Need some help with character action animation

Heya everyone. :slight_smile:

I’m a game design student from germany, currently despairing on his semester project.
I’m working on a litte protogame in blender where you can navigate a character through a level, however…

I’m stuck. :frowning: Even though I did everything like in the tutorial, my character won’t even play the (admittedly very simplicistic) idle action. I’ve rigged him and created a short idle loop, and linked it to the logic bricks. My teacher and the blender-pro in our college both already looked at my problem and couldn’t help me either. “It ought to work” was all they said. :no:

Maybe someone here could help me with this problem?
I’d attach the file, but it’s 700kb too big. Stupid upload limit :spin:.
I’ll just attach a screenshot istead. Maybe the problem is obvious to someone who knows where to look.
If not, I’ll just mail the file to anyone who wants to help me.

If any could help me with this, I’d be most grateful!:yes:

Attachments


Hi Kira,
The upload limit is for 900 or so Kb, I just uploaded a 700 Kb file myself. It will take a few minutes to upload though, for me it was about two. I personally cannot tell why it won’t work from the picture.

you can upload it to mediafire.com if you want and send me the link and I can help you

Hello
don’t use “Armature” modifiers or other fancy methods…
You must assign Vertex Groups to your bones…
And lower the bones count, maybe…
Bye

I had the same problem recently. I don’t know how to do this in 2.49 but in the new version, version 2.5, you just go to the object buttons, set the parent type from object to armature and then go to the modifiers and delete the armature modifier. If anyone knows how to do this on 2.49 please explain. Good Luck!! :slight_smile:

911:
Okay, I’ll do that tonight. Currently at college, and the internet here is sort of… fishy. :spin:

Besides that, the animation works if I play it in-program. It just won’t work in-game.
(and the file is 700kB too big, which makes it 1.6MB).

But thanks already for the swift answers.:smiley:

Meh, it didn’t work, and I’m still stuck. :frowning:
Appearantly the problem is somewhat intricate, since I’ve heard “it ought to work like this!” from several people already. :spin:

Is there someone around who really knows his way with Blender to help me solve this headache?

Hello again
this basic and old tutorial maybe will help you:
http://otothecleaner.free.fr/tutorials/LittleOTO/littleoto5/otolittle5.html
Just don’t forget to set the character object to “No collision” or he’ll jump off!
Bye

Set the armature to actor and dynamic, with no collisions…
With that, you mean ghost, right?
Make a keyboard-controler, and link it to And and Action…
Enter the action’s name and length in the appropriate field and…
Nope, not working…:frowning:

Meanwhile, I’ve uploaded it for anyone here who feels brave enough to tackle this atrocity.
http://www.mediafire.com/?sharekey=5…a154af670496da

This is crazy… wherver I look it is exactly the same thing I did, only it’s not working for me…

Oh well…
Select the character object “Malacaroos” and delete the “Armature” modifier!
Then, with the character still selected add the armature to the selection and parent it ( Ctrl-P), choose “Armature” in the pop-up^menu and “Don’t Create Groups”.
Now if you press P key, at least the “Iddle/tail” animation should work…I hope?!
Then set the armature and the character/body objects to “No Collision”, only the “Character” (empty) object must be an Actor/Dynamic!
In my opinion, youy’ve too many bones and vertices in your character!
Bye
Remove “Collision” from the camera too!

I fixed your problem.

here’s what I did:

  1. Select your mesh and go to the editing tab and apply your armature modifier.

  2. Shift-right click on the armature to select both the armature and the mesh and press ctrl-P to parent the mesh to the armature (not object) select “don’t create groups” because you’ve already made them.

your animation will now play in game but now you have some other issues.

  1. You’ll notice that the tail and the arms are in the wrong spots. So go into pose mode and move one of the arms. You will notice that the arms move like they are supposed to but aren’t where they need to be.

  2. Now go into edit mode and place all those bones where they need to be and its fixed!

Also you may want to redo your animation because the bones are no longer in the same spot.

Here I fixed up one arm for you. http://www.mediafire.com/?jdqmyozztya

In general you make your model and then place all your bones where they need to go. Parent the mesh to the armature then weight paint.

Edit: I skipped over OTO’s post. Pretty much the same thing except he made some other important observations regarding collisions. What he said!

So all that was wrong was that I parented malacaroos to the object, not the armature somewhere in the past? :confused:

Okay, tricky trap, thanks for fixing it :D.

This will probably mean the actions I’ve created so far will be sort of messed up, right? Is there some easy way to fix this, or would it be easier to just do them anew?

Ah, never mind that. :slight_smile:

It just really paid that one of the actions I posed was the basic pose with no alterations whatsoever. I just fixed the problem while in this action, and all the bones stayed where they belonged. :smiley:

Still, for the record, I’d like to know what exactly caused my problem.
And I mean litterally for the record, we have to submit a scientific documentation of our work at the end of the semester. :slight_smile:

I think it’s because you used a modifier and modifiers don’t seem to work in the game engine. If you parent the mesh to the armature object it’s the same thing as any other object, it will only move when the whole object moves. When you parent to armatures then that allows the mesh to deform.

Okay, now that the animation is working, there’s still a slight bug in it.:eyebrowlift:
Namely, while running the wrong animation is played sometimes (wait/fall).
Now this is odd, since according to the logic I gave it, it is supposed to move forward and play the “move forward” animation under exactly the same circumstances (linked to same controler).:spin:
I’ll link the file here. Anyone feel free to try it and tell me, if they have any idea as to how to fix it.:smiley:
http://www.mediafire.com/?ozcgzyo4rkn