Hi all,

I have to admit - I ran into a dead end with the character animations.

It seems like my characters have lost their ability to act different from a standard pistol soldier with many of the most recent updates.

My civilians are naked and unarmed and stand still with an invisible pistol aiming into nothing, my soldiers, even those with MP40s, are holdign their weapons likle a colt, making the mesh of the guns go through them.

Strangely enough, the old BSP Wehrmacht characters act like they should - officer with pistol, grunt with MP40 and Sniper with K98.

However, I cannot reproduce their behaviour with any of my own characters.

It was possible some updates ago by editing the FPE and pasting the fitting animations into the basic animation section, but that trick doesn't work anymore.

To explain my pipeline:

- Characters are created with Maya or Fuse, exported as FBX
- FBX is loaded into FBX2GG 1.2, GG rigged, all GG animations (whole range) imported, saved to the animation set and exported as X with the textures
- FPE is created either by hand from scratch or by copying and editing an existing one (with the right behaviour, if possible)
- In the primary animation section, the fitting animations (like unarmed conversation for idle) are pasted

that worked well in the past, no all of my custom characters are either sliding around in pistol stance or acting like a pistol soldier.

Does anyone have a clue for that?
Is FBX2GG 1.2 still usable with the "import all animation range" ?
Have the animations changed?
How can I get a soldier with an MP or assault riufle acting accordingly?
How can I get civilians roamign around relaxed and playing their conversation frames?
Do we have a list/ HowTo / Tutorial for that?

Can you post the fpe so we can see what's happening, specially everything after ;anim

The way the ai scripts read the anims in the fpe has changed now, instead of populating the csi_ list, everything is placed in the ;anim section under

anim0 = xx,xx ;idle
anim1 = xx,xx ;move
anim2 = xx,xx ;kick
anim3 = xx,xx ;hurt
anim4 = xx,xx ;reload

I am just starting to get into the new AI and Lua as well, so I don't know much, and I have many of the same questions, especially

.

I tried combining a conversation script with one of the new AI scripts but with my limited knowledge of such things, it almost worked, but not quite.

I do know this much: the characters no longer use the csi animations as before. They do have to be declared in the fpe, and there are only 4 or 5 by default (just the basics; any more you have to declare on your own). They also have to be referenced (by animation number) in whatever script you use (per Lee's latest video on AI. I really would have liked to have seen the 45 minute version, lol)

I came across this recently too. Frankly, I'm shocked that a product that markets itself as a 'non-coding-required' entry level tool uses a script that calls upon just 5 out of a possible 60 or so animations. You'd have thought that ai_soldier.lua (or, more accurately, module_combatcore.lua) would reference a few different ones for different scenarios the average enemy find themselves in.

AE

To get the civilians to idle correctly, you need to replace the anim0 frames with the appropriate csi animation (3000,3100 works for me). The new ai scripts don't use the csi animations, only the 5 animations at the top of the list (anim0-anim4).

I know that of course.

And I can get the civilians to have an idle animation of my choice running, fair enough, but they don't go waypoints and don't interact. ok, will deal with that later.

What really bothers me is that when I place the UZI soldier with



he looks like holding an UZI. What he does.

When I place my Eissturmführer, who was imported via FBX2GG with the entire GG animation frames range applied AND



hammered into the FPE, it looks like holding a pistol. And that is something new.
See screenshot.
(Also his left foot is twisted, something I can't see in any other programm I open the X with.)

And there is also BSPs MP40 guy at the party. He has



And should therefore look like holding a pistol.

No, he doesnt, he acts really cool with the MP40. But in that case, I guess, BSP had custom animations and ranges done.

Can you send me the FPE and files for "Eissturmführer" and confirm he should be using the UZI poses to hold its weapon, thanks.

Hi Lee, I sent you an email with the link.

I use now the Assault gun animations as they work better with the MP40.

Additionally, I was able to get at least the walk and idle animations right.

All is described in the mail.

Yup, Hate the new animation system. It sucked befor to do custom animations, but atleast with some effort I could get it to work. Now I cant... A tutorial would be nice. Or better yet a custom animation tool in GG that lets us set animation frame per model. There just making GG more and more for coders.... None coder friendly. Which makes it just like every other engine out there. My Great White Hope is turning into a dead whale sadly.

I've all but given up on AI now, AI is one of the hardest things for me to get my head around, and just when i was starting to work it out it all changed, i've tried learning how to use it again now, but with all the bugs and issues it has i've just lost all motivation, i'm not even working on my game levels any more, all i do is make models now.

I agree Bel, I've never had such a hard time getting custom animations into a piece of software. And it's just getting harder and harder...

My personal point of view is that we've taken the right step in making the AI more modular, but for it to make any sense to anyone other than experienced LUA coders, we need a graphical front end on the editor side to help us plot AI behaviour in more detail. I'm thinking some kind of node-based system where we can visibly see 'if x happens, call y behaviour with z animation'. And we need scripts that are even more modular that are called on a per entity basis by some sort of 'master control'.

Right now, the AI system seems work based on a hierarchy; script A requires script B, script B requires script C, script C requires script D. If I want to make even the slightest change to script D without all my other entities that use A being effected, I have to make copies of A, B, C and D. Instead, the AI should be T-shaped, with scripts A, B, C, and D being unique and not dependent on one another, and called as and when.

I'm not an experienced coder, everything I know about LUA has been self-taught since April, but this method just seems more logical to me...

AE