Does Doom3 support inverse Kinematic for ANimation?!

Beschreibung:

FK = Forward Kinematics
IK = Inverse Kinematics

The terms are used for animating the bones of a character.
Suppose we have a character standing and we need to lift his left foot as if there was something scary under his foot.
Since the skeleton maintains a heirarchy:-

With forward kinematics method, we have to first rotate the left thigh bone, then accordingly the lower leg bone, then accordingly the left foot bone, and lastly accordingly the left toe bone to put the complete leg in the desired position.

With inverse kinematics method, we first have to setup the whole skeleton so it supports Inverse Kinematics. In this method we also create some null objects which are the key parts for displacement, like the pelvis, the left foot and the toe null. Now to achieve the desired position, we just have to move the left foot null at the desired position which makes the left thigh bone and the left lower leg bone rotate accordingly to the desired position. Now to fine tune the position of the toe, we have to move the Left toe null object at the desired position to finish off the posing. Though most of the games dont support Inverse Kinematics. But things are changing these days.

Speaking of Doom3. Plz ask somebody who knows if it really supports IK.

Can somebody help me..?!

If you wanted to animate a character for Doom3 using Max or Maya or whatever, yes go ahead and setup any IK controls you want. The IK does not get exported to Doom though. Doom uses an IK system though in the game to place a character's feet on the ground. The IK does not get setup by you though, it's coded in and all you do is spesify which bone represent which body part and stuff like that. It's still your animation being played back but the IK will make sure the feet are on the ground even walking down steps or slopes or whatever.

I'm not too sure what you want to accomplish by knowing if the engine supports IK or not but it does for the sake of keeping feet on the ground.

You'll have to poke around the SDK to get IK in Doom 3 to work for more than keeping your feet on the ground. But I assume it's possible.

OK I guess Legion couldn't make you understand the question properly(like I dont understand his German stuff

). Anyways ........ I'm also working in his team. What the question really was that "Can the animator rig up the usual skeletons with IK to ease production time?" Another question is that "If the above can be done, will it work perfectly in-game?"

------- Satan.

satan wrote:

OK I guess Legion couldn't make you understand the question properly(like I dont understand his German stuff

). Anyways ........ I'm also working in his team. What the question really was that "Can the animator rig up the usual skeletons with IK to ease production time?" Another question is that "If the above can be done, will it work perfectly in-game?"

------- Satan.

Yes, It could be done!

I don't know anything about modelling but does this help:
http://www.iddevnet.com/doom3/walkik.php

satan wrote:

OK I guess Legion couldn't make you understand the question properly(like I dont understand his German stuff

). Anyways ........ I'm also working in his team. What the question really was that "Can the animator rig up the usual skeletons with IK to ease production time?" Another question is that "If the above can be done, will it work perfectly in-game?"

------- Satan.

I don't know if you're using Max or Maya but either way, you can use any tool available in the 3D software as long as you don't mess with your bone links. You can use IK, Constraints and whatever else you can think of to make your animation as easy and effortless as possible. None of that stuff gets exported, only the position and rotation of the bones skinned to your mesh.

What you do to make the bones move in the 3d app is totally irrelevant, keyframe it, frame by frame animate, motion capture, IK, whateer you want, it doesn't matter as long as the bones move

.

WooHoo ........ thanks a lot guys. Thats a really good news for our team. Once again thanx to all of you for the help.

------- Satan.

Anything goes. I've been importing and exporting mine form motion builder to do some of the animations.
It's a real pain in the ass about no vertex animation suport though, I'd love to get some realistic looking cloth animations in there as well.

oDDity wrote:

Anything goes. I've been importing and exporting mine form motion builder to do some of the animations.
It's a real pain in the ass about no vertex animation suport though, I'd love to get some realistic looking cloth animations in there as well.

I've written an exporter that works for ANY method of animations applied to a mesh for 3dsmax:
viewtopic.php?p=60558#60558
I have updated the code so here's the new version:
http://home.mnet-online.de/der/general_md5export.rar
Something like this is possible for any 3d package where you can write an exporter.

That's news to me. It's a pity I don't use Max.
So you can use a cloth simulation plugin on a piece of geometry and then export it to doom as a total invertebrate?
You wouldn't consider wrting one for Maya would you? I'm sure mel script isn't much different from what you know already, but then I couldn't write a program that would print 'hello world', so what would I know about it.

Yes, animated cloth would be possible with this exporter.
All you can do in MD5 is skeletal animation. So the exporter's magic is in the fact that it generates a bone for each animated vertex in the mesh, to give every vertex total flexibility. So you'll potentially end up with lots of bones in the mesh but I think D3 can handle that pretty well.

I don't think I'll write this for Maya, but someone else might. It's actually simpler than a 'real' skeletal animation exporter that needs to work with the skeletal system in the 3d-app.

im surprized this hasn't been written for gmax, or maya for that matter

There is a vertex exporter for maya written by parsonsbear . I've used it to export morphed lip sync animations to doom.

well thats good

now if they make one for gmax i would be realy happy i was thinking of making a water plane and exporting it with this exporter but i dont own 3dsmax so

der_ton: I have a request to have the GENERAL exporter create bones per vertex and link those bones to a BoneHead, and BoneHead is linked to neckcontrol, which gets linked to a 0,0,0 origin bone. Would you be able to make this happen?

The download link for der_ton's general md5 exporter is *edit: was* broken.

der_ton wrote:

I've written an exporter that works for ANY method of animations applied to a mesh for 3dsmax:
viewtopic.php?p=60558#60558
I have updated the code so here's the new version:
http://home.mnet-online.de/der/general_md5export.rar
Something like this is possible for any 3d package where you can write an exporter.

der_ton if it matters at this late date, I experienced this a long time ago with the GENERAL EXPORTER and now it's here again...

ORIGINAL VERSION WORKS FLAWLESSLY EVERYTIME

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/general_md5export.zip

UPDATED VERSION CRASHES WITH MATID ERROR

http://home.mnet-online.de/der/general_md5export.rar

This has happened with Max 7, 8, 9, and 2008.

If you want a screenshot of the error, let me know. Again, this may be of little to no concern nowadays.

If that's the same error that i had by past, it just a matter of wrong mat id applied in the mesh, i already spoke about it, don't remember where...

Let's say you made a beautifulll green-white-yellow flower, you made a multimaterial with slot 1=green, slot 2=white and slot 3=yellow.
Max automaticly make a loop with material slots numbers, so if one part of the so beautifull flower point to material id 4, it will be? ...green.

The der_ton's exporter don't loop the mat ids, so it look for an id 4 material that doesn't exist, and tell you that it doesn't exist.

Just edit your mesh/poly and select by material id, then search for mat 1+2+3, if you see that some triangles are not selected, just select one of these to see what is its material id, then select all the triangles with this material id, and then apply the good one on it (in this exemple, select the mat4's triangles and apply mat1 on them).

It can be something else, but give it a look.