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The Kingdom Of Soul


Pixel Perfect
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  • 2 weeks later...

A really simple example of lip synced speech using an 'off the shelf' model which was not designed with speech in mind. I rigged it with a simple set of facial bones and weighted it accordingly. The lip movement is only using about 18 vertices so is pretty limited in the degree of shaping you can achieve but even so it's sufficient to give the illusion of speech in your game.

 

Using this technique I could pretty much animate any model to talk. Obviously models designed with facial animation in mind are capable of much higher quality.

 

Voices courtesy of Steve from Arteria3D

 

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Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++

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Great work as always.. how much effort would you say is needed to rig a model for facial expressions, like the one you have shown? (one that doesn't have optimal topology for facial animations)

 

Also the spell effect is really nicely done, and the whole spell casting has a good look 'n feel to it, which is I think harder to achieve in a first person view. But i'm curious where you got those hands from, looking nice from what I could see in that dark.. :)

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Thanks again guys.

 

 

how much effort would you say is needed to rig a model for facial expressions, like the one you have shown? (one that doesn't have optimal topology for facial animations)

Hi paramecij. Not seen you around much in a while!

 

Not a great deal to be honest. I simply added 11 bones on the example posted, all extended from the head bone and then added the vertex weighting and animated the 10 phonemes. Because I had never really had to create bones before it took me a little while due to trial and error but I think I could probably do another now in a about 2 - 3 hours. (An experienced rigger and animator would do it far faster). It's far simpler than rigging a whole skeleton! You are limited by a lack of vertices for models not designed with this in mind, but I found it's still quite effective. You could of course opt to improve the geometry in those areas before rigging it, but that's beyond my skills at the moment really.

 

Also the spell effect is really nicely done, and the whole spell casting has a good look 'n feel to it, which is I think harder to achieve in a first person view. But i'm curious where you got those hands from, looking nice from what I could see in that dark.. smile.png

It took a bit of work to get the look n feel right but I'm certainly happy with it now. I like the first person view but need to find a better aiming system than the cross hairs, makes me think of first person shooters when I see them. Doesn't really fit in with the medieval look and feel of the game. But that's not that important right now, it'll come in time.

 

The hands were from a FPSC pack, I can't recall the pack number off the top of my head.

Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++

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Very nice work, Pixel! smile.png

The facial animation seems to work pretty good! You've done a good job there, keep it up! I think doing the rigging for the face is as hard as teh rest of the body, especially since you have to deal with other muscles and get the weightmapping right. So, well done!

 

The magical weapon animation is also very nice to look at! Lovely! The impact should be more impressive, but I'm sure you're working on that. wink.png

 

Just not too sure about the cursor, though. Doesn't seem to fit the game, I think.

 

Other than that, I really like where this is going. More of this if you like! biggrin.png

 

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Thanks Chris. Yes, the cross-hairs are from the FPS side of the engine and have no place in this game, just served as a temporary targeting indicator till I think of some more suitable mechanism for this game. The engine's designed to offer dual support for both FPS and RPG/Adventure games.

 

The actual spell effects on the targets have yet to be designed and will of course depend on the spell type in use at the time, as will the visual 'in flight' effects and colors. There is just a simple animated 'star burst' on impact at the moment to serve as visual feedback of the collision taking place, otherwise the spells time out after a configurable distance!

 

There is a lot to do yet, I haven't even demoed any of the AI side I've been working on with the EKI One AI engine, which is coming along nicely, but will do at some point. I estimate I still have about 6 months work left to do to get all of my planned functionality into the engine and tested.

Intel Core i5 2.66 GHz, Asus P7P55D, 8Gb DDR3 RAM, GTX460 1Gb DDR5, Windows 7 (x64), LE Editor, GMax, 3DWS, UU3D Pro, Texture Maker Pro, Shader Map Pro. Development language: C/C++

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