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Pitty Projects; Remaking the Carno!
Topic Started: Jul 19 2017, 11:13 PM (5,319 Views)
Paleodude
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ex-Krampus

While it's very impressive with what you've shown so far there are a few anatomical errors with the Carnotaurus.

- Toe claws seem a bit big for Carnotaurus and seem to lack the curve and point typical of all Theropods as seen here: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/landbeforetime/images/6/69/Carnotaurus.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160610180925

- The feet themselves look a bit chunky for a Carnotaurus as close relatives show strangely gracile feet structures.

-The ears seem too large for theropods as the actual hole in the skull wasn't all that big.

- The skin seems to lack the osteoderms present on skin impressions we have of Carnotaurus.
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babehunter1324
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Well Andrea Cau made a post over a year ago in which he questioned the nature of Carnotaurus "osteoderms".

http://theropoda.blogspot.com.es/2016/03/miti-e-leggende-post-moderne-sui.html?m=1
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Paleodude
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ex-Krampus

babehunter1324
Jul 25 2017, 05:24 AM
Well Andrea Cau made a post over a year ago in which he questioned the nature of Carnotaurus "osteoderms".

http://theropoda.blogspot.com.es/2016/03/miti-e-leggende-post-moderne-sui.html?m=1
Thank you, wasn't aware of this but I'm glad I do now.
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laelamcpitty
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Paleodude
Jul 24 2017, 11:22 PM
While it's very impressive with what you've shown so far there are a few anatomical errors with the Carnotaurus.

- Toe claws seem a bit big for Carnotaurus and seem to lack the curve and point typical of all Theropods as seen here: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net/landbeforetime/images/6/69/Carnotaurus.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20160610180925

- The feet themselves look a bit chunky for a Carnotaurus as close relatives show strangely gracile feet structures.

-The ears seem too large for theropods as the actual hole in the skull wasn't all that big.

- The skin seems to lack the osteoderms present on skin impressions we have of Carnotaurus.
I may edit the anatomy at some point, but at this point in time I'm just trying to get the hang of things! :-) I really appreciate that though - when I get to a point where I am comfortable with all other aspects of the creation I may go back and edit the mesh. :yes: The current textures I have though do have some osteoderms! :)

At this point, I've been animating for a few days, and I'm at a bit of a cross roads. Should I be exporting each animation as I complete it, or wait until they are all done? Should I have exported the .bfb before animating? I'm having a few errors when trying to export from Blender. (the model will export as .bfb BUT it's armature will not be the same as before, skewing its movements... and the animations just won't export at all, due to an error saying it cannot find a certain file.
Being a SUPER beginner I'm beginning to worry all of my animations and work (besides the base mesh and textures) will be for naught because I may have to restart, due to errors made on my own part. I've been reading tutorials like crazy, but alot of them are for old versions of Blender, so I'm unsure if they are the proper way or not. I'm still determined on this project though! I just hope I can figure something out - I may start over with the model and make a new armature for the time being, since I've learned alot just from my experience now.
Any help/links/advice would be awesome. At this point I just want to see this guy move on his own, haha! (x
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HENDRIX
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-retired-

Generally it is wise to complete a super basic animation set consisting of all the walking and some standing animations plus their transitions. Then you see if it can move and dock. What error do you get on bf export? Do you have the latest scripts version?

The armature should not change significantly from the exporting process, except that the reimported result will lack all constraints and thus won't work with your raw, constrained anims.

Unfortunately I never got around to fully documenting the exporting workflow for the new blender, but generally it is much more straightforward than the old one. You can mail me your blend file if you like so I can take a look.
Edited by HENDRIX, Jul 28 2017, 02:57 AM.
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laelamcpitty
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HENDRIX
Jul 28 2017, 02:53 AM
Generally it is wise to complete a super basic animation set consisting of all the walking and some standing animations plus their transitions. Then you see if it can move and dock. What error do you get on bf export? Do you have the latest scripts version?

The armature should not change significantly from the exporting process, except that the reimported result will lack all constraints and thus won't work with your raw, constrained anims.

