Guild of Writers

Hello All,

I haven't posted in a while... real life and assisting others with their Ages that I haven't really had a chance to even consider tackling my own. But I'm going to try that now... So to begin I have some questions about three features I would like in my Ages and how possible they would be... or even if I should attempt them at this time.

1. A damaged imager. I am considering my character bringing in a salvaged imager, which while largely functional would have some static in some parts of the image or would fade out in random intervals. I figure this shouldn't be that bad but just want to throw out some feelers.

2. A cat, I would like to have my character in one of his Offices have his pet cat, and said feline to have some basic traits like following around the explorers and if they stand still nuzzling thier legs, I would love a command allowing the explorer to pet the cat or try and shoo it away, if possible.

3. This part I am really not sure about, back when I lived in the country I would walk up my dirt road in the fall and then as I was walking a big swarm of tiny butterflies would suddenly appear in the road swarm around me and then dissappear again. because they were the same color as the road and so small they were nearly invivible unless you were looking for them. I am wondering if this would be possible to do in an Age or would the clouds of butterflies cause epic lag issues and possible shutdowns?

1. Sounds like "normal" modelling with a special overlay texture, so that should be possible. Kaelisebonrai built a functional imager in his pub office.

2. We currently can do nothing related to bone animations. So you would have to animate that cat with IPO curves... which sounds insane . Cyan did some great animations which look like paths even though they are IPO curves, have a look at the pond in Gira or the birds in the Cleft. The only animals in fan ages that come to my mind were done by ametist, for example in Cretaceous, Rell-too or Botan.

3. Cyan did that in Eder Kemo, so it's certainly possible - but I think you would have to re-use their fireflies as they are saved in some global prp together with the avatar. That quires some special Python coding. And the flies in your age would require a particle system, which currently can not be built in Blender.

We currently can do nothing related to bone animations. So you would have to animate that cat with IPO curves...

This sounds like a misunderstanding of what bones are useful for. Basically no bones means we can't create "flexible" looking animated objects. Each object will have to be separate and rigid, so an animated cat would look like some solid legs sticking out of a solid inflexible body. However, actually setting up such an animation wouldn't be hard because the object animation export fully supports parenting, so it would be simple to have the leg objects move with the body object.

As for IPO curves, every animation you ever create in blender is internally represented as IPO curves, and most of the time you don't have to look at them, except when you want to toggle between cubic interpolation or linear. (or no interpolation at all) This is just the difference between "object accelerates from start and decelerates as it approaches the endpoint" and "object suddenly starts moving at a fixed velocity and stops instantaneously when it reaches it's endpoint", and doesn't actually involve editing the curves. Whether or not you need to deal with this internal representation has nothing to do with whether you are using bones. (Which are just objects that have a special relationship with a "flexible" mesh, and move individual vertices in that mesh. The bones themselves are animated in exactly the same way as any other object.)

Nadnerb wrote:This sounds like a misunderstanding of what bones are useful for. Basically no bones means we can't create "flexible" looking animated objects. Each object will have to be separate and rigid, so an animated cat would look like some solid legs sticking out of a solid inflexible body. However, actually setting up such an animation wouldn't be hard because the object animation export fully supports parenting, so it would be simple to have the leg objects move with the body object.

It's possible (though difficult) to do such animations in Blender without bones, using shape keys. The only problem is that, last time I checked, PyPRP didn't support them.

Thanks Nadnerb, I should better not try to explain stuff I only know from hearsay

Speaking of which, I remember that someone once advised NOT to use an animated parent object as it will make the engine go insane and lag as hell due to all the math involved. Is that something fixable, or has any progress been made there?

diafero wrote:Thanks Nadnerb, I should better not try to explain stuff I only know from hearsay

Speaking of which, I remember that someone once advised NOT to use an animated parent object as it will make the engine go insane and lag as hell due to all the math involved. Is that something fixable, or has any progress been made there?

That depends on the number of child objects and their combined face count. There is one rule to keep in mind here: Always make sure that your animated objects are low poly.

I have played with parented animations and I can confirm that it works.

Is it possible to use bones in Blender, just to make animating easier? Would Blender automatically parent objects that are connected by bones? As long as PyPRP ignores the bones on export I assume (and that's probably wrong) that all parenting and IPO's are exported ok.

Wouldn't that make animating much easier? I would love to include some sort of animal or creature myself.

diafero wrote: Speaking of which, I remember that someone once advised NOT to use an animated parent object as it will make the engine go insane and lag as hell due to all the math involved. Is that something fixable, or has any progress been made there?

No progress made so far, I just wanted to know if it was possible and how immensly labor intensive it would be (I have not yet even begun to learn Plasma as I feel I am nowhere near that point yet.

I have played with parented animations and I can confirm that it works.

I'm not trying to be snarky here, but works and looks good/convincing? I haven't had a chance to look at the Fan made Ages yet (at least other than the Gallery) It's not that I'm unwilling to try I just would prefer to know that I can achieve what I am aiming to achieve....

Jadawin12 wrote:I'm not trying to be snarky here, but works and looks good/convincing?

Sorry, not my department. Nothing I model looks good/convincing. I am only the age wiring guy.

D'Lanor wrote:Sorry, not my department. Nothing I model looks good/convincing. I am only the age wiring guy.

You are underestimating yourself - Prad *does* look good . Far better than anything I could produce...