ArmaRig for Blender

[Macser 776]

Yeah. Pain at the thoughts of having to edit all those animations. There's a reason it's not the most popular aspect of modding. :D

[MrSanchez 243]

There's a reason it's not the most popular aspect of modding. :D

 

Yeah and it's a shame. Animations are very powerful (if done properly) for immersion. A lot of mods could benefit greatly from some nice custom animations but it's not the easiest thing to do/learn.

I am trying to get into animating so I fully support things like this rig that makes things easier :) Also your vimeo video was very useful (especially for a Blender rookie ;) )

 

Kind regards,

Sanchez

[sparfell_19 188]

Awesome tool. I played a bit with it tonight, very effective. Thanks

[Macser 776]

Thanks. It was intended for A2, even though it's not as active as it used to be. But it seems most of the people using it are modding for A3. Not that I mind. I'm happy it's being used at all. :)

[Cre8or 7]

I've been playing around with this rig for a while now, but I can't get custom handanims to work to save my life. I know it was intended for ArmA 2, but I've heard that it's possible to use it in ArmA 3 by renaming the weapon bone (as specified in the first post), so I wanted to try it. To do so, I copied the skeleton model.cfg from the ArmA 3 Samples into my addon and exported a very simple animation that I tossed together in about 2 minutes. I set the timeline in Blender to range from frame 0 to 1, adjusted the pose of the ArmaRig in frame 0, then exported as static pose. So far so good.

 

I then loaded the animation into Object Builder to see what it would look like. Both hands and the weapon were positioned properly, so I decided to try it out in-game. However, once I equipped the weapon in-game, the player's hands would stretch a few meters out into the distance.

 

So I started from scratch, this time with very simple animations - a T-pose with the weapon slightly moved to the left, and a control animation (also a T-pose, with the weapon in its original position). I then took screenshots of both animations in Blender, OB and in-game to figure out what was happening. Here are the results:

 

Control (original T-pose):

 

Modified T-Pose (weapon offset by ~0.5 meters):

 

 

Let me clarify why I think this is a problem: handanims are determined by the position of the hands in relation to the weapon bone. Nothing else really matters in this context, merely the weapon and the hands are relevant. That's the theory. The problem here is that the weapon was moved closer to the hands - in fact, inbetween them - meaning the player's right hand should be located to the right of the weapon. However, this is not the case, as the hands were both offset in the direction the weapon bone was moved in, and by the same amount.

 

 

Since I thought this was a personal issue with my setup, I mentioned it in on Discord, where 3 members helped me make sure that I've got the basics covered. But the problem still persists, which makes me think there might be an issue with the rig itself. Ofcourse, this doesn't mean that I'm doing everything 100% correct - I only recently noticed the bone names were mismatching - but I feel like this is outside of my control.

 

[Macser 776]

Ok. First off, let me say I'm no expert when it comes to animations. Or even rigging for that matter. Although I've gained a lot of experience since I first started. My intial reason for creating the rig was so I could get into experimenting with animations for the newer titles. But I ended up getting side-tracked by other things, and didn't get any practice in. So I decided to put it out there and hoped that someone else might get some value out of it. Which apparently, they have.

 

Hand anims have always seemed to be a pain for a lot of people. Maybe you've already covered what's mentioned in this post. But I'll link to it anyway. I really need to have a go at it myself. 

 

I assume the rig is not a dud, as it's been used successfully to generate hand anims, static and full body sequences. If it failed on one aspect, it's quite likely the others would fail too. Most of the problems I've seen usually stemmed from the official tools or config issues.

 

Try moving the hand bones into the desired location without altering the position or rotation of the weapon bone. The only things of concern should be the hands as far as I'm aware. 

 

From looking at the images, there's a correlation between the in game shots and the viewport shots. Especially if you take into consideration that the weapon position is offset in the aiming stance by roughly the same amount as the hands have shifted. The same looks to be true when you moved the weapon bone. It's translation appears to have been added to the position of the weapon bone in the aim stance.

Now, I'm open to correction on any of that, but to the best of my knowledge, hand anims act like an "offset" rather than a replacement. So the current position of the weapon bone has to be a factor.

[Cre8or 7]

Your assumption is correct, the movement of the bone was added to the hands, making it impossible to get an animation with both hands on the gun, both in Blender and ArmA. However, after submitting this post, I was told that Addon Builder is likely to be the cause of the animation problems, due to a binarization problem. To confirm this, I had another modder try my animation and model.cfg out, however they used Mikero's tools to pack the files. The animation worked fine on their end, which seems to be confirmation that Addon Builder has something to do with this. Additionally, I tried using animation files from open-source mods such as NIArms, and they all stretched horribly in-game. Compiled animations on the other hand, like the ones contained in BI's files or even other mods, all work as intended, further implying that the binarization process is the root of these problems.

