hello community, I’ve recently been trying to convert my limited animator knowledge from SecondLife to Arma 3. I downloaded Blender to work on SL, but other smaller programs fulfilled my needs so I didn’t learn it very thoroughly, so now I’m in a bit over my head.
I have some previously created BVH animations utilizing IPI (but the license is expired, I’m trying to get Brekel working but having driver issues… that’s it’s own situation) unfortunately that program utilized one skeleton and the one I’m using for Arma 3 has more bones. I’ve tried using Benjycook’s tutorials to retarget my older animations to the arma 3 skeleton, but it ends up way out of wack and unfortunately my knowledge is too limited to get done what I wish to get done.
Anyone willing to help me out I will happily credit for their efforts, I have Skype and Teamspeak and just contact me for contact info. attached is a short vid showing you sort of the problems I’m looking at (also displaying my rather remedial knowledge of blender basics)
Okay, a little update, thanks to Batfinger (the info was helpful, even if I didn’t directly apply it, all knowledge is power)
Super big thanks for 28selves for taking the time on skype to walk me through all of this! sorry my knowledge is remedial but you’ve taught me SO much!
Okay, first off this is the original armature I downloaded to work on, and given my experiences it should suit the task appropriately. it matches up in the secondary software (Oxygen, Arma tool suite)
Okay, that’s good. Created a Mocap animation utilizing IPI Recorder and studio. I started my journey using an older second life BVH, that being said the data was still raw enough that all that had been done was initial recording and some cleaning in either BVHacker or Qavimator (I forget now which one) it was ready to go for imediate import into blender. this is how the animation looked (note the difference between the animation’s amount of bones vs Arma 3 bones
no matter what I tried I couldn’t concur this seemingly easy to use addon. that’s when I sought help from this awesome community. 28selves showed me that he had attempted a similar workflow to roughly the same results (I believe he said it was for a zombie animation) so he advised that I use the constrain bone feature and manually map my Arma 3 armature to the BVH imported animation
Animation matches, plays smoothly, and 28selves was nice enough to show me the dopesheet and NLA workflow I needed to go through to properly bake my animation to the armature. a little finnessing later and we bake the final result, and end up with a gorgeously dancing armature (Yay!)
So that’s as far as we’ve taken it thus far. these steps all appear to work correctly and the mocap data as well as Blender seem to be fulfilling their end of the bargain beautifully. I do love blender, something about the UI seems to stick with me and once I’ve learned something I have little if any trouble recalling it, whereas other programs I’ll often need to re-consult tutorials.
That being said, exporting into the final design software, Oxygen, had some unintended side effects.
Massive rotation of the thigh and bicep bones resulted in strange twisting of the final model.
The workflow for this is
Import animation(.BVH)
Right click keyframe box
click export matrices
save that file wherever as a .RTM file
select a new Oxygen window and bring up your Arma 3 example skeleton (one without an animation)
right click animation box and select from matrices (all LOD’s) (in this example there’s only one LOD initially anyway, for a more complicated model this would likely be different) and select your .RTM file
This should map the RTM onto the skeleton you imported. clicking through the keyframes should show the varying levels of the animation, unfortunately for me I ended up with quite a bad twist in the biceps and the thighs, so I’ve reached another deadend until my new and very dear friend 28selves can show me a possible fix
So I’ve been able to recreate the problem in blender by using a mesh downloaded from a fellow Arma Animator (not sure which one this is, I believe it’s Maczer’s, could be deanosbeano1 or one of the others… I’ve been trying a bit of hit and miss with everything)
Recreating this particular error in blender means I can rule out Oxygen as the source of the disfunction (every problem one can rule out is a good thing)
28selves is pretty sure he knows where the problem is and hopefully with his help later on we can solve this error. I’ve also talked with Deanosbeano1, who’s help I’ll need figuring out the RTM exporter in the Arma toolbox blender addon (it seems like it would be much swifter, just not sure yet how to properly utilize it) so hopefully if I’m able to conquer that I can put out an even simpler workflow for this. Everyone who’s done tutorial videos on blender basics has been such a help, This community is amazing!
sO after some more trials and tribulations with this scenario, I may have located a couple of sources of my problems. first off, I had failed to follow the original workflow set up by deanosbeano1 in the zeroing of the skeleton and setup of the animation. whether this was a direct cause of the excessive twists in the thigh/bicep bones, I couldn’t say for sure. but after starting from scratch and walking through the workflow I was able to work out a couple generic animations, this time eliminating the strange sinking in the hips and neck. from there I could pose the model, insert keyframes and get a basic animation exported. this imported into O2 and, when mapped onto an Arma 3 mesh, looked good! no sinking, no twisting, and following the export matrices, import matrices workflow I was able to get the animation to animate correctly. a little remedial, but a good start for sure. I was able to use the skeleton to articulate the fingers something that will likely be missing from mocap data no matter what as the programs I have don’t really allow for such data to be captured (or if they do, I haven’t found it yet, though I’ll be updating if I find out otherwise)
That being said, manually animating the hands is relatively easy and of no concern. the overall workflow to go from Zero to imported animation was my major concern. I’m waiting now for the lead coder to come on and see if this basic animation imports into the Arma Engine and looks correct, if all is good I’ll work from there.
The small problem I’ve found though is the test skeleton seems locked in strange ways. The pelvis doesn’t want to move, and if I grab and move it, the head is locked strangely to the world root Empty at the head location. this strange behavior is a little out of my scope of knowledge at the current moment, but I’ve continued my conversation with Deanosbeano1 on the Armaholic forums in regards to this behavior. hopefully I can unlock it, as without it attempting to mount the skeleton with the NI-mate addon it controls the arms and legs but the pelvis remains rooted, making every motion like the skeleton is some strange form of squid with all the limbs flailing foreward as they try to reach the 3d space while remaining locked to the pelvis.
I’m hoping to be able to get around this somehow and still utilize the NI-mate along with everything else to do a sort of live capture animation. discarding the old animations for new ones is not a big deal, as they were simply an attempt at repurposing old recordings. hopefully I’ll have some good news by tomorrow to share with the community
Okay, had success in unlocking the armature. turns out the auto IK was causing it to be immobile in the worldspace. this doesn’t solve the issue with moving it with the NI-mate plugin however, and I’m not sure why that’s bugging out! as far as I can see it all looks linked up correctly and what not.
this is the Armaholic thread in which I’m discussing these issues with Deanosbeano1. trying to get it straightened out so fingers crossed. as far as I see I’ve only got the one major hurdle left, and that’s importing it into game.
thus far we’ve
Imported skeleton into blender (removed pre-made animation)
manipulated skeleton and inserted keyframes, creating simple animation
-exported BVH to O2
-Extracted the RTM from O2
-imported RTM back into O2 onto A3 mesh, had success as far as animation and articulation of the fingers
this, unfortunately, is where we’re stuck at the moment. importing the RTM into a test mission locks it on the first frame of the animation. I’m not sure how the head coder is doing it (I’m learning as I go and the A3 editor is another program I’ve yet to attempt) but supposedly the config should be good
with all the limbs flailing foreward as they try to reach the 3d space while remaining locked to the pelvis.