Hey guys
What I am about to post is probably all stuff that other modellers already know all about, but I spent a while digging through all of the options in the Inez Diaz tool to try to figure out in simple english what everything actually does. 'cause I'm too thick to understand the help file, and I figured that I can't be the only one out there, so I figured that I would post what I have figured out so far.
Okay so right off the bat, I realized my stupidity - I didn't need to download new programs to export to .obj because you can already do it in GM viewer. So maya users - eat that up (.obj files can be imported by clicking window>settings/preferences>plugin manager, and then finding the .obj import).
Back to the relevant.
EDITING A EXISTING MESH
------------------------------
Starting from the absolute ground up here - creating a mesh is the 3D part in a game. There is then a texture (also known as a UV map, or skin) that wraps around it, and gives all of the texture, colour information etc. Now - meshes for POTC are in .GM , and you probably are going to have to convert them to be able to edit them. if you are using Maya, it will import .OBJ, if you are using 3DS MAX, I've been lead to believe that it can open .WRL (vrml2.0 files). Not that as said previously you can export to .obj without going through like 10 steps by using GMviewer.exe
Okay, so you open up TOOL.exe with the hopes of converting something to a VRML2.0 file. For some reason every time you export as .wrl (VRML file) it changes the orientation of the model to the skeleton. I now know how to fix that, but to save yourself some trouble later on - on the right side of the window there is a little tickbox under VRML that says SWAP Y<->X. If you click on this - the next time you load up your file in TOOL.exe, your model will still be connected with the skeleton. Horay!
----------------------------------
if it needs moving, resizing, or you've created your own mesh from scratch then you can move, and tweak your file by going to SCENE>EDIT SCENE
From in here you've got a big menu thing with all kinds of sliders and stuff. This is how it works:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Going from left to right:
First box: I'm assuming this is to add new items to your scene if you are creating a room, or town. When working on characters - you cannot do anything with this.
Second box: This is where each file that you have loaded into the program appears. You must first select it before you can edit it in any of the following boxes.
Third Box (top): Once you click on your object, values appear in the three little boxes. These represent (going from left to right) your X,Y, and Z coordinates. You can change any of these, and then click Move to Position
to move it there
Slider directly underneath your Third Box: this controls movement along your Z axis. in other words, you can move your model over to your skeleton by using this
Delete: uhh... self explanatory, no?
Fourth Box (top): In this box is written ROTATE, and there are three buttons. X, Y, and Z. EAch of these buttons rotates your model 45 degrees in the axis that you have clicked on. want to keep turning it? keep clicking that button, and in increments of 45 degrees you can do your 180 degrees, or whatever you need.
Fourth Box (bottom): In this box there are Three sliders, a tickbox, and 3 buttons.
The first two sliders are X, and Y. You can use these to move your model along the axis - just like the Z axis.
I'm pretty much assuming that you are always going to want to scale your animation aswell. I am not 100% sure - but I'm assuming that when you shrink your model, it just makes your skeleton shrink with it, so that your animation stays to scale with what you are doing.
the next slider is scale. ooh- wanna be really, really small?
The final box has to do with Textures. I have not used this yet - I am not that far into production, but I will edit this when I get there.
Afterwards - theoretically you can choose CHARACTER -> BIND, and the character should be in the skeleton - voila! unfortunately I'm running into trouble with this - but I haven't given up yet - I have a solution that I am proposing underneath...
-------------------------------
other crap + possibilities of animation
----------------------------
within this program there is an option to create a skeleton for POTC, and to make a animation for POTC. Both of these use something called Maxscript, and I'm going to take a wild guess and say that they refer to something to do with 3DSMAX. I know - it's a pretty far leap, but I'm pretty sure I'm safe with that one.
I took a model directly form POTC with all it's animation, rigging etc. done already, and saved a file of each of these. the option ANIMATION>MAKE MAX SCRIPT>FOR BONES is just that. if you take a text program like notepad, and open it up, it's litterally the placement of each bone in the skeleton of the body. I have no idea how it factors in parenting and stuff- but I'm sure that regardless the program, a similar file is used - so you could probably create, and rig a character in either, and even if you had to copy/paste bone for bone you should theoretically be able to import a new skeleton into the game. The animation script is more complicated. there is a lot more variables, and I don't know what they mean so well.
