P2F, you can use either of the two rigged meshes Mesher has posted in this thread:

http://www.modthesims.info/showthre...25#startcomment

male mesh in post 5, female mesh in post 42. Or you can use the mesh Wes posted in this thread. Any of them are going to be fine for you. You really are best off updating your Milkshape to 1.8.5 though. If you do, the same holds true, you can use any of the rigged meshes posted by Mesher or Wes.

Thank you! I updated to 1.85 and got the newer ver in post 5 (I was using the older one) and got both female versions I was having an issue in my own head with the rig txt file, but realized they were the same size after all just 2 diff ways of reading them showed slight diff in size which confused me. All sorted now. Thanks!

Thanks for the info. I was surprised how well the game interpolated the transitions. Instead of doing long animations I was toying with the idea of doing them like in game with animations broken down into sections. So for example if I wanted to have a sim doing a forward roll, I'd have the start, the roll, and the end. Then I'd use the animation player to play them in the correct order. This gives more flexibility to recycle the start and end animations if done correctly, or even use pre existing ones from EA.

I managed to quickly edit an existing animation, a seated animation and did an arm wave type motion. When I tried to trigger it in the animation player the sim stood up first. I suspect to trigger this type of animation a cloned object and jazz script will need to be done. Unless I did something wrong. Also, for some reason editing an animation in MS didn't work in game, I tried with both 'operate on selected joints' ticked then unticked. I suspect I did something wrong, although I got it to work with 3d studio max (not my copy I hasten to add, unfortunately). I also noticed the left and right slot offset bones would move in sync with the EA animation. In Max they could not be moved out of a certain range. In MS there was no limit.

I really like how Animtool works and that it is flexible

Freya, glad you finally got a more recent copy of Milkshape and the new meshes. Have fun With the legs, you can always set the animation up in MS using them, then at each keyframe set the foot offsets to where each foot is (foot world bones instead if you move the world offset bone. Incidentally, the foot world bones may have same effect as foot offset bones, not sure though if they work the same without moving the world offset, don't have my notes here atm). Don't do what I did though and inadvertently swap them around. Some very strange animations resulted from that simple mistake

This is one of the things I would like to fix. If you have a full set of joints in the rigfile, then they all get written to the CLIP file regardless of whether they have any actual frames, and this makes the animation cycle through the bind pose. I feel there must be a better and easier way to manage the configurations, it does not seem to be issues with how the data is converted, but rather what skeleton parts are or aren't included in the actual CLIP file that is created.

<* Wes *>

This would be so awesome

I'll be creating some more custom animations within the next couple of weeks (need them for the next ep of my series) so this will result in quite a bit of practical testing. I'll be using the latest version of Animtool for this

Has anyone else noticed this:
When I import from a clip with the latest animtool, the animation is on the floor,
but if I import using RothN's TS3animator it's correctly oriented.

What rig are you using?

Good question. I'm opening S3_8EAF13DE_00000000_D057FCC534C1BCBB_auRig%%+_RIG.grannyrig
(auRig) in ts3animator. I'm not sure exactly what I've got in rigfile.txt, but it doesn't have nearly as many
bones in the smd as the ones generated from ts3animator. What version of rigfile.txt should I be using?

I asked because when I used the ts3animator, my animations would end up on/in the floor as you said. The rigfile.txt used should be the one that comes with the Wes's or mesher's rig.

I think you are mixing file versions somewhere, using something extracted with nick's tool with mine. I don't think we use the same methodology to get to the same place.

The AnimTool does a +90 rotation on the X axis for all unparented joints (there is only one of these in the Sim skeleton, not true for some objects), as well as adjusting their Y and Z coordinates to correct the Z-up versus Y-up differences between the game and almost all 3D modeling/animation tools except 3DS Max. This process is reversed on export (SMD->CLIP). The rigfiles and default model skeletons we are using were designed for this method.

Not rotating X +90 will leave the sim laying on its back, feet toward you, wiggling at whatever it was doing there, except in 3DS Max, in which case it will look fine. I expect that is what you are seeing.

