StargateTC 2 Mod for Half-Life 2 Or3L - 3rd person view animations news

Hello, I'm Aurélien (a.k.a. Or3L), 21 years old, student in computer sciences. I'm leader-coding and modeler/animator for StargateTC2. I began modding by the end of 2004 in the StargateTC 1 devteam. In this article, I will talk about a part of my work: the third person viewed animation of player models. First of all, we have a basic skeleton showing the players bones. The bones are linked together by ball-and-socket joints. The model vertices (the model "points") must then be linked to the skeleton (a model vertice can be linked to one or several skeleton bones).

Once this is done, we have a model which we can bend in all the direction allowed by these ball-and-socket joints. The animator work consists in "bending" this model to create realistic animations. To complete the work, the animator must place the weapons in the model hands. Here are some examples of weapon positioning on the Tau'ri player models:

Here are some similar examples for the Goa'uld player models:

Finally, here is a video showing you some animation examples made by Kris. These animations will be included in the bêta 2 or in ulterior versions of the mod.

The Motion Capture consists in capturing the movements made by someone equiped with sensors on his/her whole body. The captured movements (walk, jump, Jaffa staff hits...) can then be modified with a 3D software to apply these movements to a player model. That's all for this article. If you have any question, just ask them in the comments of this article.
Or3L