Easy Character Creation Tutorial

[nick.ace]

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share a video tutorial I made! Sorry about the video quality, I'm really bad at making videos, better stick to game development . I hope it's useful!

 

 

Notes:

-In the Lua script for the animated model, you MUST use SetAnimationFrame(), as the model for some reason doesn't automatically animate.

Edited August 20, 2014 by nick.ace

[codeape]

Very informative. Good stuff.

[TattieBoJangle]

Nice Tutorial do you happen to have a script where all i have to do is add the animation frames in like 44-65 ect as i have a load of characters i want to bring over to leadwerks.

[Leon]

thank you.

 

but can make a pdf which explains what d oyou do..since audio is not perfect clear and I'm that are not english motherlanguage cant understand very well all steps..

 

why did you not complete the tutorial importing the character into leadwerks to show the correct workflow??

[nick.ace]

Nice Tutorial do you happen to have a script where all i have to do is add the animation frames in like 44-65 ect as i have a load of characters i want to bring over to leadwerks.

 

What do you mean by this? The tutorial only goes over how to use MakeHuman and CMU animations. I don't think it would work with other characters (maybe I'm wrong though). Combining animations is something that I know how to do only with bvh files, as other file formats become more complicated. If you want to select a certain amount of animation frames, the BVH Hacker tool allows you to do this.

[TattieBoJangle]

Ahh thanks anyway nick .ace i was hoping you had a script for other characters i suck at lua been looking everywhere for a standard character lua with frames

[Haydenmango]

Nice tutorial! I was just starting to use MakeHuman and then I found this, very useful information. BVH hacker tool is great as well!

 

I do have one question though, how do you go about playing your animation in game?

I got my character into leadwerks (gave every material animation shaders) and the animations play inside of the model viewport but when I try to make the animations play in-game my character does nothing. My script is really simple just like this--

 

import "Scripts/AnimationManager.lua"

function Script:Start()

self.animationmanager=AnimationManager:Create(self.entity)

self.animationmanager:SetAnimationSequence(1,.05)

end

 

I am guessing it is some sort of hierarchy issue but I am not sure yet.

My character is wearing jeans and has hair, do I have to do anything special to get that to work correctly?

[nick.ace]

Yeah sorry about that TattieBoJangle, I wish I had one too!

 

Haydenmango, are you setting the animation frame when you update the game? For example, in Lua there is a command called SetAnimationFrame() that you need to use in one of the update loops. I got tripped up by this two the first time I animated because I thought animation was automatic. The argument for SetAnimationFrame() should be a time variable or something like that so that the frame changes (if the argument is a float, then the bone positions interpolate, which is useful as well). Tell me if this works, if it doesn't then I'll see what I did to get it to work that's different from what you did.

 

Also, the clothes shouldn't matter, I got my character to work with a bunch of extra stuff. As long as the materials have an animation shader, it should work fine.

[Haydenmango]

Well I have tried it like that as well with no luck. The model deforms horridly. That is why I think there is some sort of hierarchy issue.

I can animate all my other models with the code I showed above which also throws me off.

 

Ah well I must be doing something wrong somewhere..... hmm when exporting from MakeHuman do you chose the rigify option and/or the rotation limits option?

[nick.ace]

Actually, I don't use either of those two options. Does it animate well in Blender?

[Haydenmango]

Aha! Yeah the animations all work fine up until I try to run it in game.

I will attempt to load up my model again without checking those options and let you know if it works.

 

--edit

After exporting my mesh from MakeHuman without checking the "Export for Rigify" and "Rotation Limits" options I got my model to animate in game!

[nick.ace]

Ok, after talking to Haydenmango, I found that using these export controls cause the animation issues, so don't use them.

[Ma-Shell]

Since at the end of the video you asked how you could include multiple animations into one file:

http://eelstork.deviantart.com/art/Multiple-animations-in-the-same-file-Blender-Tut-321883259

[nick.ace]

Thanks Ma-Shell! I'll have to read that link and see if I can do it with the MakeHuman plugin.

[Haydenmango]

Hey so I was wrong about the AnimationManager not working with the MakeHuman model. I was tired and simply didn't put -

 

function Script:Draw()

self.animationmanager:Update()

end

 

inside of my models script. After placing that in my models script the AnimationManager works fine.

[Kotaros]

ty nick i worked on that seveal test,if you load and retarget bvh with make walk plugin its saved every time the animations as a sequence automaticly without nla strip or action editor if you reload you cant see the animation that you load before

 

you didnt see it in blender but if you import fbx in leadwerks you see them all in the model editor later you can add sequence from same model in model editor

 

the thing is jorn tell in the model turtorial better to have one big sequence import that you can splitt in the model editor in more sequences and renamed self

 

im new in this things and try to figure it more out