Unfortunately I never got around to fully documenting the exporting workflow for the new blender, but generally it is much more straightforward than the old one. You can mail me your blend file if you like so I can take a look.
Alrighty, I'll go with that then. I decided to completely restart on the animation process; I had made alot of bone/rigging mistakes that would prove to be a huge problem later on. So I went ahead and also added new bones (toes and eyelids) to make it more in depth. Restarting has proven me VERY well because I can export the model without fuss now, and animations as well! Hurray! :yes:

My only issue it seems, is that the animation I exported works (when re-imported in in another Blender window, along with the .bfb model), but some of the bones don't move accurately. The legs and feet move perfectly... except for the right foot. It kind of slides, even though the original animation (constraints applied) steps perfectly. I thought it may just be from the lack of constraints, but the opposite leg in the baked animation steps the same in the original. The tail swinging also doesn't change from the first frame, staying in the right position. (The tail has no constraints). Any idea what could cause this? I feel like its something extremely simple and I'm just overlooking it in all honestly, lmao
If you would still like me to link you the current Blender file, I can post it in my drive and link it here. :) I really appreciate the patience! :worship:
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HENDRIX
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-retired-

Take the bf import with a grain of salt. It gets rotations right but translations will induce errors. Look at the gorilla anims to see extreme errors of this sort. In most cases you should not need translations for realistic animations - in fact I only use translations for bip01, pelvis and animated attachment nodes.
Also it might be due to a rounding error on import that I just now fixed, so re-download the scripts too.
Just send the current version over, I will check it out and see if everything is fine with the rig and stuff.
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laelamcpitty
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HENDRIX
Jul 28 2017, 05:02 PM
Take the bf import with a grain of salt. It gets rotations right but translations will induce errors. Look at the gorilla anims to see extreme errors of this sort. In most cases you should not need translations for realistic animations - in fact I only use translations for bip01, pelvis and animated attachment nodes.
Also it might be due to a rounding error on import that I just now fixed, so re-download the scripts too.
Just send the current version over, I will check it out and see if everything is fine with the rig and stuff.
I can't say thank you enough Hendrix! I'll send you the .blend file link via message. :-)

EDIT: I can't send messages for some reason, any other way for me to send it?
EDIT 2: I sent the email through your profile! :)
Edited by laelamcpitty, Jul 28 2017, 07:14 PM.
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laelamcpitty
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Hello everyone! A quick update - I've still been hard at work on animating, and I can officially say that I have gotten the hang of it! I'm still working on the base animations so that I can begin testing in game, (over 30 animations completed and exported!)
I still have some things I must restart from the previous version, if you're curious you can read below.

Spoiler: click to toggle

Of course this is not my To Do List (too large to put into words at the moment!), but once the animations are done for this project, it will be a breeze to complete the rest; this is just taking the most time for me.

Also, if anyone has any idea for realistic variants from modern day reptiles or close relatives that I could include in my Carnotaurus variants, I'd love some suggestions! I'm looking toward having 5 total variants (1 separate for each gender; i.e. male variant 01 will not be as bright as female variant 01, ect), not including rare melanistic and albino skins, but if I see possible, I may add more! Either comment below or send me a PM with suggestions, your choice! I'd greatly appreciate!

And, as usual, here are some quick previews, this time of some variant concepts variants!

Spoiler: click to toggle

I hope you all have a marvelous week! I hope to update again soon! :)
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Anthracite
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Oh my lord this is so cute! I love it :adowable:
Edited by Anthracite, Aug 11 2017, 07:45 PM.
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Posted Image Viggen
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The green skin seems a little bit too saturated, perhaps more of an olive green would look more natural?
I would also recommend a finer texture, as the large scales make it seem a little cartoonish. A simple fix could be to add a small bit of noise to make them appear more detailed.
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laelamcpitty
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Viggen
Aug 13 2017, 06:40 PM
The green skin seems a little bit too saturated, perhaps more of an olive green would look more natural?
I would also recommend a finer texture, as the large scales make it seem a little cartoonish. A simple fix could be to add a small bit of noise to make them appear more detailed.
I actually thought the same to be quite honest, but I wasn't sure if it was just me or not - I'm glad to hear from someone else. So I'll definitely dull it down quite a bit. I haven't textured anything like this before, so I may go through and just better detail it now that I've gotten comfortable with it all! Honestly thinking about editing the model to show a more realistic version as well, especially the toes, I've gotten comments about those.
Thank you so much for the comment! Other input definitely helps! <3


