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Work in Progress / Enhanced Animation - addon for DBpro

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Gedo831
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2007 16:43
Hi WOLF,

Thank you for sending me the demo of your great work, Enhanced Animation DLL. It is just fantastic!
Now I am doing a simple test with my motioned and non motioned model with EnAn. Here is waht I got.

The left orc is applyed its motion by EnAn and plays its motion almost fine. But as you see, his neck is stretched and I have no idea why.
Do you have any suggestion to solve this? or is there any situation which I must avoid when I use EnAn?
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 3rd Feb 2007 22:23
Gedo831,
LOL!
Sorry...
I've sometimes noticed some minor stretching when moving between keyframes that are very different. Apparantly, it must be in how I am interpolating the rotation matrices. I've definately not seen anything like THAT before though! I bet it stems from the same problem though. That is actually what I am working on now.
Can you please e-mail me a copy of that model? Not only will it help me solve your problem, it will help me prove that it is the same issue that I have noticed.

Other than that, thanks for the compliments on the plugin

Thanks,
Ron

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Gedo831
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Posted: 4th Feb 2007 04:07
Hi WOLF,

Here some of my orcs look happy.

To avoid the problem above, I found I need to make a key frame explicitly even when it has no animation data. But I am not sure if it is the ultimate solution for the matter.
Anyway, I sent you some files so please take a look at them when you feel free to do so.
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 4th Feb 2007 04:42 Edited at: 4th Feb 2007 05:34
I didn't get your files yet, but I think I see what is going on after reading your last post.
I am not sure what 3D modeling package that you are using.
Are you using models that were exported with animation, then extracting animation data from them and applying it to models that were exported with no animation? If so, that will not work correctly. When you use a model that was exported with animations, it sets up the "original" positions and rotations differently than a model that was exported without that animation data. All you should have to do is add a dummy keyframe or two to your models that do not have any animation data in them.
I have also added a command called EnAn_ObjSaveNoAnims that will remove all animation data from your object (for faster loading times) and save it as a .dbo.

In practice, I would do the following:

Media preperation:
-Create your models and animations in your modeling program (Make sure all models have at least a couple keys of animation data)
-Make a program to extract the Enhanced Animation data files from your object
-Save copies of your models with the EnAn_ObjSaveNoAnims command.

In your game:
-Load the .dbo models saved with the EnAn_ObjSaveNoAnims command
-Load the EnAn animation data files
-Apply them as necessary


I can see this causing some confusion with people. I might look to see if I can find a way to better know how an object is initially set up. I'll see what I can do about that, but really it looks to be a minor issue.

...that is of coarse if I understood you properly!

Thanks for the feedback!

-Ron


EDIT:
I just got your e-mail (it actually got thrown into my spam box for some unknown reason). I DID understand you correctly! So evething that I said above is true.
Nice models by the way

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Xarshi
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Posted: 7th Feb 2007 00:47 Edited at: 7th Feb 2007 00:52
so how long until release? And good news,I think I may be able to get it Ben found money! So like,I could take say,animations from fpsc characters,which usually take forever to load,save them as files,and then load the model with the limbs unanimated,and then apply the animations that way? And another question,is it just saving the animations?

And btw,so far this is looking amazing. I can't wait until I can save animations as seperate files and then load objects faster. This plugin takes dbp one step closer to being able to make commercial quality games easily.

Hello
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 7th Feb 2007 03:04 Edited at: 7th Feb 2007 03:10
Benny,

Quote: "so how long until release?"


Things are pretty much finished on my end. There are a couple of things that TGC needs to do before it is released. So, I can't really estimate other than.... SOON!
In the mean time I am still looking for bugs and improvements!

Quote: "So like,I could take say,animations from fpsc characters,which usually take forever to load,save them as files,and then load the model with the limbs unanimated,and then apply the animations that way?"

You have to watch the licensing restrictions of FPSC characters
But other than that... Yes!

Quote: "And another question,is it just saving the animations?"

