[WIP] Animations For SH4

Project:
To finally crack the animations format in SH4.

Reward:
Not a danged thing except knowing you worked on it.

Goal:
Create a way to place new animations into SH4.

For an idea of what level of work I'm talking about:
http://www.subsim.com/radioroom/showthread.php?t=176928

No takers so I'll use this thread to babble on as a record for the future.
Plus I forget alot of things and always never keep notes!


I been doing some 'animation' type work for other reasons and learned alot about how Bipeds work and alot of other boreing file structure stuff.

This all klicked in my head a few days ago so I started looking at the SH4 animation areas again.
This is not about props rotation but the animated people stuff.
So don't ask!


A Biped is defined in the SH4 file Secondary.dat
It's listed as Body Parts in S3D. You'll only know what those body parts are if you look at that chunk in Hex.
There's a bunch of them. All with a bip name.

To be continued.....................................

[Rockin Robbins]

Babble on! I haven't used a hex editor since my Apple II days so I wouldn't be a lot of help. But if you keep babbling, I might learn something and be of some help in the future.

I do volunteer to serve in my traditional function of crash test dummy though. If you have something that needs trying out let me know and I'll give you a report on how it works.

Hey Mate!

Saw you was out and about again.


Still have an old e-mail address for you. That bad now?


I did PM a new Member that want's to learn and that I have exchanged with lately. We'll see how things go.

One thing I do very well is to figure out file structures.
A lot of it is pattern recognition. I've seen the pattern outside of SH4.

I only need to figure out the details now.

[iambecomelife]

FYI I am sorely tempted, having done some hex editing in the days before pack3d. Unfortunately, I don't think I'll have the time! If things change I'll let you know, and thanks for your continuing work on this dinosaur of a game.

[Rockin Robbins]

And thanks for YOURS IABL! I sure hope to see your Wolves of the Kaiser working soon!

[Rockin Robbins]

Originally Posted by privateer

Hey Mate!

Saw you was out and about again.


Still have an old e-mail address for you. That bad now?


I did PM a new Member that want's to learn and that I have exchanged with lately. We'll see how things go.

One thing I do very well is to figure out file structures.
A lot of it is pattern recognition. I've seen the pattern outside of SH4.

I only need to figure out the details now.

Same old e-mail address! What hex editor do you like?

I use SweetScape 010 Editor mostly now.
http://www.sweetscape.com/010editor/

It's not free but well worth the few bucks if you use it as much as I do.

Biped stuff listed in the Secondary.dat

Bip01
Bip01 Footsteps
Bip01 Pelvis
Bip01 Spine
Bip01 L Thigh
Bip01 R Thigh
Bip01 Spine1
Bip01 L Calf
Bip01 L Foot
Bip01 L Toe0
Bip01 L Toe0Nub
Bip01 R Calf
Bip01 R Foot
Bip01 R Toe0
Bip01 R Toe0Nub
Bip01 Spine2
Bip01 Neck
Bip01 Head
Bip01 L Clavicle
Bip01 R Clavicle
Bip01 HeadNub
Bip01 L UpperArm
Bip01 L Forearm
Bip01 L Hand
Bip01 L Finger0
Bip01 L Finger0Nub
Bip01 R UpperArm
Bip01 R Forearm
Bip01 R Hand
Bip01 R Finger0
Bip01 R Finger0Nub

A Biped I created with Maxscript showing Parent/Child relationships.

4 x 7 x 31

I've nearly got the extracted data ready to import to 3ds Max.
If this does work out the animations will be opened to extract/replace and add new animations.

[iambecomelife]

Originally Posted by privateer

4 x 7 x 31

I've nearly got the extracted data ready to import to 3ds Max.
If this does work out the animations will be opened to extract/replace and add new animations.

No Idea what you're doing or how you're doing it...but I'm glad to hear!

I've got quite a bit of the animations format figured out so far.
Not as much as I'd like, but it's moveing along each day.
Alot of it I figure out by NOT working on it.


It's kind of 2 steps forwards and one back right now.

Took a break today to go listen to some friends in a bunch of bands play.
While talking about some equipment the old "Dang! I should of thought of that!" hit me.

I came home and did a little experiment and SAW the biped from SH4 for the first time!!




It don't look like much but it's proof positive!

I can now start converting it to a common format that most programs will handle.

The format, as it is in SH4, is 7 floats.
X Y Z RX RY RZ W
The base biped is NOT transitional!! That's where I wasted alot of time and banged my head against a wall.
I'm guessing the animation frames will be the transitional stuff.

There are 31 parts so now you get my math.
4 x 7 x 31

The base biped is 868 bytes and each animation frame is 868 bytes.



The format I find closest to universal is the Collada dae.
It allows X Y Z RX RY RZ W to be exported.
It can also be parsed and converted to a format that can be placed into SH4.

I'll explain about transitional stuff a bit now.

If you use say even the dae format? each position adds to it's parents positional data to find it's actual position.

This is not true for the base biped in SH4.
Each position is actual position so we need to do the math and subtract from the parent chain to move the data to a useable format such as dae, bvh, etc.

We need to know what is that parent-child chain.
I'm not totally convinced it's as the biped is listed in SH4 Secondary.dat.
I also did not render it that way. Once an animation is exported and added to the base biped I have I'll know for sure.

Once this is all understood as We did for SH3? SH5 will be the next target.

I sent a message to Skwasjer about the animations last night.
I know he did an update to S3D that he never released concerning SH5.
Not that I expect him to do anything to S3D but I figured he'd like to know things have progressed somewhat.


I've got a script started for 010 that rips the animations into a readable vertex7 format.

Another script I'm working on rips the base Biped and does all the math needed to plant the results in a dae file so it can be imported to different 3D programs.