Toadie's SmallArms WIP thread

[babylonjoke 22]

Lovely anims! Looking forward to the release!

[dissaifer 10]

Really good work and the community always needs another anim master. Now only if BIS could fix the hand position when they walk with the gun down - broken wrists... looks odd.

[toadie2k 799]

Excellent work, I'm especially looking forward to the animations. The M60 reload is excellent, sad that the weapon itself cannot be animated properly to really work with the hands (same with the enfield, lack of stripper clips/cartridges).

It can to a degree, and I've got it to a point where I'm really quite happy with how close it is (we're talking the character being out by maybe a tenth of a second overall at the end of the animation, which is nothing). It's not spot on perfect, but for how A3 handles animation of both character and gun, it's close enough that it doesn't look jarring.

RE; The enfield- oh there's going to be stripper clips, trust me. Wouldn't leave an important detail as that out. Just haven't got them into Oxygen yet, nor animated.

A question regarding the AK-12 (or any weapon, for that matter): Is it possible to have the charging handle move with the hand during the reload animation? As in you see it move back and forth in sync with the hand animations.

Yep, it does that, as do all the AKs I've got in.

[toadie2k 799]

Smallish Update.

I figure that video's probably better medium for talking about animation, than text, so here's a video of where stuff's at.

If you're not keen on watching the whole thing, the short story is the M60E4 and the source files for it coming next week.

[kgino1045 12]

after 12 years and here the person who actually can adjust reaload animation

Is arma engine that hard or just no body care about this?

[roberthammer 582]

after 12 years and here the person who actually can adjust reaload animation

Is arma engine that hard or just no body care about this?

Dude , only arma 3 can finally do this - so thats why ...

[kgino1045 12]

MY god;;; didn't notice that

Then i can say B.I. finally make some progress.

[scarecrow398 43]

Looking great toadie, looking forward to this that's for sure!

Two things, Do you plan on having new animations for the VOG in the future aswell (They're front loading caseless rounds) and I don't know how much of a modeler you are but would it be possible to add a few more polys to the rear sight of the 727? it would look a bit nicer with a few more sides.

On a side note, what mix are you listening to during the video?

[13islucky 10]

Schweet, looks great and I think it' great that the 60 is coming out by next week. I did find it hard to understand a few things you were saying as you were shooting at times, but I got most of the vid.

I do have a minor question on the 727, and that is if it is possible to have the optics attached to the carrying handle as opposed to taking off the carrying handle, kinda like this?

[Kaxii 11]

Awesome work! Looking forward to that RPK and RPK-12! Just hope that we get some more high qaulity soviet soldiers for those AK's and maybe even WW2 and 1 Brits one day!

[LykosMactire 298]

Dude , only arma 3 can finally do this - so thats why ...

actually it was possible in A2, look at I44 weapons

[roberthammer 582]

actually it was possible in A2, look at I44 weapons

Was , but in more hacky way than in A3

[Linkage 10]

Finally, a decent looking Steyr. I've waited so long for this.

[samyg 3]

How are the AKs coming along Toadie?

[enex 11]

amazing work, look like you are premiere men leading animation front regarding weapons and

I applaud you for that loudly.

There is a spark of curiosity in me.I know that arma makes magazines appear right

before they are seated.So is there any way to make that 'second and half' before

they get seated in "visible in hand" rather then standard appearing 'half of second' before seating.

Hope I was clear.

[toadie2k 799]

amazing work, look like you are premiere men leading animation front regarding weapons and

I applaud you for that loudly.

There is a spark of curiosity in me.I know that arma makes magazines appear right

before they are seated.So is there any way to make that 'second and half' before

they get seated in "visible in hand" rather then standard appearing 'half of second' before seating.

Hope I was clear.

The short answer to that is yes, but it's REALLY not worth effort needed for it.

The slightly longer answer is that you have to hand-script all the motions that the magazine would transition through, and the character would have to be animated to perfectly sync to that.. so yeah, while it's doable, I don't think the end result would worth the pretty much exponential effort.

Anyway, another update.

Cliffnotes: Steyr AUGs and G3s animated and pretty neat, AK's coming in a couple of weeks, AR15s trailing a couple weeks after that.