Well... sort of. It is saving the animations in it's own file format. Depending on how the animations are stored in the .x (or whatever other) format, Enhanced Animations may have to do some conversions to get it to it's own format.

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Xarshi
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Posted: 7th Feb 2007 03:31
ahh,cool. Yeah,I was just using the fpsc characters as an example,cuz I know they load very slowly....But this whole thing sounds freakishly awsome,and I can't wait to use it.

Hello
Duffer
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Posted: 8th Feb 2007 17:20
@ Wolf,

Any news on the TGC formal release?

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 8th Feb 2007 18:11
No news yet.
I'm waiting patiently. If I don't hear anything in the next couple of days I will bug them again. In the mean time I am still working on it. There is still some strangeness that happens when you interpolate animation frames that are very different. I'm trying to solve that issue now. It should be nice and polished by release

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Duffer
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Posted: 9th Feb 2007 01:03
@ Wolf,

Perhaps wrong thread but strongly related - when EnAn is released what are your plans for and timescale for 3DCM?

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 9th Feb 2007 01:45 Edited at: 9th Feb 2007 01:45
Quote: "@ Wolf,

Perhaps wrong thread but strongly related - when EnAn is released what are your plans for and timescale for 3DCM?"


My plans are to resume working on it. It will take a little bit of a back seat to Enhanced Animations at least initialy as long as any bugs need resolved. I don't want to put any kind of time scale on it right now. I'm not good at that, LOL! I thought Enhanced Animations would take a month or so to finish. It's been four!


I am working on reworking some of the internal structures of Enhanced Animations. Some of the stuff I am doing now might not make it into the initial release but I thought of a couple things that lay it all out better. I'm not going to get into what that is yet, but so far it is going well. Who knows, I might even have it all done BEFORE release

-Ron

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 9th Feb 2007 15:21
YAY! I FIXED MY SCALING PROBLEM!

Well, that was the last thing that I was concearned with before releasing. Even though the issue was minor it was bugging me badly. I have a little more clean-up work to do as a result of the fix, but it should all definately make it into the initial release.

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Duffer
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Posted: 9th Feb 2007 17:43 Edited at: 9th Feb 2007 17:44
@ Wolf,

I know there is some dll out there re getting and setting limb names, and getting limb parents, childs and siblings - but recall you said you might include in your plugin?

[edit] and congrats on completing it!

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 9th Feb 2007 18:26
Yes. That all is already included

You can change the name of a limb. You can return the parent of a limb. And you can check to see if a limb is a child of another limb.

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Duffer
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Posted: 10th Feb 2007 09:53
@ Wolf,

Excellent - just show me where (and when) to pay for it!

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Xarshi
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 00:23
so...whats going on with this? Any news on the release?

Hello
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 01:00
Well, I got a fixed Basic3D dll from Mike today that has the need bug fix incorporated into DBpro 6.4. So, that is good news. I also e-mailed TGC asking if there is anything else that they need to see before release. Hopefully, I'll hear something from them tomorrow. As far as I am concearned things are finished on my end.

Over the last week I made a lot of internal changes to Enhanced Animations. Overall, things still seem the same from the outside. The biggest change that is noticable from the outside is that I removed all of the limb hierarchy stuff from the saved animation data files. Instead, the hierarchy info is now part of the OAC objects which makes much more sense.
I also wrote a 4th example program that illustrates applying animations to more than one object. It also highlights the use of the command to save an object with no animation data (as a .dbo). On my PC, the test model that I am using takes 1030 miliseconds to load with the animation data in it. Once I remove the animation data and use the version of the model saved with the command, it only takes 30 miliseconds to load. That is quite the difference!
I have also updated the helpfile and keywords file to meet the changes that I mentioned above. There are now more than 70 commands!
The only thing that I have removed (for now) is the limb global rotation commands. I did some further testing with them. They are very close to working but they aren't 100%. I have some more testing to do with them in hoped to figure out what the problem is. The command may or may-not make it into the initial release of Enhanced Animations.

