Improved character animations using Smartbody

[Christian Clavet]

Unity added very-recently another sub-system to help in character animations. They name it "mecanim".

 

I'm following a project that does something like similar to that and is open source (LPGL licence, but said they can negotiate some special licenses). Their project name is named Smart Body and is aimed at improving character animations (automatic, rigging, skinning, etc)

 

With this, users would only have to model their characters and share animations. The system would retarget the animations to the body shape and do the rigging and skinning automatically. From what I've seen from some videos, they can even lip sync from using text files and make characters talk!

 

This could be really interesting to have (in the long term) a tool like this integrated with Leadwerks.

 

You can check their video gallery if you were not aware of their project.

[Guppy]

Ogre3D (not a game engine) had it for a while - it looks very good, especially the eyes

http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=73261

[YouGroove]

The most interesting feature i think is steering :

Makes walk/run animations lot more natural with good foots orientation, lot more natural and visually attractive than vertical characters.

 

(Its very old technique, i remember having that steering in charcaters when playing very very old game like first Splinter Cell.)

[beo6]

that looks amazing. I can only imagine how awesome it would be when it gets implemented properly in Leadwerks.

[Rick]

I don't think anything is stopping anyone from making that in LE. That to me looks like it's just rotating and positioning bones.

[Josh]

A long time ago, a third party made a plugin for 3D World Studio that compiled the Torque equivalent of BSP maps. At some point I decided this functionality should be built into 3D World Studio, so I just added it in and effectively cut him out. This was a mistake because all the sales I was getting from Torque users dried up, because I no longer had that third party actively promoting me.

 

That's sort of how I think of this kind of thing. If I integrate it directly into Leadwerks, I am effectively killing any possible third-party innovation, because no one will want to compete with a built-in solution that costs nothing extra.

 

I hope that through the Steam Workshop we can devise a way to support third-party authors so they can publish their own C++ programming libraries and make them work with Leadwerks. Even if they are only tidying up a third-party lib they didn't necessarily write, like this one.

[knocks]

Third party support would be fantastic! You're reliance on steam is frustrating.

[Josh]

The distribution and visibility through Steam is so great that it makes it worthwhile. I mean, the old way of uploading and passing files back and forth is just ridiculous. With the system I am building, you never have to deal with files. You'll see this for yourself soon.

[knocks]

I recognize the benefits of steam, but for me bandwidth is too expensive to have steam dictate when and how I use it. Should they remove forced updates and not block access to non-updated software it will remain a negative.

[YouGroove]

I recognize the benefits of steam, but for me bandwidth is too expensive to have steam dictate when and how I use it.

 

I agree, i would go for some Unity like Asset store integrated in LE3 site instead, full control and freedom , more small plugins or systems allowed and sometimes little plugins are amazing when they do the job they are meaned for and that you needed.