<* Wes *>

Well, I looked at 3 different smd files, and came up with 3 different bone counts.
I think I've propogated an early version of rigfile.txt to my folder hierarchy.

Although I use smd files from both your and Nick's tools, I never try to convert his
smd to a clip with your tool, or vice versa. It's easy to tell them apart, because the
ones from your tool have the s3 and tgi stuff at the beginning of the name, but I
just use the animation name when I convert a clip with his tool. And am I glad smd
is in text format, sooo much easier on the eyes than hex.

FTR, I like your UI better than his, but I like being able to pick an S3PE exported rig with his.
It's good to have peanut butter *and* chocolate! Now if I could get either as a library dll,
that would be whipped cream, since the first thing I'd do with it is convert clips en masse.

So, without further ado, I shall proceed to make my sim lick her eyebrows. That ought
to impress her girlfriends.

Text format was a part of why I chose SMD. I forget the reason I passed on BVH, but I think it was due to that format always needing an "end" bone added to the rig. I gave some thought to just inventing some format, as I know well how to code MilkShape plug-ins, but using a converter and a standard format has started to pay off, as people are able to work with tools other than MilkShape, as we are seeing.

As far as the exported rigs, in any case we are limping along with a fraction of the data that would have been in the rigs the artists used when making the original Sims 3 animations. I have a fairly deluxe setup now for Maya, with full body IK control. I haven't added any joint limits to it yet, and I am still working on testing the output, but if I get a useful pipeline working I will share it.

<* Wes *>

I have yet to get a good IK setup on the lower body, but here is a test of my upper body setup used in a sim-to-object animation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Idv_x72_bnY

Are these a series of animations being played by the Animation Player, or are they driven by interactions between the Sim and window?

Tell me more how you organized all this to happen... I mean that is a pretty involved sequence, if you can structure that much action then it means it is possible for much to be crammed into a single scene for machinima... lots fewer transitions to edit later.

<* Wes *>

It's interactions between the Sim and the window. The 'open' interaction consists of three animations: one for the sim, one for the window going up, and one for the window open pose. The close interaction is two animation: one for the sim and one for the window going down. The sim animations were made with a idle pose as the base(for better blending).

Are the interactions new, or replacements?

I am not questioning your results, just very curious about the method used. Obviously, the animation created with IK was a success, but it piqued my curiosity about the mechanics used to make the scene.

And I am impressed, by the way.

<* Wes *>

They are new interactions, in a new script class, and a new JAZZ script. So, basically I just put in all the windows and filled the queue with the 'Open' interaction, then the 'Close' interaction(this is what you hear in the video). The open interaction's flow is like this: 1. Route sim to window; 2. Play sim's and window's "open window" animation simultaneously; 3. Play window's "open window" pose and loop as needed. The 'close' interaction is the same but without step 3.

In an offline conversation I had with someone else, it became apparent that there are animation overlays, at least for facial expressions. I saw some animations that had nothing but facial bones moved in the frames, and not even starting at frame 1, but later. Not to change the subject entirely, but is there a special way to play those from the interactions script at the same time as the basic interaction?

Like perhaps an interaction of a Sim opening a present, and showing either pleasure, scorn or puzzlement during the process, by playing a different expression with the same body/hands animation.

<* Wes *>

Yes, you can play overlays as 'reactions'. I've seen it in the code, but I don't understand it enough to implement it yet.

This is so awesome. The animation is so smooth and natural. I'd like to make object based animations, I'm not a stranger to scripting so may try 1 or 2 when things are less hectic, although I need more animating experience to get them up to a decent level.

Hi Wes, I followed all of your directions in order to make a toddler rig for animating.. the only problem I'm getting is when following step 7, the skeleton after using your plugin is still an adult skeleton. I'm wondering how I would go about getting the toddler skeleton or the rig.txt file?

I never made a child or toddler rig, but I think Orangemitten's tutorial has a child rig linked from it that Mesher did.

<* Wes *>

Not #42 in this thread... look in the thread Orangemittens linked to in her post.