Avatar Animations

[Christopher]

Hi,
I have the problem that I only can animate the upper body with the help of the wave emote source from cyan. An other problem is, that it always overwrite the original Wave Emote in Uru, but I can fix this with PRC editing. My question is: How can I animate the whole body?

[Agenotfound]

Wait you're using the Moul version of the wave emote in CC -TPOTS ? or to be more precise Moul's avatar rig ?

if that's the case you're even lucky something worked at all. The avatar's structure changed between CC -TPOTS and Moul meaning the files Cyan gave us are not usable as such in our single player version of the game. The changes are minor in nature but completely break the compatibility with older versions.

So what you can do is either test and use your emote in a Moul compatible environement or you will need to completely re-rig the avatar that Cyan gave us to fit the CC - TPOTS version. I believe Chloe tried to do that some time ago ....

[Mystler]

Well, CC/TPotS is not the problem.They are bugged in a MOUL environment too. The problem seems to be that 3ds Max always exports the animation as "MaleWave"/"FemaleWave" with only the Upper Body and a not changeable animation lenght. I have no idea how to at least change the name or the lenght without editing the PRCs...

~Mystler

[Christopher]

Mystler is right. I can see in the PRC of the animation, that the lower body is not exported. And the moul compatible environment is a minor problem for me.

[GPNMilano]

I'm assuming you guys are doing this in Max, and not by hand. So:

Within max, to change where it exports to, and to change the upper/lower body you need to select the "handle" dummy object. You can change both from here. To change the upper/lower/full body animations you'd select the Plasma Component that's "EmoteAnimation01" and in the max rollout box for it you can change it from "upper body" to "lower" or "full". Then select the pageinfo component and change the page and age it exports to in the drop down box. I'd suggest if you want to export it to Global Animations you'll need to edit the age file within PlasmaShop and add in whatever page name and a new page number for it.

Of course you'll need to animate the rig itself for whatever animation you wish to export.

Male Avatars are more tricky. They are both missing bones and have extra bones then the ones in CC. Without knowing what liscense Cyan wishes to use for the KI and Avatar stuff, I'm reluctant to post a link to the edited MaleWave file that will work with Complete Chronicles.

Also, if you want to export animations that are not emotes, but instead Behavior animations like for door levers and such you can use these to do so, but you'll need to make some adjustments and add a few more things into the files to get them to work.

[Christopher]

I have choosed "full body" in the rolloutbox, but nothing happend. Only the upper body will be exported. It doesn't matter what I choose.

[Mystler]

Yepp, Max exports to the page that you choose. But thats quite it...
If I e.g. export a page called "MaleSimpleAnim" and open it with PrpShop there is the animation component but it's called "MaleWave", uses the same bones as the MaleWave anim and has the same lenght (75 frames). When I test it on my MOUL test-server the animation shows what is exported - the Upper Body. So, It doesn't matter what I do in the max file except changing the animation of working bones...

[GPNMilano]

Yepp, Max exports to the page that you choose. But thats quite it...
If I e.g. export a page called "MaleSimpleAnim" and open it with PrpShop there is the animation component but it's called "MaleWave", uses the same bones as the MaleWave anim and has the same lenght (75 frames). When I test it on my MOUL test-server the animation shows what is exported - the Upper Body. So, It doesn't matter what I do in the max file except changing the animation of working bones...

You need to change the Notetrack in the dope sheet. It's under Bone_Spine0. This is where the name of the animation goes. Don't forget you need to change the track to match both the length of your animation and the name of the animation. So for instance in your example you used MaleSimpleAnim the two notes you'd add in would be where the animation starts (Usually frame 0) with MaleSimpleAnim@start and then the last frame in your animation would also have a note for it called MaleSimpleAnim@end.

Edit: Correction it's Bone_Spine1. Also Christopher, since the Notetrack controls the name of the animation. I'm Guessing it's not going to export the full body because the note track that names the animation is on a lower object in the dopesheet heirarchy. IE All the bones for the lower body are before the Bone_Spine1 object in the heirarchy of bones. So try attaching your note to the handle object in the dopesheet, rather than the spine and that should do the trick.

Edit2: And of course Cyan had to be tricky. With the MaleWave rigging, the Bone the notetrack is on is Bone_Spine1. With the Female it's Bone_Spine0. Just change it to the handle object. It won't hurt it and it'll keep the heirarchy intact so you won't have to go searching for one bone has the one notetrack you'll need. Silly Cyan.

[Christopher]

Thanks, it works. Now the whole Animation is exported. Thank you very much.

[Mystler]

Yaay, that did it! Gosh, why didn't i see that in the notetrack?^^
Anyway, thanks!