HOWEVER what I could decipher from looking at the code is that it is the exact coordinate that each bone is situated at for each frame of the animation. I can't figure out what QUAT means, and while ROTATION is written out, there does not appear to be any variable for it. strange.
now - if you look at a .ani file included in POTC, they seem to be the animation files that seem to call on the animations themselves in the game. Each of these files has a start time, an end time, a blend time, and some other value called probability. The way that animation works in a video game pipeline is that they hire one person to animate each action a character will do - but unlike traditional animation - or animation for a movie - you never know when the user will change, or interrupt that command. Maybe you were in the middle of a run cycle, and you jumped to the right to dodge a rather unwelcome musket ball. Well to compensate for this, there is a BLEND - that is litterally giving a slotted amount of time, or frames in which your computer will make direct in betweens to get each bone coordinate, to match those used in the first frame of your new animation - in this case being your jump to the right.
Unfortunately, it seems like the names of the animations that are being called on have been left in code or something because they read as bogus symbols. but maybe we can put our own in using the same name - have a unique run to match your character's attitude - a heavy footed rumbling run for davy jones, and a fairy like run for jack sparrow with arms waving all over the place. lol okay not really.
<b>Anyways despite all of this info - with the latest mod installed I can't seem to test my new model in the game... can somebody help me? pretty please? it's a butch job right now - I just attached the head to another's, and there are some areas where the faces seem to have disappeared (but only where I did the butch job of creating like 5 triangles going into one line, not to mention that my normals on the hat will be pretty weird - I'm going to extrude the face up there so that I get a normal on both sides of the hat, and so that people will see it. a very small, and easy fix. Unfortunately, after binding my character to the skeleton I ran into some problems HOWEVER the skeleton remains in the .WRL file so you CAN tweak an existing one and bring it back in AND you can most likely use whatever modelling program you are using to see the skeleton (since it is carried over), and then attach it well inside your modelling program, instead of inside the TOOL.exe . Also there is animation scripting included in Inez Dias's TOOL.exe.... if somebody could get something animating period imported into the game, then you could probably do anything. but this whole thing is really beyond my skill, and it's all educated guessing and stuff. if I'm wrong - pleaaase don't let me get away with it. Oh and DO read the help file that is included with TOOL.exe - it's super useful too -but I needed screwing around too before the sky stopped falling.<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> - actually - read that first.</b>
That said - if anybody has any other tips for getting stuff to work in POTC - post away man - I just figured that instead of spending a bunch of hours writing this out for myself, I might as well do a decent job of it, and post it for others too - just in case. cheers, and good luck!
What I am about to post is probably all stuff that other modellers already know all about, but I spent a while digging through all of the options in the Inez Diaz tool to try to figure out in simple english what everything actually does. 'cause I'm too thick to understand the help file, and I figured that I can't be the only one out there, so I figured that I would post what I have figured out so far.
Okay so right off the bat, I realized my stupidity - I didn't need to download new programs to export to .obj because you can already do it in GM viewer. So maya users - eat that up (.obj files can be imported by clicking window>settings/preferences>plugin manager, and then finding the .obj import).
Back to the relevant.
EDITING A EXISTING MESH
------------------------------
Starting from the absolute ground up here - creating a mesh is the 3D part in a game. There is then a texture (also known as a UV map, or skin) that wraps around it, and gives all of the texture, colour information etc. Now - meshes for POTC are in .GM , and you probably are going to have to convert them to be able to edit them. if you are using Maya, it will import .OBJ, if you are using 3DS MAX, I've been lead to believe that it can open .WRL (vrml2.0 files). Not that as said previously you can export to .obj without going through like 10 steps by using GMviewer.exe
Okay, so you open up TOOL.exe with the hopes of converting something to a VRML2.0 file. For some reason every time you export as .wrl (VRML file) it changes the orientation of the model to the skeleton. I now know how to fix that, but to save yourself some trouble later on - on the right side of the window there is a little tickbox under VRML that says SWAP Y<->X. If you click on this - the next time you load up your file in TOOL.exe, your model will still be connected with the skeleton. Horay!
----------------------------------
if it needs moving, resizing, or you've created your own mesh from scratch then you can move, and tweak your file by going to SCENE>EDIT SCENE
From in here you've got a big menu thing with all kinds of sliders and stuff. This is how it works:
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Going from left to right:
First box: I'm assuming this is to add new items to your scene if you are creating a room, or town. When working on characters - you cannot do anything with this.
Second box: This is where each file that you have loaded into the program appears. You must first select it before you can edit it in any of the following boxes.
Third Box (top): Once you click on your object, values appear in the three little boxes. These represent (going from left to right) your X,Y, and Z coordinates. You can change any of these, and then click Move to Position
to move it there
Slider directly underneath your Third Box: this controls movement along your Z axis. in other words, you can move your model over to your skeleton by using this
Delete: uhh... self explanatory, no?
Fourth Box (top): In this box is written ROTATE, and there are three buttons. X, Y, and Z. EAch of these buttons rotates your model 45 degrees in the axis that you have clicked on. want to keep turning it? keep clicking that button, and in increments of 45 degrees you can do your 180 degrees, or whatever you need.
