Animation - explanation of the magic behind

[x3kj 1247]

with this i get "Animation k40_anim\vehicles\chimera_cmdr_in.rtm not found or empty" now in the rpt.

All the "No entry 'bin\config.bin/CfgMovesMaleSdr/States/etcetc" warnings are gone at least

the addon name is k40_anim and the path to the rtm is k40_Anim\vehicles\*.rtm

Both poses ingame are T poses now...

in the turret config call the actions like that:

gunnerAction = "k40_chimera_cmdr_out";

gunnerInAction = "k40_chimera_cmdr_in";

If i load the example soldier from A3 samples and import the rtm it plays fine, so no idea whats wrong.

Edit: error was typo in path. And i had the rtm not set up properly, frame -0.5 should be t-pose, 0 and 1 animated. I had 0 as t-pose as well

Edited July 9, 2014 by Fennek

[sebj 10]

@Smookie,

Hi, I saw your great explanation about the secrets of animation and that's really great for what I need to do.

I just would like to see if you have a solution for my case to launch a custom animation for each shoot (bolt cocking for a sniper weapon) without passing trough scripting...

As there is already an animation for the finger that is puling the trigger, I suspect that we could be able to modify this one for the hand to rearm the bolt too :)

Is there a possibility to call a custom animation for this case like it is possible for the "reloadAction" ?

Thanks in advance for your help

[mcruppert 300]

Hi there!

I want to know how to affect the first person player view in an animation.

I did some player animation which work very well ingame but the camera (in first person view) does not move with the head bone when turning the head.

I know there is a bone called "camera" but it seems its only for the third person view

Hope you can tell me

Cheers

Ruppertle

[cyclone83 6]

Posted this already in an obviously wrong thread, seems better here. I tried to use some civil animations from ArmA II, mostly healing, beating/punching and fist pumping. Therefor I put the ArmA II anims.pbo into the ArmA III AddOns folder. Generally it works good so far but the main problem is that the player movement gets stuck. I only can move by pressing the run key and only can stop again by turning around with the mouse :D

Maybe someone could cut out these specific lines of code that prevent the player unit in ArmA III to move as it should so we can use all those great animations from ArmA II.

[Polygon 11]

Hi there!

I want to know how to affect the first person player view in an animation.

I did some player animation which work very well ingame but the camera (in first person view) does not move with the head bone when turning the head.

I know there is a bone called "camera" but it seems its only for the third person view

Hope you can tell me

Cheers

Ruppertle

Have you solved this? I've got the same prob holding me back.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

I'm getting a bunch of :

Error: Bone face_hub doesn't exist in skeleton LoDR_Opfor_Walker_01_Legs_Skeleton

Error: Bone face_eyelids doesn't exist in skeleton LoDR_Opfor_Walker_01_Legs_Skeleton

Error: Bone face_cheeksideright doesn't exist in skeleton LoDR_Opfor_Walker_01_Legs_Skeleton

Error: Bone face_cornerleft doesn't exist in skeleton LoDR_Opfor_Walker_01_Legs_Skeleton

error in the arma rpt from my custom skeleton. I can't really find any more definitions related to the default arma man skeleton and the walkers cfgvehicle class is now parented straight from man class and uses custom moves/gestures/fatiguemoves that I have stripped of all default animations and replaced all skeleton references to my new skeleton. I do have given the walker Animalhead as I thought the man head still defined to be used might cause this but so far I have not managed to get rid of these.

Might you Smookie or anyone else have any answers to this? Perhaps the default skeleton parts are hardcoded into the game?

[smookie 11]

Hi there!

I did some player animation which work very well ingame but the camera (in first person view) does not move with the head bone when turning the head.

I know there is a bone called "camera" but it seems its only for the third person view

This is a very late reply but in case anyone still needs it:

You need to adjust headBobMode and headBobStrength. HeadBobMode should be set to 4 or 5 and headBobStrength should be close to -1.

[Apache7 10]

Fastest way would be to delete the bones that are mentioned in the rpt error. I have to constantly do that when porting an anim from A2 to A3 due to different naming conversion in a3 for facebones. They won't impact your anim unless you plant o animate eyelids,mouth etc.

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Apache7, I've tried that. I have completely custom skeleton, animations, cfgmoves, cfggestures, head, and I've purged any reference to the old bones I could find. Don't know where to look anymore. I don't inherit from the ManSkeleton nor the cfgSoldierMoves.

[smookie 11]

Might you Smookie or anyone else have any answers to this? Perhaps the default skeleton parts are hardcoded into the game?

I actually dont know but that very well may be as these are seperate facial animations. Your best bet is to ignore those or put fake unweighted bones into your skeletons.

[.kju 3244]

@ HorribleGoat

Make a search for the bones it complains about on all (your) data loaded by the game - including binary data.

