Animation/interactions progress part 3
Added 2022-02-27 19:48:58 +0000 UTC
As the poll requested, I'm doing a video rather than a text for this month.
If you haven't checked out the trailer I suppose you do that. You can find it on my Twitter and FurAffinity.
Video update (walkthrough for patrons):
>>> CLICK TO ACCESS WALKTHROUGH <<<
I forgot to mention in the video that the animation is placeholder solely for the purpose of getting a feel for the physical behavior. I'm aware there are some issues with heads/tongue for Maya. (We're essentially playing human animation on an anthro giraffe which is not what it was made for.)
Enjoy your evening!
All the best.
- odes
Comments
The sole purpose of the dancing in this case is to get a better understanding of how the configured physical parts behave during motion. That being said, I want to add some kind of breathing animation during interactions, but that's different from the dancing ....
FurryVNE Team
2022-03-02 02:14:43 +0000 UTCExciting! Will there be a simple breathing animation added with the dances?
BeerCookie
2022-03-02 00:56:34 +0000 UTCThat's a very detailed and versatile system so far. Looking forward to it!
【FANCY】
2022-03-01 17:12:00 +0000 UTCit can only get better!! I'm really excited and looking forward to further updates :]
THe GERio
2022-03-01 08:43:44 +0000 UTCI thought that was the case! Just wanted to see if that ever changed. Super excited regardless, excellent progress and cannot wait to see more! Keep it up <3
Bixxx
2022-02-28 20:36:31 +0000 UTCThank you! The whole point with the interaction systems is user defined animations. - odes
FurryVNE Team
2022-02-28 20:18:38 +0000 UTCAwesome work! I'm curious about something. Is the interaction system going to just be pre-defined animations? Or is the plan still to allow the user to be able to create their own animations?
Bixxx
2022-02-28 20:06:47 +0000 UTCYeah, probably best to focus on character animation next, since it seems you’ve already made some tentative steps into that direction by slapping on those bone-retargeted dance animations to the characters here. Pretty crude result, as can be expected, but not as bad as one might expect. With a bit of tweaking, should be fine. Might be worth investigating how users might be made able to adapt canned animations to their own character from other characters or maybe even third-party sources, would streamline the animation process quite a bit. Hmm, not quite sure what you mean with my method complicating things needlessly. Though, now that I’ve thought a bit more about how the video shows things working, it should theoretically be possible to make clothing work both with being bound to the body’s bones and having physics chains acting semi-independently, no? Some older games I’ve seen with rudimentary clothing physics likely used a similar system before modern cloth simulation became widely used, but that’s just a somewhat uneducated guess on my part. The rule of no-skinning-and-cloth-sim-on-same-mesh probably only applies to those modern cloth simulation systems rather than all physics simulation. Ah well, I suppose we’ll see how things work in practice soon enough. That cybernetic giraffe I showed WIPs of on the forum quite a good while back should be fertile testing ground, in fact. She’s got those big banners on her back, a long loin-cloth and wires hanging off her headgear. Guess I should see if I can’t find some time to get the rest of the stuff I had planned for her done at some point in the near future in preparation, eh?
Brownmane
2022-02-28 19:40:31 +0000 UTCThank you! Please see my reply to Brownmane. - odes
FurryVNE Team
2022-02-28 18:57:16 +0000 UTCPrehensile behavior is something we're interested in for sure, but it's something we're probably going to start looking into after we have basic animation going for characters. If you think about it, a character and a prehensile tail are very similar - they're both a connection of physical bodies that you want to affect in a specific way but with behaviour governed by physical simulation. So if we can figure out how to do characters, tails can be an addon to that. The way I think about it is that you'd be able to define a "pose" for the tail that it's supposed to match. The actual matching could then be done simply by aligning the constraints in such a way that it results in the pose. In a way, that's what you already do when you reduce gravity to 0 and increase stiffness, albeit it's going to its default pose rather than a configured one. The only difference we need to make is offer a way to configure a different poses to match. Probably some more work will be required and maybe some extra constraints to make the tail end up in the way you want. But yeah, definitely things we are interested in implementing and it's only a matter of time, but first and foremost - getting multiple character posing and animation in there. As for using physical parts as clothing - sure, I don't see why not. You can already do that. Nothing has really changed in that regard, only that parts can now be physically simulated. If you want a part to be for clothing you'd just mark it as not part of the body, as before. And you are correct - while combining clothing in the way you suggest would definitely be possible, it's also complicating things in an unnecessary way with zero gains. The clothing, even if part of another mesh, would still have to be rendered in it's own draw call since it would use other materials and textures. So I'm not sure what the gain would be. Note that actual cloth simulation is something we're interested in implementing so it's something we're probably going to see as well at some point in the future. But until then, this system could definitely be used to achieve some effects like loin cloth or similar. - odes
FurryVNE Team
2022-02-28 18:56:41 +0000 UTCThank you!
FurryVNE Team
2022-02-28 18:45:31 +0000 UTCReally amazing progress! Looking forward for more animation related content. I am now wondering how this system would go with making actively animated prehensile tails (e.g. lizard tails) :3
JAF1320
2022-02-27 23:10:42 +0000 UTCGood stuff, I think this works quite nicely in video format too, especially with this much moving stuff to show off. I can see a lot of uses for this system already (floppy goo tentacles came to mind immediately, for example) but what about more active animation rather than just the passive physics simulation? I’m guessing you’re already planning that, given that a lot of tails are prehensile to some degree and the fact that YL1 also had a mix of the two systems for some appendages. I’d guess that’ll be the topic of the next progress report, no? It’ll be interesting to see how you’re going to handle grabbing (both of and by the appendage), for example. Good to know we can do custom bone chains for our own meshes, too. I’ll certainly have my work cut out for me, adding that functionality to some of the stuff I’ve already made (and then sat on for nearly a year for lack of time to polish it up, as per usual). Hmm, come to think of it, this should make flowing clothing a possibility already, yes? Just need to be careful where to cut the mesh and how to hide the seam so that it looks like it’s part of the garments that are bound to the body, since I’m guessing there’s still the hard limit of not being able to mix both skinning and cloth simulation in one mesh, since even professional 3D software can’t handle that. Or are you, tricksie little technical wizard that you are, cooking up something on that front too, perhaps?
Brownmane
2022-02-27 22:48:32 +0000 UTCNice! Thanks for the answer.
Static_snowflake
2022-02-27 20:37:35 +0000 UTCIf you want custom parts to bend you'd have to rig them yes, but it's fairly easy to do. I could do a tutorial on that at some point. Most parts would only take like a minute to do. - odes
FurryVNE Team
2022-02-27 20:31:10 +0000 UTCIt's unbelievable what the team is putting together - breathtaking 😍
Deimos
2022-02-27 20:20:23 +0000 UTCThis is a considerable milestone! Finally after a long and patient wait, some physics and animations! But if i make some moving custom parts, does it have to have armature as is or is it possible to add it in the game?
Static_snowflake
2022-02-27 20:14:38 +0000 UTCYESSS! finally there are moving tails! It gets better and better, can't wait! The animation is amazingly smooth. :P
Deimos
2022-02-27 20:06:48 +0000 UTC
