Full Body Anne

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TheIdiot
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Full Body Anne

Post by TheIdiot »

I've been thinking about this for a while after discovering CE's unlocked polycount for objects. Originally, this started as a remake of my Diane model for RTJP (and will likely be used as a basis for such), but it quickly turned into something different, yet familiar...
Click on Image
(Click on thumbnail for full size)
Image
I know it's very WIP, but you can see where I'm going with this. She's obviously still missing shoes and a head - was thinking of giving her sandles as that is what I always imagined her to be wearing, considering she went on vacation and her footstep sounds don't really sound like boots or even shoes. Overall, she is based on the Anne from the concept art images as well as the B116 version (as you can see by the shirt). I intend to make her head look like the concept one I re-drew a while ago, which you can see here in the first post:

viewtopic.php?f=132&t=10813&p=116660#p116660

It would be awesome to finally get a full-body model of Anne in the game, even if only to use for scaling purposes or so that we can give her a proper shadow. However, I'd like to go a bit further than that once the model is finished: I'd like to look into getting her left arm to work as well, however only having it do so when she picks up an object. My idea is that she has some extra invisible polygons attached to her left arm bones in her default sub-model; when she picks up an object like a gun or rifle, her sub-model will switch out to one where the left arm is rigged properly to attach to what she is carrying, whether it be a bat, pistol or rifle.

machf, I know you've done experiments on a character with two arms, so specifically I'd like to hear what you think of this approach.

Either way, not sure if I'll get this done in a reasonable amount of time due to being busy with all sorts of other stuff, but I figured I'd show my work so far and put out the two-arms idea for discussion. :P
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by machf »

TheIdiot wrote:I've been thinking about this for a while after discovering CE's unlocked polycount for objects. Originally, this started as a remake of my Diane model for RTJP (and will likely be used as a basis for such), but it quickly turned into something different, yet familiar...
Click on Image
(Click on thumbnail for full size)
Image
I know it's very WIP, but you can see where I'm going with this. She's obviously still missing shoes and a head - was thinking of giving her sandles as that is what I always imagined her to be wearing, considering she went on vacation and her footstep sounds don't really sound like boots or even shoes. Overall, she is based on the Anne from the concept art images as well as the B116 version (as you can see by the shirt). I intend to make her head look like the concept one I re-drew a while ago, which you can see here in the first post:

viewtopic.php?f=132&t=10813&p=116660#p116660

It would be awesome to finally get a full-body model of Anne in the game, even if only to use for scaling purposes or so that we can give her a proper shadow.
Well, there's Nedry from the East Dock level. Take a look at him to see how the model had to be arranged.
However, I'd like to go a bit further than that once the model is finished: I'd like to look into getting her left arm to work as well, however only having it do so when she picks up an object. My idea is that she has some extra invisible polygons attached to her left arm bones in her default sub-model; when she picks up an object like a gun or rifle, her sub-model will switch out to one where the left arm is rigged properly to attach to what she is carrying, whether it be a bat, pistol or rifle.
Here we go again...
The "invisible polygns" most likely won't work, as all $ubmodels have to share the same texture and the same number of vertices and polygons (connected in the same way, you can only move them to a different position) as the "regular" player mesh.
machf, I know you've done experiments on a character with two arms, so specifically I'd like to hear what you think of this approach.
Not really, I've theorized on possible ways to do a two-armed mesh, but none of them seem really satisfactory. I lack the proper elements (or the time to make them) to test those approaches.
Either way, not sure if I'll get this done in a reasonable amount of time due to being busy with all sorts of other stuff, but I figured I'd show my work so far and put out the two-arms idea for discussion. :P
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Re: Full Body Anne

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Here we go again...
The "invisible polygns" most likely won't work, as all $ubmodels have to share the same texture and the same number of vertices and polygons (connected in the same way, you can only move them to a different position) as the "regular" player mesh.
Okay, but if the body texture had transparent parts to it, it wouldn't matter since we wouldn't be swapping out textures. The verticies and polygons thing is a bit of a problem though. If you can't re-organize the bones, there's no way to make this work. But then would two arms work if we DIDN'T swap out meshes? Only thing is holding your arm out would make Anne walk like a zombie.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by machf »

The bones corresponding to the left arm don't move, neither do the ones corresponding to the legs. Any vertices connected to them will stay in the same position.
Look at the various $ubmeshes for Anne or Nedry to see what *can* be done deforming the mesh...
Or look at the latest version of the TC Dilophosaur.

