one in the trailer.

I think it looks better with the arms back, but I understand we're trying to hone in on the one seen in the trailer. What do you guys think? --Bobbysoon

Hmm, it doesn't look that different to me, overall. What do you mean about the "tail tip thing"?

As for the arms, not sure I understood what you meant. They are further back here than on our model, but that matches the trailer model, doesn't it? --Iritscen 01:41, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I mean the upper arms. In the trailer, the arms are mounted to the body. In this pic, they're mounted to the tail thing. --Bobbysoon 03:00, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Oh, I see. Interesting. That doesn't look too bad, in Mullins' painting. Looking again at the other reference pics, are we sure that the original model didn't actually have the arms mounted that far back? Since we can see that the cannons (or forearms) are mounted further back on the original, and our model has a longer "body" piece than the original, might the arms not actually be attached behind the body on the original? That being said, Mullins seems to have the arms mounted on the tail at the very top, and they're pretty clearly lower on the trailer ID. --Iritscen 14:30, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

The arms appear to me to be mounted into mid-torso in the trailer, judging by later frames of the clip with it advancing straight at you, but it's hard to tell.

Consider also that much else in the game has changed from what's seen in the trailer to final release.

Basically, I'm hoping for a compromise which would allow us to implement specifically the tail as arm-base design.

--Bobbysoon 18:14, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I could always send an email to Okita\Lorianne and see what they remember. :) Gumby 18:40, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

Couldn't hurt, right? Maybe they got something interesting laying around, like the original model :p --Bobbysoon 00:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I am pretty sure that they won't remember anything, that they don't have the original model, and that we'll be annoying them. You wouldn't know this, bobby, but they've already been written a good number of times. --Iritscen 00:40, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Let's not and say we did ^_^. I'm fine personally with the arms being attached in back, although I would think this will require a little more work, since right now the arms just go into the body with no "bridging" detail, and if the backs of the arms are exposed, that might look odd without adding a joint or connector of some kind where the arm attaches to the tail. --Iritscen 20:08, 21 September 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking joint connector too - something like this:

http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w161/bobbysoon/IDtailjointa.jpg (dead link)

--Bobbysoon 00:10, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

You're ahead of me, good. :-) Yeah, that's just the kind of thing we'll need. --Iritscen 00:40, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

TRBS and TXMPs are on the way... --Bobbysoon 06:18, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

Good to hear from you bobby, and I'm glad that you still found some time to work on this. We knew you were busy and were trying to resist the urge to bother you for an update ^_^. Okay, so the model looks new and improved in our 3D apps, but when we take it into Oni, we get this:

EdT inspected the TRMA and the DAE and couldn't find the problem. Hopefully this issue rings a bell with you and you can guess why it happened, because we're stumped at the moment -- is it a result of rearranging the use of the 19 bones in the model? Did you make a new UV map that OniSplit might have an issue with for some reason?

Fixed http://www.filefront.com/14765749/TRMAiron_demon.oni. I think it was the material order. I re-arranged the TRMA's references. --Bobbysoon 17:36, 21 October 2009 (UTC)

Looks good, though the order of the TXMP links are different from the normal order. EdT

To me, it looks a bit too organic\cartoony. Not really menacing...it might just be the rerendered textures or the angle though. Maybe adding some sharper lines to it would help. Just my humble opinion. Gumby 06:49, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

I see what you mean, Gumby, I hadn't consciously thought that before but I did think to myself that it was shaded very softly. Does this model have smoothed normals? Because we probably don't want that on a mechanical model, right? --Iritscen 12:54, 22 October 2009 (UTC)

It has smoothing groups applied. I haven't yet gotten into vertex normals. --bobbysoon

Hmm, smoothing groups... that could be what is making it feel a bit soft. Also, and this is probably a question for EdT, were this model's normals smoothed during import with OniSplit? I think the option "-normals" has to be used, but I want to make sure. --Iritscen 17:20, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

I used the TRBSiron_demon.oni that Bobby included in his latest update. So that question goes back to Bobby. :-) EdT

Besides that obvious issue, we are liking the changes in almost all cases. However, some new information has come to light about the "fanny pack", which we had previously agreed you should make smaller. Alex Okita informed us that it was going to be the ID's weak point. I don't know yet if we will be going with that original intent in our design of the ID fight, but I think we should at least leave it as a possibility. That means we should probably bring it up a lot closer to the original size in 17secs' model. It did seem to be larger in his model than it was in the trailer, but now it might be even smaller than the one in the trailer, and, in light of this new information, I'm sure you agree that we want to get it as close to the trailer size as possible, since we're now talking about a (potentially) critical piece of the model. --Iritscen 04:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