Use agent ransack or powerGREP. It will surely still find some matches.

To purge/convert rtms follow Reyhard's guide:

http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?184655-Preventing-skeleton-errors-in-rpt-HOW-TO

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Kju thanks for the tip, ill try that when I have time, I had also forgot to put the model.cfg in the .Rtm folder but that did not solve the missing facial bones.

I'll have to try what Smookie suggested and write the bones into the skeleton config even though they are not used.

[Macser 776]

I actually dont know but that very well may be as these are seperate facial animations. Your best bet is to ignore those or put fake unweighted bones into your skeletons.

Something very similar used to happen with the program OFPanim,for OFP/CWA.An animation would contain

data relating to bones that were removed from the model in question.Which would throw up errors on import.

Updating the animation was the only way to correct it.

It may not have anything to do with your issue if it's purely config related.But I'd thought I'd post the info anyway. :)

Edited October 28, 2014 by Maczer

[HorribleGoat 1473]

Im quite certain that it has something to do with the head system as the animations nor the skeleton have any reference to those bones. And all the errors seem to be from facial bones.

[renatopoooo 10]

kju, thank you!

[Emperias 11]

Hi,

in first, thank you smookie for this thread.

I would like to raise this issue. I work on a bolt action rifle project and I search an answer for this problem.

@Smookie,

Hi, I saw your great explanation about the secrets of animation and that's really great for what I need to do.

I just would like to see if you have a solution for my case to launch a custom animation for each shoot (bolt cocking for a sniper weapon) without passing trough scripting...

As there is already an animation for the finger that is puling the trigger, I suspect that we could be able to modify this one for the hand to rearm the bolt too :)

Is there a possibility to call a custom animation for this case like it is possible for the "reloadAction" ?

Thanks in advance for your help

thank you beforehand for your answer.

[Kydoimos 916]

Hi there,

Great thread, Smookie - thanks so much for sharing! Quick question on animations for units in cargo - I'd love to be able to prevent units from moving (enableSimulation has no effect when in cargo) - the idea being, to enable an in-flight briefing inside something like the Ghosthawk. As it stands, with the unit's head movement, it's hard to create the effect. Is there a way to do this without playing with config files etc.? At one point, there was a bug, where if a vehicle had its simulation disabled, the units inside remained still - it worked perfectly for the in-flight briefing scene! Trouble is, it's been fixed! :D

Thanks in advance for any answers! Again, great thread!

[akalegman 10]

An interesting read!

[sebj 10]

Hi,

in first, thank you smookie for this thread.

I would like to raise this issue. I work on a bolt action rifle project and I search an answer for this problem.

thank you beforehand for your answer.

for my part I completely stopped my M24 SWS project because of bolt action and hands animation troubles and creating an working .rtm file.

I had a lot of trouble to work with BIS skeleton (Feet and hands bones names seems to be changed by bis but not in the sample Skeleton furnished with tools), the Skeleton made by Kiory (http://forums.bistudio.com/showthread.php?167944-Modders-resource-New-animation-workflow!) was a good alternative but really long to implement for advanced animation.

I hope in the future there will be (or maybe it is already available somewhere) some help/tutorials for 3ds and motionbuilder softs.

[smookie 11]

Sorry for lack of response, reinforcing Team Mike got me carried away :)

@sebj @Emperias : Unfortunately, you need to use scripting for that but it should be rather light and not very intrusive. You can define your own new gesture (simiairly to new State, just remember you could use a new action) and have it defined for two cases: Normal and Context. Additionally, you have to make a prone based full body animation. You can link those two gestures and one state with one custom action (can be called whatever you like). You add actions in specific actionsets. For non-prone stuff, its enough if you place it in low ready rifle actionset. For prone, place it in RifleProneActions. Action that is linked to gesture needs to be an array (actioname[] = {"gesturestate","Gesture"}), while in case of state, its just a variable actionname = statename. Your best bet is to copy and rename one of reload animations. Just clone the entries in all the places they exist. THEN you just need to add fired event handler, do some simple checking for ammo and PlayMoveNow actionname. It will work at any stance if you have done the linking correctly.

IF you guys are interested,i can do a streamiing session and walk through this process. It probably would be beneficial to others so I would also record it and post in online.

@Kydoimos: Head movement is irritaiting and you cannot disable it. I will be placing an internal request to fix this problem but I dont have ETA's for fixing.

[Emperias 11]

thank you Smookie for your answer.

The use of even handler is something that I had thought, but I was looking for a cleaner way to do it.

I will enough with this way.

[smookie 11]

It's clean enough, imo :)

[Kydoimos 916]

@Smookie - ah, thanks for the response! Awesome stuff! :D

[smookie 11]

BTW if you need quicker reply, just add me on skype. It will be much easier

[sebj 10]

@smookie thx for your explanations.