ArmaRig for Blender

[Macser 776]

Hey Foxhound. Archive seems ok. The file contents look to be original and free of anything harmful. If you could suggest a free service that you think is trustworthy I can upload there. Although I've never had any problems with sendspace, they are sporting more ads than they used to. :)

 

I put up an alternative link at filedropper.com. Try that and see if it causes any problems.

[Guest]

Thanks Macser, now all was fine :)

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

 

ArmaRig for Blender v5

Blender 2.6x

[Macser 776]

Thanks for the link Foxhound. Much appreciated. :)

[taro8 806]

Question: I'm making a new uniform model from scratch in blender (based of a sample). Will I still need to rig it in o2, or can I use 3ds Max for rigging and then import rigged model into o2?

[PuFu 4600]

Question: I'm making a new uniform model from scratch in blender (based of a sample). Will I still need to rig it in o2, or can I use 3ds Max for rigging and then import rigged model into o2?

it is really unrelated to this topic, but anyways

You could:

1. rig it in blender if you're doing it in blender

2. rig it in any other software, max included

3. rig it in O2 (expect wasted time here).

[x3kj 1247]

you can use .fbx to import rigged meshes from real modelling tools into O2

[taro8 806]

Sorry if it was really unrelated, I wasn't sure if ArmaRig is required for rigging Arma 3 models in blender and such. I couldn't find any good tutorials for that. Thank you for  the info.

 

Just for clarification ArmaRig is only for creating animations like rifle hold, reload and such?

[Macser 776]

There's nothing about the Armarig Blend file that's required. 

 

The primary aim was to create a rig for Blender users to animate with. Originally for A2. But I noticed the very strong similarity between the layout of the characters from A2 and A3 and decided to use the A3 samples as reference. In the absence of anything dedicated for that purpose, in Blender, people have been using it for their A3 projects.

 

It's only limited to what the user can do with it. So walk, run and other dynamic sequences are possible.

 

RTMS are universal by the way. So they work with all of the engines.

 

But that's not the only thing you can use it for. Because you have a rig based on the A3 character, you can add things like clothing or accessories, and weight them to the armature. When you do this vertex groups are created corresponding to the individual bones.

 

These vertex groups are the selections you would see listed in Object builder/O2PE. Creating the mesh and binding it to the armature, inside Blender, will allow you to view the deformation in real-time. So you can see potential problems like distortion or clipping before going in-game.

[Macser 776]

Another small tweak to the file. I moved the forearm bones onto the first bone layer. This should help correct

potential collapse when rotating the hand forward( palm to the back, as opposed to the front).

 

Links have been updated on the first page.

[Gazzamc 1]

How would I go about using this rig to make simple animations? any help appreciated, Thanks

[andy1 71]

What are you animating for weapons, hand signals, vehicles. That varies how you approach it.

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[Gazzamc 1]

What are you animating for weapons, hand signals, vehicles. That varies how you approach it.

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Thanks for the reply, the unit itself, I guess that would be hands and weapons.

[andy1 71]

Your best place to start is to create the hand animations. That's the static holding pose. From there you can start creating reload animations.

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[Gazzamc 1]

Your best place to start is to create the hand animations. That's the static holding pose. From there you can start creating reload animations.

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I'm not actually looking to create reload animations, i'd like to create animations with or without the weapon, for instance blocking his face with one hand as he holds the rifle in the other.. little things like that, is that possible?

 

edit:

 

I don't want these to be static either, so you can still walk while in the pose.

[Macser 776]

I haven't explored that type of animation to be honest. I know it's possible to reload while in motion since A2. But I'm not sure whether it's tied to the reload action specifically. You could certainly create the animation within Blender. It's how to apply it in game that might give you some difficulty. 

 

Static poses wouldn't be a bad place to start, if you're just getting into it. :)

[andy1 71]

I'm not sure if you can do those actions whilst you still walk but you can definelty create actions like that it all depends on how you set it up in the config.  A good one to look at is this thread it explains all the magic behind the animations.

[Gazzamc 1]

I haven't explored that type of animation to be honest. I know it's possible to reload while in motion since A2. But I'm not sure whether it's tied to the reload action specifically. You could certainly create the animation within Blender. It's how to apply it in game that might give you some difficulty. 

 

Static poses wouldn't be a bad place to start, if you're just getting into it. :)

I'll try static first so, I don't mind as long as i get them into the game properly.. baby steps i guess.. I did have an issue with my character being halfway in the ground. The animation in blender works as intended, i tried exporting it with the arma toolbox addon (as a rtm file).

 

I'm not sure if you can do those actions whilst you still walk but you can definelty create actions like that it all depends on how you set it up in the config.  A good one to look at is this thread it explains all the magic behind the animations.