I had been thinking the control pad would be a good weak point, and it'd be a challenge to hit. But I could rescale that part. What kind of rescaling are we talking about? --Bobbysoon 01:34, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

"What kind of rescaling are we talking about?" I was localizing images that are externally-linked to from the wiki the other day when I came across this one that isn't in the collection on your user page:

To me, it looks like 17secs was actually pretty much on the money with the "the big drums of ammo hanging from its butt" (I neglected to mention before that Okita told us that's what they were, hence why BW planned on them being a weak point). So, unless it's just me, it looks like the drum was supposed to be that big after all. --Iritscen 17:20, 25 October 2009 (UTC)

Weapons

Loser and I had a chat and came up with a tentative plan for the ID's weapons:

• What weapons will the mech have?

• The chainguns, obviously. Per a chat with EdT, we should be able to give the ID infinite ammo to we don't have to worry about reloading.
• Homing missile launcher. Keeps Konoko on her toes even when she isn't in the ID's sights.
• Gas grenade launcher. For when the mech does not have a line of sight to the enemy but knows where they are hiding and wants to smoke them out. The gas is toxic enough that you won't want to hang around if a 'nade gets lobbed next to the thing you're hiding behind.
• Flamethrower. A close- or mid-range attack if the player lets the ID get too close, or stupidly charges the ID to get inside the range of its chainguns.
• Tesla discharge field. Another close-range attack (for story purposes it could be a defense against people who would try to get into the mech). Used alternatingly in place of flamethrower or else at even closer distances. Forms a sphere of electricity around the mech.

• Where will the weapons be on the mech?

• Chainguns are a "duh", but what about the other weapons? (Edit: Actually, Loser brought up the idea of making the barrels PAR3s attached to the model, so they can rotate when they fire, is that doable?)
• The homing missile launcher could be mounted on the back of the ID, pointing up (could be a simple hole in the existing model's upper back) because it would allow firing in all directions, and also, it would simply look cool for the missile to fire up, and come arcing down to chase Konoko around corners as she runs.
• The chin gun (is it still there?) could be altered to look like it can fire gas grenades.
• The flamethrower should be placed low on the body, since flames rise. Perhaps we can use the holes in the leg plates for this. By simply adding hoses that attach from the back of the holes to the feet, we would demonstrate where the fuel comes from (incredibly crude sample illustration).
• The electric field doesn't need to be based in some physical aspect of the model (but personally I wonder what that cylinder attached to its back with warning stripes does...) :-3 --Iritscen 21:30, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

I've made the chainguns the wrists, centered to spin. The wrists are the large forarms. The biceps are the arm-axis under the shield, and the shoulders are the shields over the arms, which are linked to the neck, 'cause that's how I found it...

Some recoil can occur with the whole arm kicking back 5 degrees or so

I did drop the gunpod, but I'm expecting to rework the model and textures again for such accommodations

I've made TRBS and TXMPs. Next, an idle animation

• What's the simplest way to get this in-game?
• What's with the %2Fs in the names? I see in the xml those names imply folders. are those necessary?
• Maybe I should just upload the dae (http://www.filefront.com/14467707/_IronDemon-dae.rar/, dead link) and tga (http://www.filefront.com/14467713/images.rar/, dead link) and let you guys get it in game properly

Hey, I was wondering, could you place a gun pod\barrel of some sort (for missles or grenades or whatever) on the ID's right arm? Gumby 07:13, 26 September 2009 (UTC)

I think we need to wait until we start testing the ID in-game and finalizing the gameplay design before we know what to do about the grenade launcher, so let's come back to this idea later. --Iritscen 04:06, 20 October 2009 (UTC)

TRAM Discussion

So close:

EDIT Removed old screenshot showing Iron Demon partly in the ground. Error in TRAM data.

