Clutter

[VictoryWorks]

We have these skeleton models available in Crafter Pete, I thought they were the beginning of creating people.

Cheers Brian that's Interesting. I guess it's just Blender then that's lacking character support. Crafter is cheap enough that I might grab it and see if it's worth having just for character export assuming I can get Blender generated files into it.

[briyeo]

Captain Bazza (Barrie Martin) has done some work with characters in Canvas/Crafter, there are some downloads knocking about somewhere.

At the top of this page http://www.amabilis.com/mediadownloads.htm#3DCModels

[AndiS]

The Make Human project has been on my list of things to try out once I find the time. Much of it may be overkill for railway simulation, but they name Blender as a main part of their 'pipeline'. I also pick up something about animation creation assistants for walking etc.

On the subject of figures in RW, aren't they just animated like everything else. When I observe them, I clearly see a walking animation loop played while the model is moved along a bit too fast, compared to the movement of the feet. And the .bin files in Kuju\...\Characters are animated scenery with three animations with obviously predefined names. So I cannot see how Blender would not export that.

[VictoryWorks]

It's the bone system that's missing Andi. Whereas a normal animation moves the nodes of a model, the character animation moves a skeleton of special bones inside the model, this then deforms the "skin" of the character.
The skin uses a special shader (which would be easy enough to apply in Blender), but the bone system needs naming and I would expect has a hierarchy in relation to each bone and the model itself. Also I suspect - although it might use a "closest vert" system - that each bone needs to be mapped to the appropriate verts of the model to know which parts it should be deforming when it moves.
You could use the standard system to model characters and animate them but they'd look like wooden puppets with rigid limbs and rotating joints rather than stretching and bending properly.

[AndiS]

It's the bone system that's missing Andi.

Thanks, I seem to understand, or so I tell myself. The important point that I seem to forget all the time is that you cannot assume that whatever you animate in Blender can be shown in game. I remember suggesting to shrink or otherwise transmorph some part in the cab to hide in the boiler or under the dashboard and was told 'no-no', too.

Good for me that I spend my time talking about things instead of doing them. I always wanted to have shunters directing you as you couple up and signallers showing flags - all implemented as signals, following prototype procedures, of course.

[rivimey]

I think the problem is that neither the 3DC or Blender exporters support the required bone systems for characters so it's only available to those who use Max.
I've been wanting to make characters for a long time but it's just not possible in Blender yet. You can make them static of course - I ended up doing this for the driver of the Steam Railmotor - but really they want to at least stand there and shuffle their appendages a bit.

Blender can be used to do animating people - I've seen it done. You may be quite right however in that it might not do it in 'the right way' according to TrainSim...

Ruth

[briyeo]

This is my latest design for Ikea, every home should have one, It's called a "Pekare".

[rivimey]

Love it... when can I have one

Ruth

[rivimey]

It's the bone system that's missing Andi.

I have heard people say this and also see people talking about anim using bones in blender, like this:

http://www.youtube.com/v/uOYnmZbwMKw

is it a case of different implementations, or meanings, or export issues?

Ruth

[AndiS]

I think the exporting is the bit that is missing. Sure enough you can do great stuff in Blender using bones.
The question is: How is the data squeezed through these intermediate file formats .igs and .ia into the internal representation of the game.
I never tried to dig into the internals of these data formats, but we got both Henning and Dominique registered here, who could shed some light on the issue - and Pete who is on first name terms with animations in RW and all sorts of fun in Blender.