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Xarshi
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 02:07 Edited at: 14th Feb 2007 03:03
dude,thats amazing. 70 awsome commands! I'm excited about this,cuz I can actually do what I wanted to do a while back in dbp now! Dude,your amazing. Do you think we can have a demo or something showing some commands from this?

Hello
Duffer
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 18:16
@ Wolf,

All excellent. Would be good if limb rotate commands could be kept in - was envisaging writing a bit of kit to allow me to move about bipeds and store new frames of animation etc....?

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Xarshi
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 18:55
do you have commands to see what frame everything is at? Can we see a command list maybe? I can't wait to use this dude!

Hello
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 18:57 Edited at: 14th Feb 2007 18:58
Quote: "Do you think we can have a demo or something showing some commands from this?"

If you want to try it out, just send me an e-mail. I'll try to get a demo of it over to you

Quote: "Would be good if limb rotate commands could be kept in - was envisaging writing a bit of kit to allow me to move about bipeds and store new frames of animation etc....?"


The only thing that is removed right now is the "Global Rotation" of limb commands. Actually, they aren't even removed, they just aren't documented or "supported" yet. You can still manually rotate limbs and save the data to an animation file with no problems. I plan to explore the global rotation stuff further and hopefully add them back in officially in an update.


RELEASE NEWS:
All is progressing. I've been busy talking to TGC today. It should be released in the next newsletter (or sooner!).

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! (coming soon....) 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Lost in Thought
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 19:15
Very cool

el zilcho
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Posted: 14th Feb 2007 20:03
this will honestly save my life when it is released. you've made a tool that is going to make db games so much more fluid and presentable. well done

WIP - team zero
Xarshi
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Posted: 16th Feb 2007 20:13
Wow,this thing is really good actually. Alot beter than I thought it was going to be!

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Duffer
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Posted: 22nd Feb 2007 21:36
@ Wolf,

How go the finishing touches?

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Peter H
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 00:21
@WOLF- This add on is just about exactly what i am needing. All the animation blending abilities, seperate limb animations, AND that whole nifty thing about being able to save the animations separately from the object, all add up to something i can easily see myself spending money on.

Only one question, when you are using various commands (such as blending animations.. etc) is it still possible to get a object "frame" from the object, that you can use to set another object (of the same model) to that frame? I ask because if i used it in a multiplayer game this would be necessary to send animation data over the network (either that or you'd have to predict what animation the other player is doing, which wouldn't be optimal).

One man, one lawnmower, plenty of angry groundhogs.
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 02:35
Quote: "Only one question, when you are using various commands (such as blending animations.. etc) is it still possible to get a object "frame" from the object, that you can use to set another object (of the same model) to that frame? I ask because if i used it in a multiplayer game this would be necessary to send animation data over the network (either that or you'd have to predict what animation the other player is doing, which wouldn't be optimal)."


Yes. You can retreive the current rotation/position/scale values from the current limb orientations. These can be directly applied to another object with the ROTATE LIMB, OFFSET LIMB and SCALE LIMB commands.

Quote: "How go the finishing touches?"

Bleh.

Actually, it is driving me nuts at the moment. One of the people testing it found a bug with the animation extraction. It only applies to objects with animation data saved in the position/rotation/scale format instead of the matrix format. Anyway, I have been working relentlessly trying to get this fixed before release next week. In the mean time, I also have to put together some screen shots and videos of it in action to show off. I have a BUSY couple days in front of me!

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Duffer
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 14:13
@ Wolf,

Sorry to have asked but as you'll gather from above thread quite a few keenos (like me) are ready and raring to purchase...

Keep with it!

a long time dabbler with DBC and DBPro with no actual talent but lots of enthusiasm...
Gedo831
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 17:19
@WOLF,


Quote: "I have been working relentlessly trying to get this fixed before release next week."