 

I wasn't able to 100% confirm that Addon Builder is the only issue though, as I simply haven't tested any other PBO builders yet. I will get back to you as soon as I can confirm that it works with other compilers. Thanks for the quick reply though, and especially for the amazing rig that you provided - I can't wait to get down and dirty with animations. With how easy to use it is, I have a feeling I'm actually going to enjoy animating this time, which, considering I absolutely hated it in previous games, definitely says something!

[Macser 776]

Yeah. That definitely has cropped up, from what I've read. But I thought they'd rectified that in later updates to the tools.

 

In any case, I'm glad to hear you're getting into the area of animations. It's often overlooked, even though there's been some fantastic contributions from various people.

 

Any kind of ik based rig really does make the process less tedious. For OFP and even A2 to some extent, the main process was FK or mesh based deformations out of O2. Functional, but not exactly inviting. 

 

[Cre8or 7]

I figured the problem out! And I also have a fix!

 

I'm modding on the dev branch, and I'm using -filePatching to preview my changes without having to restart the game. However, this will overwrite the compiled animations from my .pbo with the source files. Therein lies there problem - it seems that the game can't handle handAnim RTMs if they're not compiled.

 

To fix this, either remove the -filePatching parameter, or, if you're like me and want to keep it, just rename/move/delete your source animations so that the game doesn't reload them. Oh, and if you really need to preview different animations in real-time, you need to go through an additional step: make a dummy addon where your new animations go into, along with the A3 samples' model.cfg, and compile that addon whenever you add a new animation (or overwrite an existing one). Then extract the binarized animation file from the newly generated .pbo file and stick it in your main addon folder. Provided the names match up, the game will then reload the animation and it will display fine, because it is now compiled. HOWEVER: once you're done testing your animations, make sure to replace the binarized RTM with the uncompiled version before you pack your addon! Worst case scenario, AddonBuilder (or PboBuilder, depending on what you're using) will try to binarize your files, even if they were already binarized, which will result in errors!

---------

 

Okay, with this out of the way, here's a quick summary of what you need to check if you, like me, are having problems with animations being stretched in-game:

• in Blender, make sure the weapon bone starts with a lowercase W: weapon
• if you're not sure which model.cfg to use, simply copy the one from the ArmA 3 Samples (can be found on Steam), found in this location: "...\Steam\steamapps\common\Arma 3 Samples\Addons\Test_Character_01\model.cfg"
• handAnims do not change based on the weapon model that you use in-game. If you think your (custom) weapon model might be breaking your animation, try and replace it with the ArmA 3 Sample weapon. Granted, the hands may not fit that weapon, but it certainly shouldn't stretch the arms out into oblivion or anything crazy like that.
• if you're using the -filePatching launch parameter, know that ArmA will replace the animations in your PBO with the source animations (if it can find them), which is most likely the cause of your animation being stretched. I already provided a description on how to fix that issue earlier in this post, so just go read that.
• and finally, if you still can't get your animations to work, join the ArmA 3 Discord chat and post about it (there's an animation makers channel). The people there are usually friendly and will help you troubleshoot your setup, and generally have some good advice for you. (Kudos to HorribleGoat for helping me out!)

---------

 

If I'm honest, with how simple of a fix this is, I was hoping this would be a common issue. Apparently not that many people animate on the dev branch, since nobody seemed to know about this issue until now. Anyway, I hope this post will help other people before they go and rip their hair out like I did.

[Macser 776]

The part about the naming convention I mentioned on the first page. But the rest will be invaluable. So thanks for posting back. In fact I'd say that warrants a separate "solved" thread in the A3 modeling section, so it doesn't get buried in here. You could suggest it to a moderator and see if they agree. If there was concern about it getting spammed it could be locked after creation, unless it really needs to be updated with new information. 

[Barney626 9]

Spent hours trying to import the pose file into object builder and I just get error messages no matter what file format I use. 

 

When I try to import a BVH file I get this error:

 

 

 

Any idea what I'm doing wrong? 

[Macser 776]

Use Alwarren's arma toolbox addon and export directly to an rtm. Object builder will open that format natively. I don't personally bother with BVH any more. I know some folks who still do. But to be honest there's no compelling reason to do so. That's one of the reasons I didn't supply a BVH compatible rig.