EdT

He's sitting on his root node. It's feet are at ground level in 3dsworld - is it like that because it doesn't have an idle animation? Or is that because was I wrong about the neck.shoulders linkage? I'm only 90% positive about that one

Sorry, I'll get you a replacement dae with correct texture names soon as 3ds doesn't crash when I export dae DX

Re-rendering those textures really did a number on them, didn't it? --Bobbysoon 03:57, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Bobbysoon,

Corrected TRAM heights (well its still slightly off the ground but I ran out of time):

Here is a package for your Iron Demon, there is a read me with instructions: http://edt.oni2.net/temp/Iron_Demon_Package.zip (dead link)

Don't worry about the names of the textures, I took care of that. I have included idle, run, walk animations. All of them have no rotation of the body parts, so the Iron Demon moves as a single object. So currently, the ID will follow you around and if you shapeshift to the ID you can move around.

Great job on the Iron Demon.

EdT

I guess the next step is to get a walking animation made, eh? --Iritscen 15:58, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, and thanks for the package - exactly what I needed I somehow compromised my 3ds file, but extracting from that last -create:trbs solves that. Animatin time

Explosion Discussion

WOOT! The Iron Demon goes boom: http://edt.oni2.net/temp/ID_Boom.wmv

EdT

Pretty cool, EdT -- now, is that the explosion we were looking at yesterday? Because I don't see any smoking debris flying away from the scene.... --Iritscen 19:20, 5 September 2009 (UTC)

Updated the video with the full power of the env_bomb_e01 particle. I couldn't get it to work on its own, so I used the mad_e01 (Mad Bomber's particle) as the basis, they copied the links from the env_bomb to mad_e01, the last explosion is from the mad bomber's particle, so sometimes, you can see the boot as one of the debries :-) EdT

Looking great. I am inclined to say that we should actually drop the shockwave effect, as it seems inappropriate for a smallish mech's destruction. The explosion was intended for a powerful bomb that damages BGI HQ, after all, so I think the shockwave is a tad overkill for the ID. --Iritscen 03:27, 6 September 2009 (UTC)

I like the shockwave myself, though it could be downsized a little bit. Also, make the fire particles match closer to the actual mech's size. Thiugh it might be fine with the resize it needs anyways. Gumby 16:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Well, if the shockwave could just not sweep over the entire map, I would be happier. Would it look good, though, if it faded out before getting really huge? I don't know how else we would make it smaller. --Iritscen 16:36, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

I had a chat with Loser yesterday and he will work on the explosion. So we can leave it in his hands :-) EdT

I didn't realize it was that huge. Just add the <FadeToDeath> tag (or whatever its called) to the <Start> tag of the particle. Gumby 17:59, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

HERE are files for Iron Demon explosion. Video demonstration HERE. UPDATED FILES - more debris is spawned and it flies a bit slower than before ( didn't like it )

I have read that Iron demon was scaled. Somebody will have to scale "torn off" particles and position them so they spawn at respective places to make it look like these are really torn "arms" and "legs" of Iron Demon.

ID_explo_e02 - here you can set positions ( in respective emitters ) where "torn off parts" particles are spawned.

ID_explo_p03 - torn off arms

ID:explo_p04 - torn off foot which is standing then explodes

ID_explo_p05 - torn off foot which is insanely riding around then explodes

That should be all you have to resize, rest should fit even if ID model is a bit larger. --Loser 19:54, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

Wow, thats really cool! Nice work! Is there a death animation we can give it? I think a shaking/spazzing animation would be good. --Bobbysoon 20:30, 13 September 2009 (UTC)

That is up to you ( you are animation artist ^_^ ). I can only tell you that when killed by particle attacks ( shots/blasts), engine looks for animation knockdown_head or for blownup animation. But since Iron Demon is going to have permanent "canttouchthis" ( so cannot be thrown or knockdowned ) it will be a bit easier. Make some nice death animation and give it to ID as its knockdown_head and blownup AnimType animations. That should be enough.

Awesome work! Thank you so much! My version of the Boom video: http://edt.oni2.net/temp/ID_Boom2.wmv EdT

Looks like you enjoy it ^_^

Animation Discussion

moved to User_talk:Bobbysoon/Animation_Discussion

Forumish disorder

I see, in the Second Oni Trailer, @1:25, the Iron Demon has a weapon variant on it's right arm. How do we do this?

