Skeletons and Animations, is it possible?

[lub4095]

Skeletons and Animations, is it possible?

I've been waiting for some time now (couple months maybe). From what I've read the modkit cannot do that as of the moment but I do wonder whether someone figured a way to export skeletons and possibly animatons. I've exported Roche, managed to make him a simple rig and did a walk cycle. It was quite hard to find good video reference of a walking Roche but if people are to make any serious video fan content they'd have to spend quite a lot of time and effort, not to mention creating a facial rigs. So my question is - how long do you think it would take for the modkit or any 3rd party tools to add support for this? If it is not expected anytime soon I should probably continue my effort and make them myself, I just wonder if it will be in vein in the end.

 

[thisisweak]

From what I can figure out, the models do not have skeletons. They have reference nodes that are placed on each model. Here is a screen I highlighted all of the Nodes in her thumb.

I know this is what they use, because every time I save one of their files I lose this data. I import said model into the game and that model no longer animates.

The worst part is that CD Projekt Red had their own in house Mocap room and software. They call them CSkeletonAnimationSets. I learned that playing with the Mod Kit tools. I was trying to export the animations into something we could use...

 

[DingoWorrier]

They have skeletons, your problem is you aren't telling Maya to preserve them as bones. The only issue with the rigs is that uncooking does not preserve the hierarchy.

 

[lub4095]

So the modkit actually exports bones?

 

[DingoWorrier]

Yes, it just doesn't preserve the hierarchy for whatever reason. I assume it was a deliberate decision on the part of CDPR, there's no way it could not have been noticed. I don't know to what end. Perhaps to put an extra hurdle in the way of porting. You can still recreate the hierarchy manually.

 

[Dahlialynn]

You can still recreate the hierarchy manually.

As is shown here:
View attachment 23317
The Hierarchy needs to be manually created. I'm going to assume the information would be stored in the files with the .w2rig extension, which is not currently included in the types of files the modkit can uncook/export.
In this example I used a TW2 Skeleton as a rough reference in parenting the TW3 bones and am still working on it.

 

[lub4095]

So it seems this is pretty possible, won't be wasting hours in rigging and from what I see in the screenshot there are facial bones. It's a bit hard to tell, guess I'll find out What about animations? Do they export with the tool?

 

[DingoWorrier]

No, aside from a few sundries like scripts and such, the tool only exports models and textures. You can extract cooked animations via the QuickBMS script, but there is currently no converter/importer to get it into a 3D program that I am aware of.

 

[thisisweak]

I tried to export a .w2anim file for giggles and it said:

[2015.08.25 11:51:43][Error][WCC] No exporter found that exports 'CSkeletalAnimationSet' into format 'fbx'

I am convinced that the Mod Kit we received is a stripped down version of their in house editor. Hence the
[2015.08.25 11:51:43][Info][Engine] Shutting down the red gui manager

I am hopeing we can find more uses for the Mod Kit that are just undocumented not stripped out.

Can you think of what extensions they would use on a CSkeletalAnimationSet or a skeleton rig?

---------- Updated at 07:47 PM ----------

Rigs are seperate files. I extracted everything with QuickBMS and got these.

 

[lub4095]

I wonder why CDPR would do this, I mean this isn't working in their favor. If they had given us the unstripped version of their tool the community would be flourishing right now I am certain of that.

 

[thisisweak]

Check it out!

 

[DingoWorrier]

Rigs are seperate files.

Rigs are separate in the cooked files. The uncooking process merges the rigs into the mesh files, hence why a cooked w2mesh is smaller than its corresponding uncooked version.

 

[berserker66666]

I wonder why CDPR would do this, I mean this isn't working in their favor. If they had given us the unstripped version of their tool the community would be flourishing right now I am certain of that.

Cause of consoles maybe?

 

[Richiesname]

Cause of consoles maybe?

Agreed. When it doubt, blame it on consoles.

 

[Guest 2364765]

Cause of consoles maybe?

Most likely licensing or proprietary tech.

They may be relying on licensed software to do the job for them and it may not be freely redistributed.
Or that's what i wish to believe.

 

[lub4095]

Do mapping coordinates get exported in the fbx file? Seem to be missing them. UVs are default.

 

[DingoWorrier]

There are two sets of UVs, at least for characters. If you are using 3DS Max, it doesn't appear to import them properly for some reason.

 

[lub4095]

I guess I'll have to import in maya and re-export to 3ds max. Hopefully that should work.

 

[thisisweak]

Making progress on skeletons...err joints...