Bones and Eyes

[3dway]

This is the valve VERC guide information for setting up characters.

http://www.valve-erc.com/srcsdk/models/HL2_character_tutorial/characters.html

My problem with thins information is that it is far too vague. It's XSI specific.

I have no problem with the idea that I can custom rig a character and specify the rig hirearchy in the qc files.

What I'm having problems figuring out is, what specifics does the source engine required for eyes.

Can the source engine use the morpher modifier from max for the face animations?

Does anyone have a link to a more complete character setup tutorial?

 

[mikeandike22]

i dont think it matters what program you use to make it, because as long as you compile the animations into the right format it should work, plus is a twitching or blinking eye really that important to your mod.

 

[swiss_cheese9797]

I'm trying to figure this out too. Here's the thing. Ingame, hl2 blends animations from faceposer sequences and skeleton sequences. They are totally separate elements. If you decompile a hl2 character model, I decompiled alyx to check her out, you will see that there are no face bones; the bones attatched to the head end at the top of the neck. I have yet to figure out how to setup my custom model for faceposer animations. I have even posted a thread here, but I didn't get any responses that helped. Perhaps if we keep this thread updated, more ppl will see it and contribute some helpful info.

 

[3dway]

For the face poses, you should be able to use the morpher modifier in max, or the equivalent in XSI.

My concern is the eyes. The articles above (the VERC link) make it sound like there is some special eye object that you have to use that they've harvested from some other model. There is also some allusion to eye textures. I was just having a lot of trouble figuring out how it works. They're written so vaguely.

The part about the eyes that I really didn't get was the eyelid postion data. This seems like it should be done by morphing and creating vertext animation files instead of writing the coordinates of one vertex into a file.

XSI users? what's an "animation cluster"

 

[crackhead]

if you look in the sourcesdk\bin\ folder there is an exe file that i think is for eyes. for the facial animation you need to create vertex animations i think their called. you should be able to do this in max but if you cant figure it out why not just do it in xsi.

 

[crackhead]

its called qc eyes it creates a code for the positioning of eyes for your characters