arma 2 rigging

[HarryZhe 10]

I was wondering, how is this done? I know some people have put all-custom characters into arma 2, but I've no idea where to start on rigging stuff to the standard skeleton.

[slatts 1978]

you mean like vests,pouches and goggles etc?

if so youll have to get the arma1 sample character models since the lastest arma2 ones arent out

adding the gear is easy enough,getting it from arma1 to 2 is a bit tricky but the forums will help out :)

[max power 21]

I was wondering, how is this done? I know some people have put all-custom characters into arma 2, but I've no idea where to start on rigging stuff to the standard skeleton.

Rigging is all done with named selections and painting weights. You can construct a skeleton using a cfg file and creating a hierarchy of joints in text form but I'm not exactly sure of the details. Since the animations call for certain rotations of certain named pivot points, your ability to create an entirely new skeleton may be limited.

Perhaps someone else has more information but the only time I've seen custom skeletons created was to adapt ArmA 1 models for ArmA 2. This required fewer joints, so the skeleton was reorganized to require fewer named selections.

[HarryZhe 10]

i can sort of get the idea from that. what, for example, are the "LeftFoot" "-LeftFoot" selections, what's the minus symbol mean?

And, how do i import an animation to test it on?

[mr burns 131]

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/ArmA:_How_to_animate_a_model

This?

edit: oops, thats vehicles..

[rstratton 0]

you mean like vests,pouches and goggles etc?

if so youll have to get the arma1 sample character models since the lastest arma2 ones arent out

adding the gear is easy enough,getting it from arma1 to 2 is a bit tricky but the forums will help out :)

http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=6925 << arma2 character sample model

[HarryZhe 10]

I have that, it's what i've been basing named selections on... What I need to know now is how to preview some animations on it.

[max power 21]

i can sort of get the idea from that. what, for example, are the "LeftFoot" "-LeftFoot" selections, what's the minus symbol mean?

And, how do i import an animation to test it on?

-Left foot is left foot plus everything below it in the hierarchy.

edit: You want to animate with those - selections, not with the named selections for each bone. The lower bones themselves are not in the object space of their parent object, so moving left foot will move only left foot and not the toes.

Edited January 8, 2010 by Max Power

[HarryZhe 10]

oh wtf, czechs are weird guys

I've figured out absolute weighting, but i need to work on how to do like, partial weighting

[max power 21]

If you select the vertices you wish to edit 'weights' for (weights here are the degree to which a vertex is in a selection), right click on the named selections box, and select 'weights'. There you can edit the relative weights for all of the named selections that those vertices are in in percents.

The O2 manual suggests that, although there is a capacity to edit vertex weights in O2, in a production environment, weights are painted in an external program and imported. I'm not sure if O2 PE has that functionality.

http://community.bistudio.com/wiki/Oxygen_2_-_Manual#Named_Selections

[[xdf]kanga 0]

theres a import maya weight script, clearly there is a way to export Maya paint weights

edit

Just looked at the BIS sample model and how to edit wights per vertice manually inputting percentages. I used to complain about how much i hated painting weights in maya when rigging, this is just ... well I would say but I would probably be banned

Edited January 9, 2010 by [XDF]Kanga
wtf o2, seriously

[HarryZhe 10]

let's hire an autistic guy

[[xdf]kanga 0]

leave my UVs out of it!

Also dunno if you worked it out or not

but to play animations make sure your animation window is open in o2

Right click and choose from the matrices option, open up a rtm file, norrin reckons the .rtm files from arma2 are binarized so you will have to use a RTM from ArmA1. Then you can view each step of the animation in key frames, or according to the o2 manual you can

press either <Enter>, <Backspace> or the mouse wheel to select the desired animation source (indicated in the upper left corner), and then rotate the mouse wheel to step through the animation.

...NOW BACK TO WORK!

[HarryZhe 10]

I'll be frank, that sounds horrible. Am I gunna have to install a1 and unpbo all the stuff?

PS didn't catch you on msn the other night 'cause me and quag were playing this epic like 4+ hour mission which i think was intended for a lot more than two people