--Bobbysoon 20:53, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

Just attach the barrel to the arm. No need to worry about the weapon varients, as the demon probably won't use a real gun. As I said below, a dummy weapon will be the way to go. I'll do all of the particle work. Gumby 21:45, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Rather than guess, I'll let someone more knowledgeable answer the modeling questions. I don't know of the Iron Demon appearing anywhere else beyond what is found on the Iron Demon page. I'm pretty sure there's no video of it, at the very least (unless you count this fan product). As to the Iron Demon's secondary weapon, it seems to be the early Scram Cannon that Konoko is using at 1:05 and 1:54. It might make more sense to have an alternate-firing mode that uses built-in rocket launchers on the arms, rather than trying to reproduce the gun they tacked somewhat strangely onto the model in the trailer. As to how to give the ID distinct weapons and cordon them off from the weapons that other characters can cycle through (and vice versa), that's a good question I hadn't thought of, but I know EdT was looking into the weapon side of things.... --Iritscen 20:44, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

perhaps we could improve upon it's wielding of a weapon, such as an aesthetically appealing port/clamp, if built-in and not dropping weapons aren't possible --Bobbysoon 21:01, 31 August 2009 (UTC)

I think you're going to be the trailblazer in this area of Oni Modding. :-) I have limited experience with 3D models, so I don't know if the hierarchy can be changed, but my guess is that you can't. The Oni engine is probably expecting a certain parent child relationship with each of the body parts. As regards the names, I suppose you could make a quick test of a current model, change the part names and see what happens. EdT

You should be able to rename the bones, the names are used by OniSplit only to ensure that the children of a bone have the same order as in the original Oni skeleton. As for changing the hierarchy, hmm, that should work in theory, after all that's why TRIA exists. However in practice the engine might use hard coded bone indices. For example I have no idea how the engine knows which bone to attach a weapon to, it's not like in TRIA or somewhere else there's a flags that tells "this is the right hand". Neo

If all else fails, we can use particle based attacks. We could have up to six different attacks (P, K, J+P, J+K, C+P, C+K), or more if we utilized the combo system sneakily, so its not a huge problem. Recoil would be accomplished with a custom attack animation. These "weapons" would be completely built in though. I'm not sure how we would accomplish aiming though. The other possibility is to give it a dummy weapon and give the recoil animations particle attacks. We would be limited to two aiming attacks and two non aiming attacks though. (Using primary fire, secondary fire, jump, and crouch). We can burn those bridges when we come to them I suppose. When I get home I'll have to test out some AI behavior. Also, an image of the bone structure you are using might be nice. Having extra bones for a "vulnerable" part or retractable weapon would be cool. Gumby 14:19, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Vulnerable parts might also be doable with 3D particles. --Iritscen 16:03, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Negatory. The only way to do it is with a seperate eye\head bone. Gumby 21:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

• pelvis
  • thighs
    • boots
      • feet
  • body
    • cannons
      • cannon barrels
    • gunpod arm
      • gunpod
        • gunpod barrel
• remaining nodes:4, or 5 - I don't think the gunpod really needs recoil action

I found out how to render new textures from the old ones! Yay! Usefull when re-grouping mesh parts --Bobbysoon 21:36, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

Looks good. Might I suggest an actual head so it can turn and look at things? Gumby 21:40, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

That would be it's body, assuming the red thing on it's front is it's eye Bobbysoon 23:01, 1 September 2009 (UTC)

For proof that the torso's also the "head", or face, see the collage of Lorraine's face portraits here. :-3 --Iritscen 02:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

It appears to be rotated. So then, the eye is it's head --Bobbysoon 01:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

Comments from geyser, by email to EdT:

" Note that, during an animation, bones can only *rotate* with respect to each other, so parallel shift, like recoil or a retractable gun pod, can only be implemented in a rather hackish way (as a rotation with respect to a center that is very far away from the character's body parts). I'd rather suggest to forget about the chin-mounted cannon (which is an original invention by Seventeen Seconds, and doesn't really put the chainguns to shame at all). It may be useful to compensate for the Iron Demon's limited ability to rotate, but the point is moot in the absence of any animation at all. Forget it for now.

As for the chainguns, I'd allow them to rotate on their long axis, just the way miniguns or Gatling guns do. Note that in the original concept the guns have three barrels each, as opposed to 17secs's rendition, and I think we should bring back that aspect of the model.

I think it's too early to think of the weapons, anyway. There's plenty of stuff to do on the animation front.

2) Bobbysoon's comment on inconsistent units is relevant, but incorrect. Oni's world units are decimeters, and so is the output of OniSplit: centimeters have nothing to do with it. The problem is that early versions of the exporter got the the meaning of the "meter" factor wrong. This will be fixed.

