Oh wow,
http://www.vrac.iastate.edu/~streeter/avh/avh.html
His 2003 videos are the most fantastic hilarious thing I've seen in ages! Its quite an emotional experience watching the little guy purposefully flinging his face into the deck until he can jump - the launch he does is really realistic with all sorts of natural body flexing going on. I don't think I'm likely to get that kind of fluidity with verlet & state-machines... but I can do the weird spasms lying on the ground just as well :)
Nice links.
Schmodz.
Golem AI
864
February 28, 2006 05:47 PM
Just another thought... you might want to take a look at the work done on passive walking over the past 15 years. In particular, look at Tad McGeer's papers from the early 90s, which are finding particular favour lately.
468
February 28, 2006 06:48 PM
Quote: Original post by schmodz
Hey all,
I managed to find an old .exe of my walking ragdoll engine before
I broke it :)
I posted it at devimg so you can try it out:
http://www.devimg.net/?Post=743
The motion is pretty comical, and there's all sorts of horrible glitches,
but it gives you an idea of what you can do with verlet as a start.
Tech note: there's some extra controls not listed in the readme:
numpad * = toggle skeleton display
numpad + = increase character LOD bias
numpad - = decrease character LOD bias
Let me know if it works for you..
LOL, I can't resist because that was a funny and cool demo!
Oh oh! I mad skinny mad!
No skinny I was just playing!
Noooooooooo! Don't smash my head!
He was only playing too! Now he wants to shake and make up!
BTW:
I don't think I am suppose to be up here :-)
Anyway, cool demo and please excuse me, I am tired...
(EDIT)
There are younger people on here so I blurred the ... "Skinny?" out.
948
February 28, 2006 07:25 PM
Skinny is going to give me nightmares blurred or not.
In other news, I am working on a 2d ragdoll system. I have my character editor and I have animations working (but no animation editor, it's still done by either modifying the plain-text saved files or editing code, unfortunately.) It is capable of seamlessly moving from one pose to another or from one animation to another. I have only played with simple examples, but by chaining animations I could get some realistic movements (provided there are enough animations, I anticipate I'll need many). Unfortunately I don't have any real physics involved in animations.
I am planning on approaching this exact problem by activating animations in certain situations triggered by my physics engine. It's a long way off right now.
In other news, I am working on a 2d ragdoll system. I have my character editor and I have animations working (but no animation editor, it's still done by either modifying the plain-text saved files or editing code, unfortunately.) It is capable of seamlessly moving from one pose to another or from one animation to another. I have only played with simple examples, but by chaining animations I could get some realistic movements (provided there are enough animations, I anticipate I'll need many). Unfortunately I don't have any real physics involved in animations.
I am planning on approaching this exact problem by activating animations in certain situations triggered by my physics engine. It's a long way off right now.
_______________________"You're using a screwdriver to nail some glue to a ming vase. " -ToohrVyk
178
March 01, 2006 03:30 AM
Sincere apologies to viewers of a sensitive disposition for any disturbing imagery.
SkinnyMan is a character designed by a friend of mine who has a fairly strange sense of humour. If I had a working build without him or with a fig-leaf to protect his modesty I would have posted that....
2D ragdolls are cool because its so much easier to calculate bodypart rendering and proper knee/elbow constraints when you only have to worry about one plane. I expect you could get *hundreds* of them running at once... maybe some insane 2d fighting game, or a battle between two big tribes of ragdoll lemmings might be fun...
Timkin: I have seen some of the passive walking stuff too and its very impressive what they can do even with no control input at all. Sadly I think my implementation is way too fake in its physics to take advantage of things like the natural pendulum motion of the legs. Something I did think of was maybe transferring the damping into joint-space rather than world-space so that the characters have something resembling muscle tension - i.e. a pose could be 'tensed' while the whole body remains movable through the world without excessive damping. That *might* enable more proper physical effects.
Schmodz
SkinnyMan is a character designed by a friend of mine who has a fairly strange sense of humour. If I had a working build without him or with a fig-leaf to protect his modesty I would have posted that....
2D ragdolls are cool because its so much easier to calculate bodypart rendering and proper knee/elbow constraints when you only have to worry about one plane. I expect you could get *hundreds* of them running at once... maybe some insane 2d fighting game, or a battle between two big tribes of ragdoll lemmings might be fun...
Timkin: I have seen some of the passive walking stuff too and its very impressive what they can do even with no control input at all. Sadly I think my implementation is way too fake in its physics to take advantage of things like the natural pendulum motion of the legs. Something I did think of was maybe transferring the damping into joint-space rather than world-space so that the characters have something resembling muscle tension - i.e. a pose could be 'tensed' while the whole body remains movable through the world without excessive damping. That *might* enable more proper physical effects.
Schmodz
948
March 01, 2006 05:59 AM
Oh, don't worry about me taking offense at a little shrivled penis, it's no more erotic or explicit than if you were to watch a 90 year old man shower. I'm talking about Skinny's overall apppearance, his beady little eyes and creepy teeth and hooker boots. Overall, it provides a nightmarish creature and when it follows you around that's just creepy. I duplicated him like 50 times and had a zombie skinny hord after me.
I've put the following in source tags so you can scroll through it if you want to, or skip it easily. It isn't topic related entirely, and is mostly talking about my project and other 2d ragdoll demos. Sorry for the diversion from the topic.
As far as 3d solutions go, it is much more difficult to make seamless animations that look good. I'm lucky, 2d stuff is simplistic by comparison, but even tackling the 2d problem of a character getting up realistically is very difficult without resorting to animations (which I'm doing anyway.)
Good luck.
[Edited by - M2tM on March 1, 2006 7:59:20 AM]
I've put the following in source tags so you can scroll through it if you want to, or skip it easily. It isn't topic related entirely, and is mostly talking about my project and other 2d ragdoll demos. Sorry for the diversion from the topic.
Yeah, 2d ragdolls are awesome in that regard. I've only found them seriously used in three full games to date: ragdoll masters and ragdoll kung fu, and ragdoll Matrix. I came up with the concept of doing a serious ragdoll fighting game with realistic animations about a year ago before hearing about these two games, but even with the games I mentioned, neither fighting style is realistic.Ragdoll Kung Fu takes the concept too far by providing you with 100% control of the skeleton which ends up making you pick up and drop each leg to make them walk. It's a pain pull off combos and involves twirling your mouse too much, things feel too chaotic and cartoony in general. Awesome concept, alright execution, but it feels lacking in gameplay while being an interesting tech toy.Ragdoll masters is addictive as hell, but ultimately falls short as being just another quick to pick up, quick to put down party style game for one or two people. I know it sounds funny "party style" and "two people" but that's how it plays.I haven't tried Ragdoll Matrix, but I don't like their execution graphically.Basically, the games give you too much or too little control over the character which detracts from the gameplay and therefore the playability. I have a system that should fix that and I can even promise you'll not even notice the different joints in terms of textures overlapping eachother.As far as 3d solutions go, it is much more difficult to make seamless animations that look good. I'm lucky, 2d stuff is simplistic by comparison, but even tackling the 2d problem of a character getting up realistically is very difficult without resorting to animations (which I'm doing anyway.)
Good luck.
[Edited by - M2tM on March 1, 2006 7:59:20 AM]
_______________________"You're using a screwdriver to nail some glue to a ming vase. " -ToohrVyk
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