[Barney626 9]

Now I just get this error: 

 

 

 

Steps I'm doing (probably doing something wrong):

 

Load model that comes in your zip file: 

 

 

Go to export menu and click export with these settings: 

 

 

Try to import the file into object creator using 'Universal Bistudio TXT' (file doesn't appear with any other importing option) and get the error shown at the start of the post. 

Edited January 31, 2017 by Barney626

[Macser 776]

Just to be on the safe side, make sure you're in pose mode when you're exporting.

 

You can't load an rtm from the file menu, if that's what you're doing. You load them onto a model from the animation window. If that's not a visible panel in your object builder, you can activate it from the window menu. When you right click in the animation window you will get the option to "load matrices". When you click on it you can navigate to any saved rtm and the frames will be loaded onto your model. 

[Barney626 9]

Yep finally managed to import the models but now a model like this: 

 

 

 

Imports to look like this: 

 

 

 

What am I doing wrong this time? 

 

 

 

[Barney626 9]

Ok managed to get it working, was using a broken model now I've managed to get this: 

 

 

I know this isn't strictly to do with your work, but would someone be able to explain how I get this pose onto an AI in the actual game? Super nooby question I know but I can't find any guides on how to actually do this :/ 

[Macser 776]

Before someone does that you need to find out why the transforms and rotations are messed up. If it's not looking right in Object builder/O2, then it won't look right in game.

 

Try this rtm and see if it's ok for you. It should look like this:

[Barney626 9]

File dropper doesn't seem to be working...

 

Could you upload it to mediafire or something? 

 

and yeh, that 'fixed' model still doesn't look quite right 

 

[Macser 776]

Ok. out of curiosity, what model are you running the rtms on? Is it the A3 character sample in it's original form?

 

Are you taking exactly the same steps as I outlined in the video on the first page?

[Barney626 9]

Using the a3skeleton.p3d from this page: https://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Arma_3_Modding_Characters

 

It's difficult to follow the video because the voice isn't understandable in the second half and you already have the file loaded into O2. For a beginner (and I mean, totally new) it's difficult to follow along when steps like that are missed out. I have tried looking for other videos explaining how to do it but they are few and far between. Most are not about charater models and the ones that are usually use a completely different method from 5 years ago... 

 

Just tried re-loading it and now it seems to be working? at least it looks like the mesh isn't distorted... 

 

[Macser 776]

What ever you did the deformation looks better. You don't have to use object builder if the rtm is a static pose, by the way. Once you've established there's no issues you can export the rtm straight to game. But you'll have to sort the config side of things yourself. I can't offer advice on that.

 

I'll have to rewatch the video. You're the first person to say they found it hard to understand. I can't really do much about my voice though. It is what it is, as the saying goes. 

 

I didn't see the point in showing the model being loaded in. You open a file in the same way you would with almost any windows based application. The video is only there to show how the rtms are generated with the arma toolbox. It's not intended as an introductory tutorial for people new to modding. I don't consider myself a teacher in any sense of the word anyway.

[Barney626 9]

All I need at the moment is a couple of static poses for a few screenshots. The main problem I'm having now is I have no idea how to get and rtm file into the game and put onto an AI? 

 

Even Bohemias main page about this is completely useless: 

 

 

I just don't know where to even look, all the guides I found are massively outdated. 

 

What I mean't by your voice in the video is that it sounds like it's been sped up 100x or something. The first part is fine but in the second half it's impossible to understand due to that weird effect... 

 

As far as teaching goes, you have been by far the most helpful person I have found! You have managed to get me most of the way to getting these models working which I am very grateful for, I just need to know how to get these models into the game and working...  

 

EDIT:

 

Tried following this guide: http://www.aos.armaholic.eu/tutorial2.html

 

Where he has a list of files that should be in the pbo, I'm missing his 'Data' folder. No idea where to get that. 

When I pack it and move it into the addons folder I can't find it anywhere in the editor so I'm assuming it hasn't worked... 

Is that guide too outdated to be useful? 

[andy1 71]

I don't claim to be an expert on animations but I have managed to create and apply custom hand animations for weapons and reloads.  For static poses I'd look here 

 numerous people are starting to make static poses.  The effectively are producing RTMs then you apply them in game, but how I'm not sure you'd have to look at the documentation they provided to find out how.

[R0adki11 3949]

Should i move this thread to the Arma3 section if forum members are using it for guidance? 

[Macser 776]

Sure.  I think most of the people using the rig so far have been modding for A3 anyway.