Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

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Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by machf »

Well, I've been looking at the dinos in the beta, extracted them as .tpm files and noticed a few things:
  • Para_A has a PVA (vertex assignment) value of 6000 instead of the usual -2
  • Para_A has no vertex assignments in its bones/joints
  • None of them uses NumDoubleJoints
  • Only raptors use interpolated joints, on bone 20 and with these values:

    Code: Select all

     Anim00 = 22
     Anim01 = 16
     Ratio = 0.500000
     RotationRatio = 0.500000
    
  • Only raptors have a NumJoints value of 23, all other bipeds have 21
  • All quadrupeds have a NumJoints value of 29, in the retail they have different values
Comparing to the retail:
  • In the retail, raptors have:

    Code: Select all

        int NumJoints = 21
        int NumDoubleJoints = 6
    
  • Interpolated raptor joints are 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26
  • The para has 21 joints, no double/interpolated ones
  • The albertasaur and rexes have 21 joints and 1 double, interpolated one is 22
  • The brachi has 29 joints, no double/interpolated ones
  • The steg has 30 joints and 2 double joints, interpolated ones are 30 and 31
  • The trike has 31 joints and 4 double joints, interpolated ones are 31, 32, 33 and 34
This seems to imply that:
  • there are some predefined vertex assignments for certain meshes (for example, 6000 for the "old" Para), new ones use a value of -2 and t-scripts for vertex assignment instead
  • the base biped skeleton (indicated by string Type = "Raptor" or "TRex", which are synonyms) has 21 bones/joints
  • the base quadruped one (indicated by string Type = "Trike") has 29 bones/joints
  • additional bones/joints can be added (yes, I'm being redundant)
  • some of the new bones/joints can become double/interpolated, but they don't need to; I guess non-interpolated ones remain "static" relative to the "hip" bone and interpolated ones instead move together with the ones between which they're interpolated (Ratio and RotationRatio determining how much the Anim00 bone/joint influences the position and rotation over the Anim01 one)
So, let's try that and see what happens... for example, there's and old T-Rex mesh with a different vertex count in the retail in IJ, I believe, right? That one may have used a predefined vertex assignment too.

Oh, and BTW... anybody attempting to discuss this outside this forum without my authorization will be tracked down, killed and skinned (and not necessarily in that order), his/her head will become a trophy on my wall, his/her skin a rug on my living room, and his/her bones chewing toys for my dogs. Trust me, I'll find out.
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by Rebel »

That's rather curious and raises the question of the skeletons being hard-coded at one time. Perhaps they assumed that having scripting entries gave them an ability to edit and/or change assignments after a dino import?
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by machf »

More likely,they realized if they made any changes to the meshes, they would have to change the code and recompile if it was hardcoded... this way they didn't have to.

More evidence supporting my theory (how did I not remember this earlier?): the shadow meshes for the dinos in the retail (the ones in the Beta don't have them, BTW). All bipeds have 21 joints, the Brach (only quadruped with one) has 29, just as the dinos in the Beta.
As for the joints not indicating the interpolation parameters, I still have to run more tests.

Oh, and the demo/retail don't recognize the "PVA = 6000" parameter for the Para_A as the Beta does, I imported it into a blank level for tests. So, by the time it went gold, the predefined assignments had been removed and only scripted ones were used.
Now I wish we could get not the source code, but the *Beta's* source code... oh, well, I can try to disassemble it too. Big Red, do you want to help me compare it to the retail?
I swear I've seen those two raptors at the start of PV jump the first time I played it...
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by RexHunter99 »

It'd have been because of the slope in the terrain, I've seen them 'hop' more than once and thought they were jumping, but upon closer inspection found they'd just bounced on the ground :(
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by Draconisaurus »

machf!!!! This is incredible. It's the first step in unlocking higher customization of new working dinosaur models, which will be crucial in creating a new, more capable rigging application, if it's to be done. I also do find it amazing that we now "know" that PVA stands for Predefined Vertex Assignment. That's awesome! Surely -2 means "don't use one". I wonder, then, what -1 and 0 would indicate.. Maybe 0 is "none" (meaning disallow bone assignments) and -1 was some kind of default, maybe for their original raptor meshes.
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by tatu »

machf wrote:I swear I've seen those two raptors at the start of PV jump the first time I played it...
I saw one of the raptor in the lab level jump, in the beta enigne. And I also notice that the raptors are smarter in beta (atleast in the lab) since they walk right up to you when you start, they don't do that in retail.
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by machf »

Draconisaurus wrote:machf!!!! This is incredible. It's the first step in unlocking higher customization of new working dinosaur models, which will be crucial in creating a new, more capable rigging application, if it's to be done. I also do find it amazing that we now "know" that PVA stands for Predefined Vertex Assignment. That's awesome! Surely -2 means "don't use one". I wonder, then, what -1 and 0 would indicate.. Maybe 0 is "none" (meaning disallow bone assignments) and -1 was some kind of default, maybe for their original raptor meshes.
Well, in the past we had used "joint assignment", "bones assignment", "assign the vertices", and a couple of times "vert assignment" and "vertex assignment" when speaking about rigging a mesh. The V in PVA certainly stood for Vertex/Vertices, seeing that the Para's bones had no assignments and that PVA value of 6000 made me add 1+1 (and get 3) and realize A stood for Assignment (previously I had thought it might be Array). As for the P, I'm not sure, I though it might have been "Polygon", I guess "Predefined" would make more sense...
I wonder if TPDC's "weight" files should now be renamed as "PVA" files... since that's in essence what they are storing. (And TPDC renamed to "PVAtool" or "PVAapp"... no, Remdul would kill me for suggesting that.)

Since the value used by most is -2, it's logical that -1 was already taken before (no bones? I should test that too), and apparently positive values were used for predetermined assignments (should test the Rex too, with some other PVA values). 0 could be either considered part of the same system of the positive values (0, 1000, 2000, etc.) or may be a special value too.

UPDATE: OK, setting the PVA value to -1 (and using the Para for Mesh and Physics instead of Para_A) would make the level crash as soon as I turned on the BONES cheat... and the Parasaur apparently collapsed into a black hole as soon as I got near it without using BONES. It was weird, it was standing there and then it woke up, rolled in the air around its center, and vanished. With PVA = -1 and Physics and Mesh set to Para_A, it wouldn't do that, apparently it moved fine, but it would still crash with the BONES cheat.

EDIT2: wait... now it's crashing with BONES even after I reverted to the old version of the level...
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by tatu »

I think it has to do with the beta enigne, it crash in the beta levels too
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by Second Illiteration »

Just let me know when we can adjust the skeletons to get better moving dinosaurs (like my edited jp3 version of the tc-isle raptor) :mrgreen:
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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by Draconisaurus »

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Re: Dinosaur skeletons and the beta

Post by hppav »

He just divided by zero :o
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