Friday, March 18, 2011

Ongoing Character Animation Problems

Character Set Up
OK I've been struggling with this problem for so long now with what seems like no end in sight. I thought I would take a little time and screen capture as much as possible with some explanations and see if this information help anyone to help come up with a solution to this problem.

As you can see in my first screen capture my alien starts off OK in his "T Pose" and stands up vertically. I've included as much of the setup as possible so you can hopefully see my settings. Click the image for full size view.

Firstly, I'm using MAX 8 to create my character and import from Max 8 to Unity 3D using Max's version of the FBX exporter. as you can see the FBX export options are very limited and it does not give me the option to adjust rotation of the model, which I'm beginning to suspect is where the main problem is. I tried looking to see if they have an updated version of the FBX exporter but they do not support past version 9 of MAX it seems. Software companies REALLY know how to stick it in and break it off don't they? So I'm stuck with exporting it in with this method unless there is another way that I'm not aware of?







Test Play: Now as you can see I've added his "ZombieAlienAIAnimation.js" java script and his "ZombieAlienAI" java script (Basically the same script from the FPS tutorial on Unity 3D) both of these scripts can be viewed here. on my Unity Answerer's Question.
As you can see he flips over and performs his animations and his routine of moving from one Waypoint to the next, he will even chase after my FPS controller like how you see him above. I have not given him and REAL attacking ability yet nor have I made other animations to allow him to actually attack my player yet, nor will I until I can get him to perform the most basic of functions properly.

I've included this screen capture just in case you need to see how my Alien Zombie biped is in place.
Someone had suggested placing the character inside of an empty game object and adjusting his rotation. Well I tried that and it seemed no matter what direction I rotated him he would still end up performing his animations and routine exactly like in my screen capture that shows his action in game play. Face down and swimming rather than walking!!



Here is a screen capture of the alien as he is imported into Unity 3D straight from MAX 8 using the FBX export from MAX 8. I don't know if anyone would need to see this but I have included it just the same.






Now I've included this screen capture because it shows a distinct difference in the way the Robots from the FPS tutorial on Unity 3D differ from my imported Zombie Alien. As you can see the robot is rotated sideways and my Zombie is rotated straight up. Now that could be part of the problem like I had mentioned above. but I should mention that I have tried a few other scrips on my Alien Zombies. I had one that would make them animate properly only they would not walk, they would walk "on the Spot" or "in one place" for lack of a better description. So from that I can only deduce that it must be a script problem, but I'm not a code expert so I REALLY don't know. All I do know is that I have been at this problem for well over a month now and it just gets more and more frustrating each day.

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