Animation conversion problem

[foxunitone]

Hello all. I have been experimenting with converting animations from Vice City to San Andreas. I use 3DS MAX 2011. Here are the exact steps I am taking.

 

Open 3dsmax and use kam's IFP I/O.

select a random SA ped to load.

select the whole ped.

Load the VC ped.ifp

select the animation walk_player

apply animation

The ped changes its position based on this.

Now I can press play and the ped performs the animation of Tommy's walk style. I see no problems.

I press the button that says set keys. I uncheck the one that says position.

Now I load the SA peds.ifp

I scroll down to walk_player and click it.

I click the button REPLACE.

After a few seconds, max seems to be finished.

I exit max and run my 'testing rig' install of SA.

The player now has Tommy's walk but the waist and jaw deform horribly when walking. Model seams to squish down or turtle while walking as well. I know there is a step I am missing.

Anyone have any ideas?

 

 

-Fox

[ceedj]

I've heard that bone assignments from VC to SA are different, which may be what you're seeing. One thing you might try is to use IFP Dump on both animations (one at a time), paste them into two notepad files and see what the assignments are. You may or may not be able to change this, then re-binary the txt using T2B from Kam's GMax tools. Check goin-god's tut on this in the tutorial section.

 

Just an idea, I have NO idea if this will work or not...

 

EDIT: No worries fish, sound advice there (below) as well.

Edited June 17, 2011 by ceedj

[fishfinger]

I can't exactely tell you what's going wrong but i'm currently testing some modication/replace in gta sa ifp ( on the walk_player inter alia )

and i notice that unused bones ( no frame key ) bug in game after export and re-import with 3Dmax .

For an example if i export the original player_walk , without any modification , and re-import and replace the same anim , it makes the jaw of cj bug in game (not in 3Dmax).

I don't know how anims for mouth and other special bone (like breast , jaw , eyebrown , belly ) works in gta.exe but i tentatively fix it by adding keys for all unused bones bugingame .

It seem to work but i didn't properly test it , depend on the rigging of the model.dff .

 

Anyway , just to say that your mouth problem is not necessarily a problem of conversion between VC and SA .

 

An other thing is walking and run anims function , with all 4 or 3 speed .

I'm not sure , but the different walk and run speed seem to be mixed together to get a smooth transition .

For an example , when you walk , first there is walk_start , after walk_player , a mix beetween walk_player and run_player , run_player , then run_player and sprint_civi quickly mix and finally sprint_civi .

All that to say if yours foot step of you new animation aren't basiclly the same ( like left foot first .. ) of the anim comming next , it will probably messing around due to the transition .

( i remember 2 years ago testing anim of the walk_player in gta VC and i've got a lots of problems with step order and thing like this ( damn walk start ) )

 

 

I press the button that says set keys. I uncheck the one that says position.

 

hummm ... i 'm not sure to understand why did you do this .

 

One more thing , check if bones of VC and SA are the same , animation in gtavc seem to be very different of sa .

And try with a model of Tommy Vercetti rig for sa because he has a very peculiar walkstyle .

 

sorry for my english and 'hope you understand but like i was saying , i'm just on it and don't know if all i say is true , it's just my personal conclusions .

 

[edit] oups , don't see ceedj previous post . Anyway , its didn't discredit my advices .

Edited June 17, 2011 by fishfinger

[foxunitone]

Thank you both. I will try these ideas and see what I can come up with. Also a note, if I use skin changer to play as any model other than CJ, this problem is not there. Seems to be a problem that affects just the CJ player model.

 

 

-Fox

[ceedj]

 

Thank you both. I will try these ideas and see what I can come up with. Also a note, if I use skin changer to play as any model other than CJ, this problem is not there. Seems to be a problem that affects just the CJ player model.

 

 

-Fox

That's interesting. While the player.dff in SA has a root bone like all other actors, it also has an additional bone called Normal. Maybe this is where things are getting fluxed?

[kyddos]

Edit: Found the fix already

Edited July 3, 2011 by kyddos

[smallcombe]

Yes I know it has almost been a year since last post - Saturday, Jul 2 2011, 17:49

 

But I believe I know the problem and the solution and it could help other people in the future.

 

the reason why your getting errors is because vc does not use a mouth or belly bone in there skeleton. so when you apply the vc or gta 3 animation to a SA skeleton those 2 bones will not have animation and deform. Make sure you select the mouth and the belly bone and add a key frame to the start and the end of the animation. This should keep the model verts in the right spot in game, although not sure why it only effects cj model and no others I thought they all used the same rigg, anyways add those key frames to those bones and it should be fine