As far as my work on the whole project, its come to an abrupt halt, because of a docking issue. The Carno works fine in game for the most part, but when it needs to dock to an item, it (usually) turns the opposite direction, and walks in place. (I say usually, because it always turns 180, like it either ignores the 90 degree turn, or it thinks its facing the wrong way?) If it happens to be close to the object, it will slide into position, and then not commence in any action - usually just stands or decides to do something else entirely.

I've read HENDRIX's common pitfalls in animating, and saw that this was a common issue, so I went and looked at the original Carnotaurus's bipNonAccum orientation and implemented it to my Carno, but this still hasn't fixed the issue. I checked coding, but I don't think its a coding issue... (Though I could be wrong).
I've also oriented the Floor Node and Front Node to be the same as the OG Carno, but it still keeps on doing this error. I do not want to continue animating and working on it until I solve this bug, but I've exhausted all of my ideas and searched for many hours for a solution.
Does anyone have any kind of information that could possibly help? Anything else I could try? Thanks so much for any input, I'm trying not to lose hope on this project. xD

(To clarify, I've oriented the Bip01nonaccum bone to the same parameters of the OG Carno, as well as Bip01 just to be sure. I've also oriented the Floor, Footsteps, and Front Node to the same parameters. This was all done for the .bfb and later for the .bf, to fix animation breakage. I feel like there has to be some other bone that needs to be changed, because the model behaves like it doesn't understand its direction. I've scoured the .xml, changed the anklerotlocation to the according feet, ect. The Carno xml doesn't have bicycle points or anything.)

I hope you all have a wonderful week, and best of luck on all of your projects as well! :)
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HENDRIX
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-retired-

I can check it out but only in early September. Did you get the email I sent you a while ago?

If it doesn't like to use the correct turn anims, it might be the anim names' fault. But at some point we noticed that randomly changing the animation duration fixed this issue in some cases.
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laelamcpitty
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HENDRIX
Aug 21 2017, 04:38 AM
I can check it out but only in early September. Did you get the email I sent you a while ago?

If it doesn't like to use the correct turn anims, it might be the anim names' fault. But at some point we noticed that randomly changing the animation duration fixed this issue in some cases.
That's fine Hendrix, I know you're a busy dude! I've been checking my email and never got it, I thought that you just had other things to attend too. x) Maybe I misspelled my email? I'll look through my spam folders just to be sure!

I'll try to work with the animation durations then. If all else fails, I may just hook up my mesh to the OG Carno armature and edit slightly to where I see fit, THEN make some new anims for the creature. I've already learned so much from this project, regardless of the amount of times I've had to start over. I've learned alot surprisingly through trial and error. But each time I do, the creature gets better, and thats all I hope to do is provide a wonderful download for everyone. :$

On another note, I've actually remeshed the feet to my best ability, as recommended by Paleodude, and added new alpha channels to bring osteoderms and spines to the model. I've also taken out the teeth, and replaced it too with an alpha channel like the original ZT2 animals, to try to save on faces and vertices.
And of course with a new mesh edit, I have to make a new texture - so I'm taking advantage of that and hand drawing all of the details, to try to make it look less cartoony, as pointed out by Viggen.
I'll try to get around posting an update on the edits, but I'll only do so once I've completed it. :)
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HENDRIX
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I don't have access to my sent mails from here, but I had a couple of points. Mostly about the naming of bones and some more I forgot about by now haha. I think you found and fixed some of these issues on your own already.
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