3) I wouldn't spend any time on weapons right now. The Iron Demon is worthless unless it has a convincing walk/turn mechanism. And if he is essentially a stationary turret, then weapon attachment is a snap anyway (cf camera). Therefore I suggest you guys concentrate on the lower body animation (shifting weight from one leg to the other, walking, turning, stomping/kicking/shockwave attacks).

The upper body can be kept rigid at this point, and its hierarchy is irrelevant. I'd keep it consistent with Oni's generic skeleton, though, because Neo is right about the weapon attachment: the bone index is determined based on a mere flag in ONCC settings. The position of the gun is snapped to the bone that has either the index 18 or 14: this is hardcoded, and the best way to ensure predictable behavior is to keep everything consistent with the generic hierarchy of body parts. Likewise, renaming bones is a bad idea, especially if it's only a matter of personal convenience. Point is, the modeling tool will sort siblings by name and this will affect their order in the COLLADA file, and this in turn will affect the order in which the bones are stored in Oni, hence, again, a possibly broken weapon attachment. Unless Bobbysoon is already quite confident with the rigging and animating of Oni's regular humanoids, I wouldn't advise him to seek out any customization at all; it just isn't fair. If he sticks to the usual bone names and hierarchy, everything should be fine.

4) I understand that Bobbysoon feels like modifying the hierarchy of the skeleton, but this can and must be avoided. The structure of the upper body is actually quite rigid, and the animations will be few, so it is quite possible (although not necessarily intuitive) to design an animation scheme that is consistent with the topology of Oni's generic "humanoid" skeleton. The relative placement of the body parts will require some creativity, as well as all the relative rotations, but modifying the hierarchy is right out of question, at least until Neo or I write up something definitive about weapon attachment and aiming screens: it is important to understand that the basic animating will involve aiming screens and turning animations; Bobbysoon should come to terms with this ASAP.

Bottom line: keep the upper body rigid, and focus on the lower body. Start with weight-shifting from one leg to the other, because that will be the main ingredient of walking for a robot of that size (hence the massive feet), and also of aiming and turning. I might provide some illustrations of what I mean, but I have no clear idea of my free time right now.

5) Another thing that needs to be done is cosmetics. Seventeen Seconds's model has some non-planar quads that have been triangulated in inconsistent ways on the left and right side of the model: these should be fixed. More generally, normals will need some more work: they should be recomputed using hard edges where appropriate, and also angle-based weights for adjacent polygons, for a better look ^_^

I know this is overly technical, but Bobbysoon may know what I'm talking about. I'm not sure 3DS Max supports angle-weighted normals; Mod Tool does." -- EdT

Were you taking notes, Bobbysoon? There will be a test later :0) Anyway, I just wanted to throw some thoughts out there:

• Let's not forget the unused walking sounds for the Iron Demon once we have an animation: [1].
• I think the Iron Demon definitely needs an additional weapon beyond the chainguns. We have to think ahead about that now, as it will affect the model. I propose a heat-seeking missile pod on the back, pointing upward. This would prevent the battle from becoming a simple game of "stay out of the ID's line of sight" and throw a wild card out there once in a while for Konoko to deal with. Assuming we can train the AI to use it correctly.
• Has anyone given thought to the fact that the two guns are parallel to each other? This means that aiming at a point in-between the guns is impossible unless the arms can turn inward and outward. More obviously, the arms also need upward-downward range, in case Konoko is fighting it from a walkway like in the trailer.

All that being said, I agree with geyser that walking should probably be the priority. --Iritscen 02:59, 2 September 2009 (UTC)

• The eye will be it's head then. Sounds good to me. I'll model it a sphere, unless it should be uv animated? Is that possible?

• I think I've fixed it's geometry errors, but we'll see

• How does this look? http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w161/bobbysoon/Gatling.jpg (dead link) That added some polys. Now it's at 3004 triangles, 1615 verts

• ColladaMAX has an option to export normals. I got a basic idea of what they're about - I think I'd need to calculate them somehow (i think i've seen a script for this) after applying smoothing groups. I'm not too great with the smoothing though.

• I'll use the default structure and names. Point taken about the skeletal structure, especially after noticing the shoulders are linked to the neck D=.

• the TRAS aiming screen closely resembles a section of Halo's model_animations tag. This in Oni is like this in Halo, which I've done.

