Friday, February 22, 2008

Ramblings: Friday Morning

Oh god.. i did NOT want to wake up this morning.

Anyways enough about me, So i grabbed an importer and imported the Betruger head from Doom 3. And just.. wow. Now THAT is an importer. The Mesh is perfect, the bones are named properly, the joints are placed perfectly, and whats more awesome than that? The WEIGHTS are proper.

Ok so understandably, i dont have the rigs that Id used to animate the faces or characters as ive had to import the MD5mesh's. But they used an insanely traditional means of animating the faces: No blend shapes, no weird scripting to place nulls and weights, no advanced strange controls only found in game. Nope. Just pure Joints and Weights. So this was rather encouraging to actually: Learn how to rig a faec. And thats what im in the process of doing. THIS is something im fully willing to do.


First of all, both of these are FRESH imports of their RAW reference exported format. On the left is Betruger from Doom3, on the right is Berney (believe it or not)
With Betruger, right from the import, i am able to move the joints around and create a facial expression (quick 5 second one purely done for example, i know theres flaws :p)
On the right with Barney: Notice there IS no facial controls?! I had to wireframe it to prove it, also notice NO JOINTS?! They are NULLS. If you try to move one of them, the mesh stratches instead of staying contrained, making animating a complete joke and nightmare.
Also notice with barney that weird thing goiing on: Yeah i turned his neck join about 20 degrees to the left.
Thats it.
This reference SMD actually requires me, to pretty much redo everything juust to get a custom sequence in there (as your REQUIRED to RECOMPILE the reference SMD to add another sequence) and thats NOT what im up for.
The doom3 side wins, its lip synch system may not be as phonetic, but at least it sets me miles ahead in ambition than the Source Engine does.

To understand what im getting at, check out the video for Thursday right below this post. Everything should become clear!

and now for something new:

The Danceoff Edition!
On occasion i have been known to surf youtube for various reasons. So i thought id pick out a few every now and then that seem to standout in my mind. Todays theme seems to be around dancing, so lets get to it:

The Yes! Dance [Warning: If your even slightly homophobic, you may hate this]
Lets do the fork in the Garbage Disposal! My god these guys are HILARIOUS.
Beetlejuice's Interpretive Dance!
I dont know HOW dead men dance, but he works it HARD! BJ does a mean robot and epic pelvic thrusts. Who knew? Beetlejuice Beetlejuice Beetlejuice!
The Blue Fox Group [Warning: if your even slightly furryphobic, you may hate this]
Obvious parody of the BlueMan Group. I laughed throughout the duration of this one, something about a bunch of dudes in blue fox costumes, rapping, is just downright hilarious, and ballsy. Songs kinda catchy too.


'Till next time!

-K

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