In theory, you *could* switch textures for a part of the player's body (like it's done with the tattoo, or the early version of the TC Dilophosaur), but you'll have to script it to properly work. And the left "arm" (attached to the bones of the right hand and the left shoulder) will look even worse than Anne's elastic arm whenever you move it around.

I've theorized about using interpolated joints to place an "elbow" between the left shoulder and the right hand, but I don't know if it will work...
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by Rebel »

The craziest solution I ever had to giving Anne 2 hands/arms for more realistically handling larger weapons was to use
a dummy arm (CEntityAttached) attached to a rifle and having it appear with the gun when she picked it up and have it
disappear when she dropped it. I can't recall how it all came out though -
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Re: Full Body Anne

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The bones corresponding to the left arm don't move, neither do the ones corresponding to the legs. Any vertices connected to them will stay in the same position.
Look at the various $ubmeshes for Anne or Nedry to see what *can* be done deforming the mesh...
Or look at the latest version of the TC Dilophosaur.
Right, I understand that. The left arm can't be manipulated on its own without doing some heavy rigging.
In theory, you *could* switch textures for a part of the player's body (like it's done with the tattoo, or the early version of the TC Dilophosaur), but you'll have to script it to properly work. And the left "arm" (attached to the bones of the right hand and the left shoulder) will look even worse than Anne's elastic arm whenever you move it around.
That was my other idea. However I assume that because of its attachment to the right-arm bones, if you rotated your arm at all, the left arm would deform.
Rebel wrote:The craziest solution I ever had to giving Anne 2 hands/arms for more realistically handling larger weapons was to use
a dummy arm (CEntityAttached) attached to a rifle and having it appear with the gun when she picked it up and have it
disappear when she dropped it. I can't recall how it all came out though -
I've done that as well, the problem is that the left arm isn't attached to Anne. It looks fine when you have your arm in the default position, but if you rotate your wrist, it looks awful.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by Slugger »

Interesting project!
TheIdiot wrote:I've been thinking about this for a while after discovering CE's unlocked polycount for objects.
Oh, I think I missed this development. TresCE has removed the triangles restriction for models?
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Re: Full Body Anne

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Oh, I think I missed this development. TresCE has removed the triangles restriction for models?
Evidently yes. I don't remember this being mentioned anywhere during the development and only discovered it after accidentally importing a mesh with more triangle than the limit and loading up the level, only to find that it worked anyway! I would still try to keep the polycount low though as at the moment I'm unsure of how Tres handles these high-poly models.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by tatu »

TheIdiot wrote:
Oh, I think I missed this development. TresCE has removed the triangles restriction for models?
Evidently yes. I don't remember this being mentioned anywhere during the development and only discovered it after accidentally importing a mesh with more triangle than the limit and loading up the level, only to find that it worked anyway! I would still try to keep the polycount low though as at the moment I'm unsure of how Tres handles these high-poly models.
I don't know if it removed the limit, but it allows those meshes to load and not crash the level. I think it is one of the notes but he couldn't say if it will load properly in-game or not.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by TheIdiot »

I don't know if it removed the limit, but it allows those meshes to load and not crash the level. I think it is one of the notes but he couldn't say if it will load properly in-game or not.
Hmm, then maybe there would be rendering errors with a high-poly mesh? It definitely doesn't crash the game, and GeomAdd will still report the error for you.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by tatu »

TheIdiot wrote:
I don't know if it removed the limit, but it allows those meshes to load and not crash the level. I think it is one of the notes but he couldn't say if it will load properly in-game or not.
Hmm, then maybe there would be rendering errors with a high-poly mesh? It definitely doesn't crash the game, and GeomAdd will still report the error for you.
Oh, nvm. This is what I was thinking of: "Render limits increased to handle more polys and (hopefully) not crash if exceeded, instead objects partially or completely disappear from view if exceeded"

But maybe that is what made higher poly models to actually load and not crash.
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Re: Full Body Anne

Post by TheIdiot »

Oh, nvm. This is what I was thinking of: "Render limits increased to handle more polys and (hopefully) not crash if exceeded, instead objects partially or completely disappear from view if exceeded"

But maybe that is what made higher poly models to actually load and not crash.
That's what I was thinking of. I don't know if the polygons are actually hidden or not though. I believe what that note is referring to is instead when you have lots of objects on the screen and the game would crash because it couldn't handle it.
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