This is helpful :P Thank you.

[Guest]

Thanks for the headsup about the new version :)

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

 

ArmaRig for Blender v6

Blender 2.6x

[Macser 776]

Thanks Foxhound. I've updated the first post to include your link. :)

[Macser 776]

I created a slightly different version of the rig and updated the first page. 

 

The parenting for some of the bones has been removed, and replaced with "childof" constraints. This allows the bone's parenting to be switched by the animator. It also allows for keyframing of the influence value. Practically this means you can stack the same constraint more than once for the same bone and keyframe what's called a "handoff" during an animation. Where the bone can switch parenting during the sequence. Either locking to an empty object or another bone in the rig, and back again.

 

If you see the child bone pop out of position when you initially switch the parent, don't panic.

Just hit the "Set inverse" button. The bone's position will be updated relative to the new parent.

 

An important note while using the childof constraint. If you decide to change the parenting via the constraint, remember to change it back to the appropriate parent when editing a different sequence. Each animation records the bone transforms with the parenting used at the time. For most of the stuff you'll do you may never bother changing anything, in which case the rig operates as usual.

 

Animations (actions) created with the previous version (Version 6) may not work correctly out of the box with this one. So bear that in mind.

[Guest]

Thanks for the headsup about the new version :)

New version frontpaged on the Armaholic homepage.

 

ArmaRig for Blender v6.1

Blender 2.6x

[bad benson 1733]

I'm not sure if you can do those actions whilst you still walk but you can definelty create actions like that it all depends on how you set it up in the config.  A good one to look at is this thread it explains all the magic behind the animations.

 

since arma 2 (i think) there is a second animation layer in addition to the main whole body one. they call it "Gestures". used for hand signals for example but stuff like reloading is using the same technology but controlled in a more hardcoded way. these gestures are pretty easy to configure because they are just overlayed over the main animation. the animation classes are based on the normal ones and have interpolations in their default parent class but i'm not sure if gesture do even connect at all to each other like normal anims.

 

here's an example config:

 

class CfgPatches
{
	class babe_EM_gst
	{
		units[] = {};
		weapons[] = {};
		requiredVersion = 0.1;
		requiredAddons[] = {"A3_Characters_F","A3_Sounds_F","A3_Anims_F"};
	};
};

 class CfgMovesBasic
 {
 	class DefaultDie;
 	class ManActions
 	{
 		babe_em_jump_rfl = "babe_em_jump_rfl";	
 		babe_em_jump_pst = "babe_em_jump_pst";	
 		babe_em_jump_ua = "babe_em_jump_ua";	
 	};
	class Actions
	{
		class NoActions: ManActions
		{
			babe_em_jump_rfl[] = {"babe_em_jump_rfl","Gesture"};
			babe_em_jump_pst[] = {"babe_em_jump_pst","Gesture"};
			babe_em_jump_ua[] = {"babe_em_jump_ua","Gesture"};
                };
        };
 };
 
 class CfgGesturesMale
 {
 	class Default;
 	class States
 	{
 		class babe_em_jump_rfl: Default
 		{
 			file="\babe\babe_em\animations\jump_rfl.rtm";
 			looped=0;
 			speed=1.7;
 			mask="babe_em_mask_fullbody";

			interpolationSpeed = 20;
			weaponIK = 0;
 		};
 		class babe_em_jump_pst: Default
 		{
 			file="\babe\babe_em\animations\jump_pst.rtm";
 			looped=0;
 			speed=1.7;
 			mask="babe_em_mask_fullbody";

			interpolationSpeed = 20;
			weaponIK = 0;
 		};
 		class babe_em_jump_ua: Default
 		{
 			file="\babe\babe_em\animations\jump_ua.rtm";
 			looped=0;
 			speed=1.7;
 			mask="babe_em_mask_fullbody";

			interpolationSpeed = 20;
			weaponIK = 0;
 		};
 	};
	class BlendAnims
	{
		class MaskStart
		{
			weight = 0.85;
		};
		babe_em_mask_fullbody[] = {"head",1,"neck1",1,"neck",1,"weapon",1,"LeftShoulder",1,"LeftArm",1,"LeftArmRoll",1,"LeftForeArm",1,"LeftForeArmRoll",1,"LeftHand",1,"LeftHandRing",1,"LeftHandPinky1",1,"LeftHandPinky2",1,"LeftHandPinky3",1,"LeftHandRing1",1,"LeftHandRing2",1,"LeftHandRing3",1,"LeftHandMiddle1",1,"LeftHandMiddle2",1,"LeftHandMiddle3",1,"LeftHandIndex1",1,"LeftHandIndex2",1,"LeftHandIndex3",1,"LeftHandThumb1",1,"LeftHandThumb2",1,"LeftHandThumb3",1,"Spine1",1,"Spine2",1,"Spine3",1,"Spine",1,"Pelvis",1,"LeftLeg",1,"LeftLegRoll",1,"LeftUpLeg",1,"LeftUpLegRoll",1,"LeftFoot",1,"LeftToeBase",1,"RightLeg",1,"RightLegRoll",1,"RightUpLeg",1,"RightUpLegRoll",1,"RightFoot",1,"RightToeBase",1};
	};
 };

