The New Face of the Thief - a visual AI overhaul

nemyax on 7/10/2014 at 09:28

Quote Posted by PinkDot

I might throw in some pictures and maybe more details on the issue

Please do.

SeriousToni on 7/10/2014 at 17:57

Good luck with this! Still hoping that this will see the daylight soon together with a nice little tutorial ;D

nemyax on 7/10/2014 at 18:18

SeriousToni
In the meantime, you can use the BVH/MI conversion scripts from DarkUtils: (http://whoopdedo.org/projects.php?dark)

PinkDot on 7/10/2014 at 19:37

Quote Posted by "nemyax"

you can use the BVH/MI conversion scripts from DarkUtils: (http://whoopdedo.org/projects.php?dark)

Have you played with these? Were you able to check the converted result on some rig in Blender against the motion in Thief?

nemyax on 7/10/2014 at 19:48

I haven't, but Olfred has done some stuff. Incidentally, it doesn't have to be Blender; the scripts in question are standalone.

PinkDot on 7/10/2014 at 21:57

Quote Posted by nemyax

I haven't, but Olfred has done some stuff. Incidentally, it doesn't have to be Blender; the scripts in question are standalone.

Thanks, I'll try to contact him and see if he found the motion convertion working correctly.

- - - -
As for the issue I mentioned. Here's the example - a final pose of 'Conv 9' motion (BH114004).
Screengrabs from Yandros' MotTagDemo:
(http://smg.photobucket.com/user/TodKnip/media/Conv9_Thief_endPose_zpsb5ac152e.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/TodKnip/Conv9_Thief_endPose_zpsb5ac152e.jpg

Screengrabs of this motion imported onto my test rig in 3dsmax:
(http://smg.photobucket.com/user/TodKnip/media/Conv9_ArmsRotationIssue_zpsb3be56eb.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/TodKnip/Conv9_ArmsRotationIssue_zpsb3be56eb.jpg
Arms are not bent the same way...

And Motion Editor screengrab:
(http://smg.photobucket.com/user/TodKnip/media/Conv9_ME_endPose_zps9700ad6e.jpg.html)

Inline Image:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v305/TodKnip/Conv9_ME_endPose_zps9700ad6e.jpg
As you can see arms are posed incorrectly here as well....

There's quite a few factors affecting bone rotations: inital axis orientation, rotation center (not always the joint's center!), joint rotation order and convertion maths that needs to be done. Plus I suspect there might be some things going on under the hood in the engine as well. Plus there's one unknown value in the .mi file, which not always is 0, and that also might affect the way motions get interpreted by the engine... It's quite a puzzle if you ask me. Unless I miss something obviously simple...

Any ideas are most welcome!

- - - -
And as a bonus - here's a short sequence of walking motions. Overall it looks good, except for the jerks in between - they occur in the game as well, but I suspect there is some simple blending done by the game engine to smooth it out a bit.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAuewZOPNp4)

LarryG on 8/10/2014 at 01:13

So the problem could be in the import. What does it do if you export it right back? Does it look like it does in 3dsMax (i.e. broken arms) or does it look normal? If it looks broken, then the importer is a real suspect. If it looks normal, then the importer is likely OK, and the emulator is at fault. Make sense?

PinkDot on 8/10/2014 at 07:01

Quote Posted by LarryG

That's exactly what I want to investigate now - exporting is what I'm writing at this moment. Once I have that done, I'll be able to check some test animations i.e. 90 degrees bents of joints, to see what it looks like in the engine. That should give me more insight.

Nameless Voice on 13/10/2014 at 00:58

Three people (that I know of) who have looked into the motion file format are: Weyoun, Shadowspawn, Telliamed.
No idea if any of them are still around any more, but you could try asking them.

Yandros on 15/10/2014 at 11:58

Shadowspawn is still around although has very little free time. But if you just want some information about the file format and other motion stuff, he may be able to help.