Fourth Box (bottom): In this box there are Three sliders, a tickbox, and 3 buttons.
The first two sliders are X, and Y. You can use these to move your model along the axis - just like the Z axis.
I'm pretty much assuming that you are always going to want to scale your animation aswell. I am not 100% sure - but I'm assuming that when you shrink your model, it just makes your skeleton shrink with it, so that your animation stays to scale with what you are doing.
the next slider is scale. ooh- wanna be really, really small?
The final box has to do with Textures. I have not used this yet - I am not that far into production, but I will edit this when I get there.
Afterwards - theoretically you can choose CHARACTER -> BIND, and the character should be in the skeleton - voila! unfortunately I'm running into trouble with this - but I haven't given up yet - I have a solution that I am proposing underneath...
-------------------------------
other crap + possibilities of animation
----------------------------
within this program there is an option to create a skeleton for POTC, and to make a animation for POTC. Both of these use something called Maxscript, and I'm going to take a wild guess and say that they refer to something to do with 3DSMAX. I know - it's a pretty far leap, but I'm pretty sure I'm safe with that one.
I took a model directly form POTC with all it's animation, rigging etc. done already, and saved a file of each of these. the option ANIMATION>MAKE MAX SCRIPT>FOR BONES is just that. if you take a text program like notepad, and open it up, it's litterally the placement of each bone in the skeleton of the body. I have no idea how it factors in parenting and stuff- but I'm sure that regardless the program, a similar file is used - so you could probably create, and rig a character in either, and even if you had to copy/paste bone for bone you should theoretically be able to import a new skeleton into the game. The animation script is more complicated. there is a lot more variables, and I don't know what they mean so well.
HOWEVER what I could decipher from looking at the code is that it is the exact coordinate that each bone is situated at for each frame of the animation. I can't figure out what QUAT means, and while ROTATION is written out, there does not appear to be any variable for it. strange.
now - if you look at a .ani file included in POTC, they seem to be the animation files that seem to call on the animations themselves in the game. Each of these files has a start time, an end time, a blend time, and some other value called probability. The way that animation works in a video game pipeline is that they hire one person to animate each action a character will do - but unlike traditional animation - or animation for a movie - you never know when the user will change, or interrupt that command. Maybe you were in the middle of a run cycle, and you jumped to the right to dodge a rather unwelcome musket ball. Well to compensate for this, there is a BLEND - that is litterally giving a slotted amount of time, or frames in which your computer will make direct in betweens to get each bone coordinate, to match those used in the first frame of your new animation - in this case being your jump to the right.
Unfortunately, it seems like the names of the animations that are being called on have been left in code or something because they read as bogus symbols. but maybe we can put our own in using the same name - have a unique run to match your character's attitude - a heavy footed rumbling run for davy jones, and a fairy like run for jack sparrow with arms waving all over the place. lol okay not really.
<b>Anyways despite all of this info - with the latest mod installed I can't seem to test my new model in the game... can somebody help me? pretty please? it's a butch job right now - I just attached the head to another's, and there are some areas where the faces seem to have disappeared (but only where I did the butch job of creating like 5 triangles going into one line, not to mention that my normals on the hat will be pretty weird - I'm going to extrude the face up there so that I get a normal on both sides of the hat, and so that people will see it. a very small, and easy fix. Unfortunately, after binding my character to the skeleton I ran into some problems HOWEVER the skeleton remains in the .WRL file so you CAN tweak an existing one and bring it back in AND you can most likely use whatever modelling program you are using to see the skeleton (since it is carried over), and then attach it well inside your modelling program, instead of inside the TOOL.exe . Also there is animation scripting included in Inez Dias's TOOL.exe.... if somebody could get something animating period imported into the game, then you could probably do anything. but this whole thing is really beyond my skill, and it's all educated guessing and stuff. if I'm wrong - pleaaase don't let me get away with it. Oh and DO read the help file that is included with TOOL.exe - it's super useful too -but I needed screwing around too before the sky stopped falling.<img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/biggrin.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="biggrin.gif" /> - actually - read that first.</b>That said - if anybody has any other tips for getting stuff to work in POTC - post away man - I just figured that instead of spending a bunch of hours writing this out for myself, I might as well do a decent job of it, and post it for others too - just in case. cheers, and good luck!
" border="0" alt="mybad.gif" /> you and your unintentional puns! <img src="style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/icon_mrgreen1.gif" style="vertical-align:middle" emoid="
" border="0" alt="icon_mrgreen1.gif" /> anyway, what was it time for? (topic title)