Character tutorial?

#1 There's a free pdf book you can download here

#2 That is definitely a useful starting point.

The part I am really stuck on though is getting from 3ds max into Torque. I already have experience building, rigging, and animating characters, but I never got further than doing all that in max. Now its time to get into the game and... yeah.

#3 Rick, the biggest issue will be naming the bones and any subsequent animations you have. For the most part, creating a character is pretty easy, the issues are the hierarchy and the collision and bounding boxes. These are pretty specific in T3D (as in any engine). The Docs will give you a solid idea of how to set things up.

#4 The documentation under Artist Guide>Primer there is a document called Torque Character Primer.

It's a good starting point, but from export to COLLADA through getting into the game portion is really sparse. I remember Dave Wyand having to do some voodoo to get the animations to import properly. In my last days at GG I was working with the artists to come up with a clearer document describing the process but it was never completed.

#5 I have already read through the torque character primer, and I'd say its about as clear as mud. I think it is written assuming some prior knowledge which I do not possess... Either way, it still doesn't cover the actual process of going from rigged, animated character in 3D program --> character in game.

I've actually got David Wyand's book, but his documentation is only for milkshape. I suppose it wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if I had to export the mesh into there and do my rigging/animating/exporting from that program.

Silly question: the 3DAAK pack I am using still uses a .DTS character with .DSQ animations as opposed to Collada. Using the olde .DTS exporder I was actually able to get a character I bought(from the medieval character pack) working in my platforming adventure game(well "working" in so far as the character can run and jump; it doesn't have climbing animations).

I do know enough about rigging and animating to handle that part, and the bones thing is helpful, but I am just really fuzzy on how you get from Point I Have A Guy Walking in 3DS to Point I Have A Guy Walking in Torque.

EDIT: Seems I am confusing David Wyand with Kenneth Finney, Finney's book is the one with an extensive character modeling guide for Milkshape.

#6 Yeah, if you've read those already then you're about where I am. Like I said, there was an initiative to make an in-depth, step-by-step guide but we started it about a month before GG changed gears the last time and it got dropped.

The part that we were having fits over wasn't the modeling or rigging (the artists were spot on) it was how to get the animations over. There was some futzing around with exporting each sequence to its own COLLADA file, but for some reason that seemed to require a separate MAX file for each sequence - the exporter didn't want to break them apart or drop them out as .dsq sequences either. The character mesh exported fine but we didn't get it dialed in and the process was still not really clear when we finished.

Maybe Steve Acaster can give us a good tutorial based on Blender!

#7 Well, according to the documentation I've cross-referenced from Ubiq Visuals(Maya) and Kenneth Finney's book(Milkshape) it looks like exporting a .DTS file and an individual .DSQ files is the way to go... I guess I will likely be stuck doing my character work in milkshape for the time being.

I suppose I might have to take matters into my own hands and write an in-depth tutorial myself. It'll no doubt be deeply flawed as I haven't a clue what I'm doing, but it'll be a step in the right direction :P

#8 Ok so I have these character models created by Evan So(http://www.garagegames.com/products/medievalcharacterpack), one export sticks it in the engine and it works fine as a DTS, even taking the place of the character model that comes with the engine. So we know at least 1 person has gotten it to work from max.

BUT it only plays the animations it comes with(all of which are together in a single 3ds scene). I honestly can't say how you'd get it to run the the default animations or the 3DAAK-specific sets, but hey its a step.

Moving on.

In the .max scene there are a number of "helper" objects laid out on the ground, each named for a coresponding animation.

Not that that helps me but maybe someone else can make heads or tails of it.

I'm also going to try something else in a minute here.

#9 If you want it to run other animations the rig has to have the same bones - that much I know. If the rigs match up then you should be able to add animation sequences to the character ala the Soldier scripts using the TSShapeConstructor method.

Do the helpers match up with animations on the Biped? Hell, it's been so long since I looked at Biped animations that I can't remember what the sequence editor is called....

#10 So, silly question: is there documentation somewhere that says what the bones need to be called? I've now got 3 difference sources(you, Kenneth Finney's book, and the 3DAAK documention) thay agree: if the bones have the same names they can run the same animations.

But what do those bones need to be called?

The helpers I mentioned match up to the names of different animations as per the documentation(root, run, jump, etc) but after doing further research I am pretty sure this character is kind of doing it's own thing.

Sifting about a bit in the FPS tutorial, I notice there is one character named "Gideon" who uses .DTS and .DSQ animations, meanwhile the generic Soldier character uses .DAEs and the TSShapeConstructor method you've mentioned. On a related note, the 3DAAK default character also uses .DTS/.DSQ files, so the engine clearly still supports that method(I'm guessing this was the older method as used in version 1.2 and TGEA). I honestly don't know which is easier since there is documentation for neither.

And it apears I am examining 3 entirely different methods, here, so there's that.

Tell me; are there art source files available for T3D? I know that at least in TGEA everything was being done in 3ds max and if memory serves, the art refs were included. It might be helpful to be able to look at the original max files from T3D.

#11 On this site you can download the torqueGuide3DSMAX.chm. It has a lot of the info you're looking for.

#12 Sweet! Technically for TGE but most of that should still apply. Thanks Joseph!

#13 Yes so far it is looking really good. Maybe if we put our collective heads together we can update it for T3D.

#14 We really need to get this to work with a standard COLLADA export/import pipeline. That was the original purpose for adding COLLADA support to T3D, to simplify the process. So basically we need to figure out how to reproduce what the Soldier does. Like I said before, the issue we were having was in how to generate the separate COLLADA animation sequence files. Perhaps we can get Dave Wyand to answer a few questions when he has time....

#15 I knew I had that old tutorial somewhere, and finally found it on an old thumb drive. With COLLADA, I believe you make all your animations on MAX in one sequence, export to Torque, and then define them separately in the Shape Editor. There's a tut for that somewhere, I'll see if I can dig that one up!

#16 I'll settle for any sort of art pipeline that's actually documented.

This is just coming from an artist's viewpoint, but a simplified art pipeline is like a godsend. I'm primarily an environmental modeler, and being able to just hit file-->export then turn on visible mesh collisions to get a feel for a model in-engine is the greatest thing ever.

Now that I've got to branch out into character modeling, just finding documentation is absolutely vital.

#17 Here's a resource from Kevin Mitchell concerning COLLADA that might help, there's also a link to the official COLLADA docs on GG.

#18 LOD is wonderful, but that doesn't really solve the issue of properly exporting a character.

EDIT: looking over that link a bit it appears it is using a biped-object for the skeleton, is this the case? That certainly simplifies things a bit. The older TGE guide also used a biped. Granted, doesn't work for complicated things like horses or giant spiders, but it covers characters A-OK.

#19 Yes, biped has always been standard for TGE - if you're using another program I believe it expects you to name your bones according to Biped's default convention.

And if you're making dogs you should again start with biped and modify the skeleton to your needs before applying the skin modifier.

Weird how I don't know how to do this but have picked up little out-of-context tidbits over the years....

#20 I think the bone-naming convention is the key, I keep hearing "You need to give the bones the right names" from various sources, but nobody lists the correct names. If its the biped object's names then that would do the trick.