Lately, while working on anims for a possible anim pack I am planning, an idea ran through my head. I am able to crank out quality animations at an alarming rate whenever I have a rig that is easier to animate, much like one that is created from the "biped guide" (look it up in the VAST learning movies for more information). The difference between the rig that is created and the battlefront skeleton is the rig has a bunch of boxes and planes that you can grab and move the bones around with along with rotating them. Whenever the bones are moved, though, they bend and rotate much like they would whenever the action is done in real life. (Again, refer to the VAST movies to get a better look at what I am describing)

My question is; Can I go about making constraints/effectors to various boxes/shapes/nulls on the BF skeleton to make it behave more like a "biped guide" made skeleton? Would making these changes make the stock animations unusable? I just want alternate methods to animating the BF skeleton than just rotating the bones.

I'm pretty sure if someone made a more animating friendly rig we would have a lot more custom anims than we do now

(Awaiting Ace Mastermind's reply )

The Nasal Abyss wrote:My question is; Can I go about making constraints/effectors to various boxes/shapes/nulls on the BF skeleton to make it behave more like a "biped guide" made skeleton?

Yes, you can do whatever you want as long as it doesn't interfere with the exported hierarchy.

The Nasal Abyss wrote:Would making these changes make the stock animations unusable?

Not unless you changed the hierarchy.

The Nasal Abyss wrote:I just want alternate methods to animating the BF skeleton than just rotating the bones.

I'm pretty sure if someone made a more animating friendly rig we would have a lot more custom anims than we do now

You can use the biped guide to build a fully rigged skeleton identical to the unit template then constrain the unit template to the biped guide rig, animate the biped rig then plot the animation to the unit template or you can rig the unit template from scratch but keep your rig controls out of the exported hierarchy to avoid problems. Another option would be to animate the biped rig then transfer that animation to the unit template the same way you would retarget motion capture.

AceMastermind wrote:Another option would be to animate the biped rig then transfer that animation to the unit template the same way you would retarget motion capture.

How would I go about doing this? If I created an identical skeleton with the biped rig creator, and animated it, how would I go about transferring the movement? Are there tutorials the could be easily found, or would you have to tell me?

Anyways, thanks for the quick and great reply! I just had a hunch you could know how to alleviate my animating qualms

You can transfer the animation using MOTOR.

Wow. This makes my life so much easier. That is perfect, Ace. Thanks!

EDIT: You know what, I'm thinking about making a tutorial detailing this method. I have already made a quick animation with a more advanced rig and transfered it to the BF skeleton without a single hitch. So easy, and so much better.

in my opinion its easier to put a few contraints on the shipped skeleton and plot the animations to the bones once you are done. setting them up is easy after youve done it once and you can fit it to yourswbf2/your needs. you cant use the rotation of the bone_root for example and i prefer animating the head, spine and feet manually.

The problem with that is that no matter how many things I tried pertaining to constraints on the stock skeleton I couldn't get any to work. Perhaps it was from not knowing how/when to use constraints, but I like this new method quite a bit.

How would you properly use constraints in this form?

you contrain the position of the effectors to control object. now open the "resolution plane" parameters in the propertypage of the first bone of the chain and make sure that "FK/IK Blend" is set to 1.
once you did that make another controlobject, select the first bone of the chain again, click contrain>chain up vector and pick the object. if the chain is now rotated in some weird angle, you can fix this by editing the "roll"-value.

One small problem. When I go to transfer the animation from the rig to the BF skeleton using MOTOR, it doesn't transfer properly because I translated/modified the effectors and not the bones on the rig. Is there any way to "plot" the movements that the bones are doing on the rig, and not the effectors?

Example: I make the animation by moving the effectors around on the rig, plot those movements made to the bones on the rig, and then transfer the animation to the BF skeleton. Is that possible?

you can do this by plotting animations
select all the bones you animated with inverse kinematics (effectors etc.)
under the tools hab in the animationmenu (press 2 to open it) select plot>rotations
check the "fit plotted values on fcurve" option and lick ok
now delete the contraintobjects and export the animation normally

always save your scene before you plot and delete the contraints! then you can still modify the anims when something went wrong and the scene crashed.

Didn't work. I need the movement to be keyframed to the bones somehow. Whenever I do your method, nothing really happens.