So is it going to be released in next week? That is one of the best news I have heard in these couple of weeks!
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 23rd Feb 2007 19:05
Quote: "So is it going to be released in next week? "


Yes. It should be released with the newest newsletter

Also, The animation extraction bug has been fixed! Now, I have one more minor bug to squish

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Daris Xiao or Benjy Wright
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Posted: 25th Feb 2007 05:05 Edited at: 25th Feb 2007 05:06
Dude, I'm going shopping.

I've been spending too much time trying to figure out how to do some of the things this should fix. This is just what we of the Redwall Game Project need at the moment. Awesome.

Daris Xiao - Phonetic: Daris Shiao. aka: Benjy Wright.
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Nabil
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Posted: 1st Mar 2007 00:25
VERY NICE!

was thinking about something like this for my game.
very cool.

keep it up.

the only thing i always wonder about, is why every one is trying to sell their stuff. i am one of this free-software-developers... mainly www.GNU.com related.

-Nabil/BananaAcid- The Banana has you...?!
Chenak
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Posted: 1st Mar 2007 01:36
People try to sell their stuff generally to make money O.o But for the most part they sell their stuff because it took a lot of time, effort and talent to make. WOLF has already posted plenty of free plugins that are very helpful already.

I'd happily buy this. Such a fantastic plugin! This definately deserves the cash for the effort. Been looking for a nice animation plugin for a while now, especially when accode seemed to have smegged off somewhere leaving the anim plugin dead with no updates or anything.
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 1st Mar 2007 02:09
Quote: "the only thing i always wonder about, is why every one is trying to sell their stuff. i am one of this free-software-developers... mainly www.GNU.com related."


I do both. I try to help people as much as I can. When it comes to big projects like this though, there are a couple of reasons that I sell instead of give-away. First, it helps support my hobby. Webspace, domains, high-speed internet access, computer upgrades and such all cost money. Although I would still do all of those things even if I wasn't making any money from this, it does help justify it. It also really helps justify all of the hours that I spend on this stuff to my wife. I have 3 small children and we are on a single income. Every little bit helps. It is also nice to know that I am helping to support TGC by selling products through them. Also, if I wasn't making a little cash on "tools" for other people, then I would most likely be working on my own games. I haven't done any game development in over three years now! I do miss it.
Beyond the money reasons though, there is a good feeling of accomplishment in finishing a product worthy of other people buying. It is cool as hell to see your hard work up for sale on a site like TGC's. I'm not near making enough money from this stuff to do it for a living, but it will make GREAT resume work someday. I can tell a future employer that I now have three commercial applications that are for sale. It kind of bridges the gap of me not going to school for computer science and not having a batchelors degree in doing this stuff. Seeing projects through to the end in your free time shows a certain level of dedication.

OK... That's the end of my long boring story

EZrotate! TextureMax! Enhanced Animations! 3D Character Maker! (coming soon....)
Ron Erickson
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Posted: 1st Mar 2007 21:24 Edited at: 2nd Mar 2007 03:09
RELEASE!!!!!!!

Check out the link:
http://darkbasicpro.thegamecreators.com/?f=enhanced_animations

For all of those that have tried out test versions, don't forget to remove the EnhancedAnimationsDemo.dll from your "DBprocompilerplugins-user" folder if/when you get the full version.

This product was a lot of work to finish, but I think it was worth the effort. I hope everyone enjoys it and gets great use out of it!

Olby
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2007 18:58
YAY! Congrats WOLF! I went on and bought it already, so my hard earned student money is now yours!

But I feel very good when I exchange money for such a nice tool you created.

I'll keep you informed on how well it works, or if I found any problems.

Thanks for developing it,
Olby

AMD Sempron 3.1+ Ghz, 512MB Ram, ATI R9550 256MB Ram, Sound Blaster Live!, WinXP SP2, DirectX 9.0c, DBPro 6.5
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Ron Erickson
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Posted: 2nd Mar 2007 20:29
Thanks!

Definately let me know if you run into any problems. Feel free to post them here or e-mail me!

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