Great strides have been made on all fronts the past few weeks. Aubrey's awesome character models, David's hardcore animation editor work and Jeff's fancy UI's have come together to create some great new functionality in Overgrowth's Phoenix Engine. It's been a little while since we've done a tech demo, and I've heard some clamoring on IRC and elsewhere for an explanation of how our new features work. So without further ado, here is an initial rigging and animation editor tutorial.
Be sure to watch it in HD!
This is just the beginning, I've only shown off part of the functionality. If you think the characters look kind of gooey, you'll be happy to see the more advanced joint functionality that David has made possible. Also, the bones will eventually become physics objects that are linked to capsules and then we will have 3D character meshes that can collapse like ragbot.
In conclusion, the end of the beard is nigh. Thanks again to Mikko Tarmia and Anton Riehl for their amazing musical contributions which helped make this video possible. (permalink)
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holy crap, that rig creator and animation editor are awesome!
assuming you could bring in custom models and stuff, it would be the ultimate machinima creator.
Yes you can.
Great video and voice over.
Thanks! John made it :)
Awesome sauce!
THIS IS ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE! Sorry for the caps, but this is too cool. I wanna go and preorder this right now! ^_^
But alas, I am broke D:
No worries, take you time. ;) By the way, we have a "TrialPay" preorder option, which basically lets you sign up for something like Netflix or GameFly, and then they pay us on your behalf. You can then cancel your subscription and you will have bought OG for like $10.
Awesome stuff. And that stone pillar is putting on one sexy dance for us.
****.. in editor rigging eh... mighty fine work who ever coded that!
yep, even can understand to put the bones in the mesh despite the perspective or position of the viewer, very impressive, that as a stand alone tool would sell like wild fire.
Great, now I'm seeing an army of raping pillars and rabbits. >_< Great video though.
Awesome work, guys! That is truly some code wizardry.
One question, though, will you be implementing skin weight-painting or envelopes for the joints as well as IK solvers?
We have some more advanced features that the video doesn't show, but we are going to develop more fancy stuff soon. For example, yesterday I was working on an animation mixing UI. More videos to come!
Hehe, You guys are hilarious and absolutely astonishing. a deadly combination if I've ever seen one. Your dev team is a force to be reckoned with. Great work!
Very impersive tech demo and your animation editor looks awesome
Disturbing, and yet... So brilliant. Amazing.
Sweet, dancing rabbits. XD
You guys are brilliant with your publicity stuff, that's how PR should be done.
I loved how awesome the editor is, Impressive how easy it was for you to just get an armature working right away.
Its easier than any 3d program. You must be sh!tN@ me. Now you tell me that can be sported way easier.
I'll be buying it really soon now.
Everything you guys have done for this game is incredible. Everything is exactly how a game's SDK SHOULD be. Will everything be customizable, however? Say I wanted to use all of these incredible tools you guys are implementing, but didn't want to use them for a game about rabbits?
Frikkin awsum stuff... think I will preorder this aswell soon, just gotta wait for after my studies in december =] You guys rock, seriously
This is awesome! I can't even do animations normally, but I'll definitely be able to make them with this! It would be really awesome if there was an animation program like this. Overgrowth honestly looks better every time I check back here. You guys are great at PR. I cracked up at the part where he says "Aw yeah, get jiggy with it!"
Oh man.
I am expecting some insane mods for this. Animate any model easily? yessss
Oh wow, awesome!
Dancing stone columns for the win :P
Dear god that is insane. How the hell did you guys pull this off?! Just taking a model and giving him bones in a matter of minutes instead of doing it in 3DS Max or something. Amazing.
Is the system only going to support bone heating or also weight painting? Since bone heating is a nice quick start but looks ugly with anything but simple meshes.
I'm not sure what those mean exactly, but the animation editor supports a number of advanced features that the video doesn't show and we are going to develop more fancy stuff soon. For example, yesterday I was working on an animation mixing UI. More videos and info to come!
Wow. That looks just fantastic.
Holy crap you got all the tools. Amazing work.
O_o I didn't think seriously about buying the game, maybe a very late buy, but now... if you really make it so moddable... I won't resist buying it whenever there's cash. ;->
Anyway, the video is great! And so humourous. :-D
Awesome, very sandbox'y.
Love the way it looks, so simple which is great for users!
that is a pretty interesting editor there. I s ther any possible way it could be downloaded or used?
It's available to preorderers :)
got it.
This can be made even easier if you can group manipulate the skeleton with preset templates. So then you don't have to manually adjust the joints and get it wrong.
For fighting moves, it can be neat if you make "mini" adjustment to each arms, legs, chest, abs, and head. This is so you can create a fighting posture or a attack animation easily by loading template into a arm and adjusting it.
that's possible already... In a way
see there are two types of files when doing animation in Overgrowth, one is for rigs (the skeletons) that you can load onto any object and use as a template for the skeletons
the other type is for animations, so if you want a certain stance that already has been made, then you can just copy it from another animation (it's possible to have more than one open at a time)
awesome work!!
The best skeleton editor I've ever seen! PURE EPIC! That hare in the intro looks a bit zombified and creepy though...
Hahaha, I liked the video and the voiceover to go with it. Pretty neat stuff.