[Cobra]

I was thinking about this earlier today, would it be possible to animate the terran pilot dude to different things, like if an enemy ship is in his field of vision his head would follow the ship, or his arm that uses the joystick move around when you move your own joystick, or putting in keystrokes or whatever to make a subspace jump, or the pilot flailing around when his ship goes kablooey.

what do you think?

[StratComm]

The little 50-polygon dude in the cockpit, who has no hands, feet, or bone structure?  Short answer, no.  And no one would want a coder wasting their time doing it either because even if it were implimented you would still never notice.

[Taristin]

actually, if a higher poly one was made, the submodel animation code could probably make the little guy do things... like stand and dance in the Ares, if you really wanted to...


would be a ***** to do though. i'd imagine.

[Mehrpack]

hi,
mhh maybe for ingame cutscene?
with a higher polygon model and commandos for moves and actions.

Mehrpack

[Taristin]

Erm... Not commandoes... no... This would be a triggered animation for the ship only. There would not be any other human models floating around in space...

[Nuke]

i actually thought about this. we still dont have the linked animations, which could be used for control surfaces, thrust nozzels, and working cocpit controls and anything else you can think of thats links a motion a variable. it was planned as part of the animation system but was put on hold whilst scripting was being implemented. but it would be cheasy if done with subobjects. none the less i want the linked animations, mainly simple ones, for animated cockpit controls.

[Mehrpack]

Erm... Not commandoes... no... This would be a triggered animation for the ship only. There would not be any other human models floating around in space...

hi,
i hope i read this right.
i dont mean that you can say ingame to your wingmen: wave the vasudan.
but maybe in cutscene if the camera zoom in, show the cockpit and the pilot, in the script for the scene are event with movments for the pilot, so that he wave the vasudan pilot for help, maybe.

in the game i think complett animated pilots in each fighter with enough polygones, thats are overhead.
and in 95% of the time you dont see that, because you have no time to watch.
but i believe for cutscene that will lock nice and for the scene will give more quality.

the next step is than, imho, to build any bridges of the captital ships for cuts.
but i believe thats a lot more work.

Mehrpack

[Black Wolf]

It might be possible to redesign the pilot model so that he was a turret, the body being the base, and the head being the arm, so that his vision might follow the current target, but you'd likely get exorcist moments far too often.

[Nuke]

i wonder if theres some kind of skelital animation system that could be implemented into the engine fairly easy. probibly also come with a new model format. aside from making bioships, pilots, and more complex vwep animations, it could be used for a 3d interface or in cutscenes. the skelital system could be integrated with the scripting system. it shouldnt be too hard if the models are for show only. as you wouldnt need to worry about collision detection and such. it would be cool to have a bridge simulator, you can freely walk around the bridge as captain, manimulate control panels to control various aspects of the warship and watch the battle through the windows, it would be pretty cool.

[Skippy]

Or use that instead of the persona ani thing on the top left of the screen?

[Nuke]

if implimented you could do that as the hud wil be scriptable.

is there an open source skelital model format that could be implemented fairly easy?

[StratComm]

Nuke, you do realize the sheer magnitude of what you are suggesting right?  FS2 supports nothing resembling skeletal animation and adding it would involve coding up a completely new model format just to contain the grouping information necessary.  We're talking something on the order of Geomod here.  Plus, there's a lot of inherent DS syndrome in that request, as all of the uses for such a system would not be about fighter combat.  The game is about fighter combat, and it should, IMHO, be kept that way.  Otherwise you wind up with a jack-of-all-trades, master of none.

[Nuke]

you misunderstand. the skelital system is not for turning freespace int an fps game but rather for doing characters and stuff for interface purposes. sorta like what you find in freelancer. of work yes, thats why i suggested using some opensource format that already has loading code, a bone interface, and conversion tools already. youd just need to interface it with rendering system and the scripting system, and leave the rest up to modders. thing is we can think up of of things to do with this. but implementing any feature request is of course up to the coders.

[WMCoolmon]

Characters would be useful for cutscenes and whatnot. Very useful.

[Taristin]

Characters would be useful for cutscenes and whatnot. Very useful.

*smack*

Feature creep! Feature Creep!

[Flaser]

A skeleton system would be generally good for any in-game animation too.

[Cobra]

yeah, it would look great with the show-ship flag, too.

[Mehrpack]

*smack*

Feature creep! Feature Creep!

hi,
sure more features, more possible bugs, more work, more errors.
but thats evolution, imho.

this engine isnt death.
so why not, that we think or suggest to add new features.
no one have say: in the next 6 months, but anywhere in the future.

look at microsoft and internet explorer.
they have a long time say its good enaugh and all was cancel without bugfixing, but now they have a big piece of work for the new version and have many trends and feature oversleep.

and i think a new animation system is one of the next great logical steps.
maybe im wrong, maybe not.

Mehrpack