I have a couple questions about skeletal animation: 1) Would it be to complex to include skeletal animations on hands (moving the fingers)? I'm not worried about the feet, since the movement of the toes won't really be seen (and wouldn't really matter), just the hands (for clenching the fists, casting spells, etc.) 2) I have a skeletal drawing, but some parts don't really look 'right': For the most part, its the spine. With this system, I can't bend the person at the torso much (like they're stretching before excersizing, doing a backflip, etc). Should I add more joints to the spine? Thanks! PS: I'm just getting started in 3D modeling and animation, so if I have any misconceptions or anything like that, please correct me!

Well, while adding finger bones looks excellent (see Enter the Matrix for a simply awesome example of where no finger bones is a huge detriment, btw) there is a performance loss. I wish I could talk about what that loss is, and how great it is, but adding a handful of fingers (no pun intended! I swear!) is about as costly as the entire person in its current state. It may be less because each finger bone would have only one axis of rotation, though.

And adding more bones in the spine would be a good idea, although I cannot think of many games that have done that...

Quote:Original post by Cypher19
Well, while adding finger bones looks excellent (see Enter the Matrix for a simply awesome example of where no finger bones is a huge detriment, btw) there is a performance loss. I wish I could talk about what that loss is, and how great it is, but adding a handful of fingers (no pun intended! I swear!) is about as costly as the entire person in its current state. It may be less because each finger bone would have only one axis of rotation, though.

And adding more bones in the spine would be a good idea, although I cannot think of many games that have done that...

Thanks for the response Cypher. The reason I want to add more bones is because it will make it more cartoony. I'm going to be using this for my 3D RPG, which is going to be similiar to DragonBall. So, the entire game will mostly be based on hand-to-hand combat, which is why I'm concerned about the fingers (I guess I could add all of the fingers as a single joint, and the thumb as a separate one). And the spine is worrying me because of being hit (i.e. when one saiyan kicks another in the ribs from the side).

Ohhhh. Well, in that case I'd recommend an extra spine joint, but in a battle sequence you could EASILY get away with your current system for the hands (the characters mostly use fists in DBZ anyways, right?)

In general, what I'd do though, is visualize a plethora of positions you'll want your characters to have, e.g. battle animations, power-up animations, constipated-DBZ-power-up animations, and then set up your bone structure to fit that spec. Of course, you COULD just go all out and brute force the bone setup by putting in every major bone, whether you need it or not.

I think I'll go with your idea. I could add a second spine joint, and stick with my current system for the hands.

Thanks alot Cypher!

Edit: Awesome, thanks DUDVim! I'll take that into consideration for my game.

Quote:Original post by skittleo
Programmer16-

Study the human form a little better. The human body is not shaped that way. You cannot just do this by memory.

Visit 3d.sk to take a closer look at the human body and use it as a reference to generate your skeleton again.

I know that its not shaped like that, its just my rough draft. I'll check your site out later (too many little children around right now).

Thanks!

Yeah, I guess I should have said "the site you linked to". I had went to it and noticed they were nude, and I figured that my stepbrother and his family might not be too keen on it (since he's a youth pastor and all.) (While I was writing this I decided to go check the site out on my computer. Its a really good site, and I've drawn 2 new images, but they still don't look right:



I was thinking about using key-frame animation, but it seems to be too limited for what I want to do :( But, I like a good challenge, so we'll see how it goes.

Edit: Well, you can't really see the arrows in the second image. The second image is my midsection hit animation. (I'm no physicist or anything like that, so my terminology might be wrong) I would control these 2 joints if the player got kicked in the side, and then IIRC inverse kinetics would pretty much do the rest. I'm still learning (actually, I haven't really started), so I don't quite know what I'm talking about. So slap me if I wrong about anything. (EDIT: You can slap anyway, if you'd like :D, God knows I need it)