[roberthammer 582]

Hmm nice,

can i ask you how did managed working rotating animation on that iron sight of the G3?

did you used source animation "zeroing" or something else?

because i got problems to make it work , here is the same issue > http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?173465-Optic-Zeroing-not-working

Edited February 23, 2014 by RobertHammer

[toadie2k 799]

Yeah, the Wiki gives the wrong animation source. "Zeroing" doesn't exist, "Zeroing1" does. SO yeah, zeroing1 and zeroing2 are what do the animation.

Here's my rearsight drum .cfg

            
class Zeroing100m
           {
               type = "rotation";
               source="zeroing1";
               selection="Diopter";
               axis = "drum_rot";
               minValue = 0;
               maxValue = 3;
               angle0=rad -180;
               angle1=rad 630;
           };

[roberthammer 582]

Thx for the info

[enex 11]

That is interesting, something similar Alwandy said too.Anyway thanks for answering, good find about zeroing1!

I like long video update.(if you have someone by you when you are filming make sure you tell him to reload everyone

now and then (when you are focusing towards him) to demonstrate animation multiple times).

[Drakenof 11]

These animations are amazing.

I'm interested in one thing though, how does magazines work in ArmA 3 ? There's something i quite don't get about them, it's like they're not a part of the animation itself.

Also do you plan to modify the grenade launchers animations too ?

Edited February 23, 2014 by Drakenof

[jabroney 10]

First off thank you for the M60 as I use it every time I play, secondly i have to ask about the Tac 50 that I saw in your buying menu in the first video. Any plans to release it?

Thanks again for all the work you've done already and plan to do in the future

Jabroney

[katipo66 94]

Exceptional stuff, looking forward to the AKs, bookmarker set!

[HJohnson 16]

These animations are amazing.

I'm interested in one thing though, how does magazines work in ArmA 3 ? There's something i quite don't get about them, it's like they're not a part of the animation itself.

Also do you plan to modify the grenade launchers animations too ?

Two things.

1. Arma, unlike other games, does not animate it's weapons via armature rigs of a skeleton. Arma chooses to animate via a config file. Where as in other games you could have the magazine move with the animation because it is attached a bone and the bone is animated, Arma uses what is comparable to an excel spreadsheet for animating the different pieces of a weapon (and vehicles and buildings).

As a result, your magazine doesn't track to a hand. It just robotically moves down and hides itself, then moves back into place. It requires many hours of work to make a magazine do a simple movement as rocking into place (FAL's, G3's, AK's). However, this system does allow for making minor animation quickly (animating the bolt while firing or rotating sights when you have an optic).

2. Grenade launchers cannot be animated (as of March 6 2014). In order to animate things in the "spreadsheet" you need to have an animation source. These sources cannot be easily custom defined and cannot be custom defined for weapons specifically. So when you reload your weapon, what tells the gun and the player to do its reload animation is a source called "reloadmagazine". There are other sources such as "reload" which is the source for shooting, "empty" when your gun is out of ammo, or "hasoptics" for when your gun has optics (this can be used to hide things like iron sights).

The problem is two fold. First Bohemia has defined multiple types of sources, but each muzzle your gun has (grenade launchers are a separate muzzle) requires its own source. For example. to zero yours sights and see it animated the source is "zeroing", to zero your grenade launcher, it requires "zeroing2". However, there is no "reloadmagazine2". So if you wanted your Grenade Launcher to move, it would also move when reloading the magazine of the main gun. Secondly, we cannot define the sources ourselves as they are apparently not defined in any config anywhere. This is also why there isn't a separate reload animation for one in the chamber.

TLDR : Weapons are not animated in Arma in such a way that allows for super smooth transitions of magazines. No, it isn't possible to animated GL properly right now. It might be in the future.

[bad benson 1733]

we cannot define the sources ourselves as they are apparently not defined in any config anywhere.

which is the biggest bullshit ever and totally beyond me why it's still the same.

i really appreciate that some people still take the time to make nice weapon anims like this, eventhough BI doesn't make it something that requires reasonable effort but instead makes you struggle with this archaic engine to achieve the simplest of visual things.

big thumps up for that!