The New Face of the Thief - a visual AI overhaul

PinkDot on 19/11/2014 at 17:03

Quote Posted by nemyax

What's the maximum possible duration of a motion? Can you use a long motion as a kind of single-character scripted sequence?

I'm not sure actually - I haven't done any test yet. Hope we can go for thousands of frames. 1800 is a minute of animation. So far I've seen original motions having 600-700 frames or so.

With a few minutes animation you can repeat it as if it was a rehearsal of some scene, played multiple times. This will ensure some life is happening on the stage for a long while... Might be a good idea for a mission.

Not sure however how they would react to any player interaction (blasting off a fire arrow, for instance). I never dared to stop a conversation while playing Thief....

nemyax on 19/11/2014 at 17:21

Quote Posted by PinkDot

I'm not sure actually - I haven't done any test yet.

Is there any struct field whose data type's upper bound might be a clue?

PinkDot on 19/11/2014 at 17:44

Quote Posted by nemyax

Is there any struct field whose data type's upper bound might be a clue?

AFAIR frame count is a float value...

FireMage on 19/11/2014 at 18:03

@Pinkdot: To convert the bvh to _mc and mi. What is the difference between Humanoïd and Human with Sword?

Because I have converted my motion for my spearman and get a animation completely different from what Blender has shown... And not only for the arms, the torso, the global rotation, the knees... Everything was different... I think that is due to the convertion, but I'm not sure... Could you unlit me on this point? ^^

How to do to add trigger with a 3D software such as the footstep sounds etc?

@Global
As for climbing and jumping, the animation can have a motion going up, or down... You can not because at each frame, the character will be attracted by the gravity, so, the oly way to make it work will be a complex drometic system... ^^' alas... And the factor that will make AI able to use these motion and effect, can be only something hardcoded from the Exe... Excepted if someone can make an osm file.... But I'm not even sure that osm will make AI able to do that ^^

But yeah, we can do many and many things about it ^^

PinkDot on 19/11/2014 at 18:23

Quote Posted by FireMage

I don't know what's the difference. I think they're pretty much compatible. I'm going to investigate this more.
The reason you get things twisted might be the axes orientation. I know that in order to get the BVH looking right in Blender I had to specify directions for the Y and Z. Can't remember it now.
Olfred is a guy who managed to get motions in and out using BVH and Blender, so maybe ask him.

I tried messing around with BVH, but did not succeed to load them onto a biped in 3dsmax. I might write a support for BVH in the future, but that might be tricky, since files coming from different sources will have different hierarchy and rotation order etc...

Quote Posted by FireMage

How to do to add trigger with a 3D software such as the footstep sounds etc?

You need to set flags. That's a thing specific to dark engine's .MI format, so no software can do it by default. They're not in the BVH format anyway.
For the moment you have three options:
1) modify the .MI file manually in the HEX editor (let me know if you need more detail)
2) modify the .MI file using Weyoun's Motion Editor
3) modify the .MI file using Dromed's motion editor. I never actually used that - I just read somewhere that you can set flags with this editor.

...or wait until my tools are finished :) (but don't ask me when...)

FireMage on 19/11/2014 at 18:36

Alright! Thank you! ^^

for flags I use Motion Workshop, but it can work only with biped... And if for spider motion, everything is okay.. Biped are a bit messy ^^'

Sooo... I'll ask him if I got time! ;)

About flags, because it can help anyway for non-biped motion.
I just need to know what value correspond to flags! ^^ And the adress to look for! :) I can help myself for the rest!
(For exemple: If for a corpse falling sound I have to replace a FF to A0 etc) ^^

More test needed! x)

PinkDot on 19/11/2014 at 20:05

Quote Posted by FireMage

To edit flags in Hex editor, open an .MI file and:
1) Change number of flags in address 68h (=104 decimal) [integer]
2) For every flag just add a pair of integers at the end of the file:
[INDENT]a) Frame numer [integer][/INDENT]
[INDENT]b) Flag Type [integer][/INDENT]

Flag Types are as follows:

Code:

Standing = 1
LeftFootfall = 2
RightFootfall = 4
LeftFootUp = 8
RightFootUp = 16
FireRelease = 32
CanInterrupt = 64
StartMotionHere = 128
EndMotionHere = 256
BlankTag1 = 512
BlankTag2 = 1024
BlankTag3 = 2048
Trigger1 = 4096
Trigger2 = 8192
Trigger3 = 16384
Trigger4 = 32768
Trigger5 = 65536
Trigger6 = 131072
Trigger7 = 262144
Trigger8 = 524288

So add them together if you want to combine more than one flag.

R Soul on 19/11/2014 at 23:43

Trigger 5: Collapse on floor

Trigger 7: Draw back bow - start
Trigger 8: Draw back bow - end

PinkDot on 21/11/2014 at 22:26

Quote Posted by R Soul

Trigger 5: Collapse on floor

Trigger 7: Draw back bow - start
Trigger 8: Draw back bow - end

Thanks R Soul - didn't know that.
Do you know the meaning of the remaining triggers?

R Soul on 21/11/2014 at 22:33

No, but I worked those out by viewing the motion in Weyoun's editor, with the 'interactive' option set, and noticing the checkboxes changing state. Another way of finding triggers is to search the sound schema files for the word 'motion', which finds 'Event Motion' tags, and then you can search the motion schema files for related motions.

E.g. Mischsfx.sch has:
//SWING LEFT
schema sw_left
archetype PLYR_WEAPON...

I then found a motion name if PlayerSword.mos (ph212203) and loaded it in the motion editor.

Trigger 2 gets selected for one frame. The motion doesn't play so it will have to be imported into 3dSmax or Blender (Telliamed wrote a import script) to see what the motion really is.