  If I recall correctly, there were 2 types of aiming/looking overlays. Referring to that information in application to a particular type yielded undesired results - axis reversals. So I wonder just how similar these engines are. Some of the provided mapping of halo's engine may be useful with oni.

• could ai weapon systems be attached to the ID? Or devices? I'm guessing the Deadly Brain was a device. A similar device (in function, not form of course) would be interesting

• If at all possible, but probably infeasable, I thought it might be interesting to have the chin pod be a lasor that paints a dot, which the rockets home in on. Could a projectile impact (the painted dot) spawn a character of a 3rd team? The missile pod would be a 4th team, out to get only the 3rd team.

• having the cannons be attached characters could also solve the parallel barrels problem. Not that it's a problem if the rounds are explosive!

--Bobbysoon 01:41, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• There's no capacity in Oni for animated UV maps AFAIK, although animated textures are possible (but on people? not totally sure).
• The gatlings look great to me. The polys/verts sound fine.
• geyser's point 5 is rather nitpicky, so if it's labor-intensive, don't knock yourself out worrying about normals on a model with such minimalist texturing, it can't be that noticeable of a difference, can it?
• Sorry, I didn't get your question about an AI being attached to the ID; I mean, it will definitely have some AI profile or else it won't do anything, but beyond that, you lost me.
• The laser sounds tricky, but fake characters may not even be needed to pull it off; Oni's particle system is probably the most sophisticated part of the engine, so perhaps the laser dot particle can attract the missile particle. However, in terms of gameplay, it seems that it would defeat the purpose of the homing missile if the ID had to face a location to aim a missile there. Then we're back to just staying out of its sights all the time. Well, that's my opinion, anyway.

--Iritscen 02:57, 3 September 2009 (UTC)

• I mean, characters attached to a character, like attaching several TCTF characters to Konoko, that would engage enemies around her, independent of her targeting.
• Then scrolling text in this (http://i176.photobucket.com/albums/w161/bobbysoon/scrollText.jpg, dead link) green LED display might be possible. --Bobbysoon

• Animated textures are possible on characters. Ask 'dox. :)

• EdT drew my attention to this. So yeah, http://paradox.oni2.net/temp/TXMPID_mid.zip (dead link) is a test/demo/whatever. (Was done in PS. Fixed vector mask and moved text 4 pixel per image.) -'dox

• Excellent! I'm assigning the LED geometry to the previously null chest node. I batch cropped and sized up LED strip to 16x128 in photoshop.

• Having trouble rebuilding the animated txmp. How do you do that? --Bobbysoon 04:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

• Your xml and tga files should be in same folder. Xml looks inside like this:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<Oni Version="0.9.41.0">
   <Texture>
       <Flags>HasMipMaps  AnimUseLocalTime</Flags>
       <Format>DXT1</Format>
       <Speed>4</Speed>
       <Image>TXMPID_mid_000.tga</Image>
       <Image>TXMPID_mid_001.tga</Image>
       ...
   </Texture>
</Oni>

onisplit command:

onisplit -create ONI_folder XML_plus_TGA_folder/TXMPID_mid.xml

- 'dox

• Laser dot would be kind of meh. I could make one, but you wouldn't be able to see it. We'll see when I get home. But I can do guided missles, don't worry ^_^.
• On the guns not aiming at the same place: don't worry. We can aim to the left and the right using the targeting vectors of the ONWC, for each weapon mode. Please, don't worry about making the weapons. Just give me a spec of whatever you want them to do, and I can make it. Also, look in the comic, and see what weapons the Demon uses there. *sigh* I'll have to do up a railgun weapon sometime here, to fight this bastard. :P
• Also, we can have an extending gun pod, using attached particles. ^_^
• I wish I was home now, I want to work on this. I probably won't be able to respond for another week, when I get home, unfortunately. Gumby 02:25, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

• Re: what weapon will be used against the Iron Demon... Image:Forum discussion of Iron Demon and rocket launcher.jpg ^_^
• "look in the comic, and see what weapons the Demon uses there". You really don't want to know. Do you? Okay, here, don't say I didn't warn you. Konoko then magically turns her pistol into a rocket launcher on page 3 of issue 2 and does this. At least they got that last part right. --Iritscen 03:03, 4 September 2009 (UTC)

She sees it on the ground. Go back a page or two. Gumby 16:06, 7 September 2009 (UTC)