i do the normal jump in Enhanced Movement using a gesture to make it more responsive. you can also see here how the mask is set up. the mask is needed since it's overlayed over the main full body animation. i use a full body one here but you can easily see how it works by removing some bones from the mask array and then look at it ingame. it works kind of like a mask or alpha channel in 2d. the numbers behind the bone names are weights.

also play around with interpolationSpeed inside the anim classes. that can give you smoother but less accurate transitions. depends on what you need.

 

you play back gestures ingame like this:

 

_unit playActionNow "babe_em_jump_ua"

 

 

you can do some cool things with these but they also have their limits.

[MrSanchez 243]

Hey, thanks a lot for your rig, Macser.

 

I've been meaning to do some small animation work on weapons held in the handgun slot.

 

I very much suspect so, but do you know for certain whether handguns also use the 'weapon' bone? I got confused since you added a reference pistol mesh in V5 but I'm not sure what that could be used for (as it doesn't appear to be linked to e.g. the weapon bone).

Could you perhaps tell me?

 

Kind regards,

Sanchez

[Macser 776]

Hello. I'm always glad to see someone else getting into this subject. Hopefully you'll get some enjoyment out of it. :)

 

There's no "bone" as such for the pistol. At least there's no reference to one that I've seen in the examples. Apart from the proxies themselves. Which is why it's part of the right hand selection in O2/Object builder/in-game. As opposed to the primary and launcher weapons. Which are dedicated animatable selections in themselves.

 

I don't know what the situation is with proxies in A3, but I suspect any animations that affect them are still hard-coded.

 

So that leaves the animator with using the right hand to position the pistol. It's there just as a reference only. Nothing else. So you can get an idea of how it looks. It's very easy to bring in a new type of pistol mesh if yours differs slightly from the default stuff. But I don't see any way of animating it directly, unless a bone is specifically added to the rig.

 

That actually is possible. The problem though is that once you do that you'll need to edit every rtm in the game. As they won't contain information for the new bone by default. Bones without any transforms/rotations from an rtm will immediately drop towards the ground, as the default position for the character is the one you see in O2. Basically your zero frame, or "t-pose". If there was a way to import rtms into Blender or another app, then they could be re-targetted much more quickly. Still a fair bit of work though for one bone. 

 

Alwarren has said it's a feature he'd like to include in the Arma toolbox. But it's a bit more involved than the export process. And of course he's got other things on-going, like CUP and his personal work. 

[MrSanchez 243]

Hello. I'm always glad to see someone else getting into this subject. Hopefully you'll get some enjoyment out of it. :)

 

There's no "bone" as such for the pistol. At least there's no reference to one that I've seen in the examples. Apart from the proxies themselves. Which is why it's part of the right hand selection in O2/Object builder/in-game. As opposed to the primary and launcher weapons. Which are dedicated animatable selections in themselves.

 

I don't know what the situation is with proxies in A3, but I suspect any animations that affect them are still hard-coded.

 

So that leaves the animator with using the right hand to position the pistol. It's there just as a reference only. Nothing else. So you can get an idea of how it looks. It's very easy to bring in a new type of pistol mesh if yours differs slightly from the default stuff. But I don't see any way of animating it directly, unless a bone is specifically added to the rig.

 

That actually is possible. The problem though is that once you do that you'll need to edit every rtm in the game. As they won't contain information for the new bone by default. Bones without any transforms/rotations from an rtm will immediately drop towards the ground, as the default position for the character is the one you see in O2. Basically your zero frame, or "t-pose". If there was a way to import rtms into Blender or another app, then they could be re-targetted much more quickly. Still a fair bit of work though for one bone. 

 

Alwarren has said it's a feature he'd like to include in the Arma toolbox. But it's a bit more involved than the export process. And of course he's got other things on-going, like CUP and his personal work. 

 

Hey, sorry for the late reply.

 

Thanks for the info. I'll mess around with some selections and see what I can get. I'll post my findings here once I'm done.

I'll avoid adding a new bone as that just seems painful :D

 

Kind regards,

Sanchez