What I'm doing is animating a more advanced rig (a rig created by the biped guide) by only moving the effectors, but I want to transfer that movement (or IK stuff) to keyframed bone rotations. Is there any way to do that? (what you described in your latest post may be it, but it didn't work for me)

Because if I can do that, all of my problems are solved. The only other way to do this method is the create effectors and constraints on the BF skeleton that do the same thing that the rig does, but then I could just animate the BF rig. But I have no idea how to do that.

Ugh, animation hurts my head. Maybe I just shouldn't worry about doing animations

You can also just remove all contraints instead of deleting them (available in animation menu)

Another thing you may have to do if the animation goes funky is make sure the bone chain is set to forward kinematics 0.

If you want to do quick tests, the pandemic export will export the IK animation and apply it to the bones properly that way you don't have to do all the plotting/deleting thing while you are fine tuning. For the final you should do the plot animation thing DarthD.U.C.K. mentioned above.

The Nasal Abyss wrote:Didn't work. I need the movement to be keyframed to the bones somehow.

plotting does exactly that, it takes the movements the bones get dictated from the controlobjects and applies them as keyframes on the bones.

The Nasal Abyss wrote:Whenever I do your method, nothing really happens.

did you select all the bones when plotting the animation? can you write exactly which steps you make to plot the animation?

The Nasal Abyss wrote:The only other way to do this method is the create effectors and constraints on the BF skeleton that do the same thing that the rig does, but then I could just animate the BF rig. But I have no idea how to do that. :

how to animate? just like the biped rig. or how to rig? like in my second post in this topic. you dont have to rebuild the whole rig anyway because the swbf-skeleton isnt as complex as sksletons form other games.

The Nasal Abyss wrote: What I'm doing is animating a more advanced rig (a rig created by the biped guide) by only moving the effectors, but I want to transfer that movement (or IK stuff) to keyframed bone rotations.

did you contrain the sbwfbones to those of the bipedrig? or did you transfer the animations with MOTOR?

1. I animate the complex biped guide rig to my liking.
2. I drag select all of the bones and effector shapes (the things used to move the bones around) (I've even tried selecting the complete "Biped" skeleton in the XSI Explorer view)
3. Go to Animate>Tools>Plot>Rotations
4. Check the "Fit plotted values with an F-Curve" option.
5. Don't mess with/click anything else in the dialog box
6. Then I click OK.

But still I have had no success in getting keyframes to show up.

I'm transferring the animations from the biped rig to the BF skeleton using MOTOR, using the "Rig-To-Rig" feature. The animations transfer fine if they were made from bone rotations (as in if the bones themselves have keyframes, not the effectors), but I'm trying to avoid that as my workflow is better/faster using effectors and the like on a more advanced rig. Right now I'm trying to figure out how to convert those effector movements into bone rotation key frames. Hope this helps. I'm not going to drag this on much longer if I am consistently unable to do what you are describing.

When you go to select the bones, select the top bone in the hierachy then on the left hand side on the selection pulldown menu find and select child nodes, can't remember exact wording now will update when I get home.

I don't think my "Plot" tools are working properly.......

FragMe! wrote:...the pandemic export will export the IK animation and apply it to the bones properly...

What is your workflow or setup for getting this to work? I've never been able to export IK with the exporter, always had to plot to get it exported or else it was discarded.

Yep, the plot tools in XSI Mod Tool 7.5 don't work properly. So I'm just going to do all of my animations in XSI Mod Tool 6.01 now. Everything is working now. Thanks guys!!!

AceMastermind wrote:

FragMe! wrote:...the pandemic export will export the IK animation and apply it to the bones properly...

What is your workflow or setup for getting this to work? I've never been able to export IK with the exporter, always had to plot to get it exported or else it was discarded.

As far as I know I am not doing anything special, I have the constraints in the scene root so they are not exported with the bone, branch select then export with the normal animation things checked in the exporteer pop up.

I could send you a link to one of the walker animations if you want to check it out.

The Nasal Abyss wrote:Yep, the plot tools in XSI Mod Tool 7.5 don't work properly. So I'm just going to do all of my animations in XSI Mod Tool 6.01 now...

I just did a quick test of the plot tools in Mod Tool 7.5 and they seem to work fine, try this and tell me if it works for you:
Create a 2 bone 2D chain
Select the effector then key it
Adjust the timeline forward
Translate the effector then key it
Select the 2 bones
Plot>All Transformations>OK
Remove all animation from the effector
If the animation still works then the plotting tools are working fine


@FragMe!
Thanks but it's not a huge deal, i'll just stick with what i've been doing:
save scene>plot>export>undo>undo
everything works as it should which is really all that matters.