User talk:Bobbysoon

Iron Demon creation related

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, 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)

Comments from geyser, by email: 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.