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Jonas
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Post by Jonas »

And this is why there are no new character animations in TNM, much as we'd have liked to add some.
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Dead-eye
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Post by Dead-eye »

Yeah Unreal uses individual models for each animation frame. The engine identifies each vertex and moves them to corresponded to the new frame and new vertex position.

There are no bones or any other stuff like that. It's a really time consuming old way to make models. :?

ActorX makes me lothe the new unreal engine. It's just so outrageously easy to use I feel like shooting myself in the foot whenever I make models for Deus Ex and try to import them. :x

Deus Ex reborn really I think is more of a mod for the moding community. There most likely won't be anything new for the people who just play Deus Ex and it's mods will see. But for us moders there is the huge amount of new things we could do. :P

For a hypothetical example let's Imagen that we are making the seen were Gunther dies. And we really won't to see a little movie where JC jumps out a window when Gunther explodes to avoid being incinerated. In both the Old and new engines we can theoretically do it. But In the old unreal Engion we would need to set up a custom model with custom properties and wright a LOT of code to do it. Also after everything is done we might even get a crazy BSP errors, that would take just as long to fix as our animation that we would most likely scrap the idea. :cry:

In the new Engine Ued2.5 or 3.0 (And no MR.Cyberpunk there is no 4.0 to date) all we would have to do is take to model we already have of JC Denton pull him out of UED (this parts a lot easier too.) give him some costume animation and put that animation in the engen and tell him to play when we set up our little move. (noted: there is also a set of tools for making movies in UED so we don't even need to do much, if any, programing.) :D

But there is still the problem of there being too few programmers that can take all of Deus Ex's custom content and port it to ued2.5 or 3.0. I would do it... if I new how. :cry:

BTW: UT2004 directly supports lightwave formate, no exporting needed.
Last edited by Dead-eye on Sun Sep 16, 2007 11:14 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Post by Dead-eye »

Jonas wrote:And this is why there are no new character animations in TNM, much as we'd have liked to add some.
Interesting I'm surprised you took the time to take out all the animation, but I don't know if a bunch of static meshes will be vary fun to look at.
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Post by Phasmatis »

Jonas wrote:And this is why there are no new character animations in TNM, much as we'd have liked to add some.
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Post by EER »

fox wrote:
Laputan_Machine wrote:What I found was individual models for each frame of character movement, so there was a folder filled with tonnes of models.
:shock:
:shock:
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Post by Akerfeldt »

There really is no way around it, we need to reanimate all the DX characters meshes with skeletons.

In the interim though, what I did for DXR was make a joint for every vertex and turn those tonnes of models back into a skeletal mesh :D . CPU friendly? No. Quick and dirty? You bet.
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Post by Jonas »

Dead-eye wrote:For a hypothetical example let's Imagen that we are making the seen were Gunther dies. And we really won't to see a little movie where JC jumps out a window when Gunther explodes to avoid being incinerated. In both the Old and new engines we can theoretically do it. But In the old unreal Engion we would need to set up a custom model with custom properties and wright a LOT of code to do it. Also after everything is done we might even get a crazy BSP errors, that would take just as long to fix as our animation that we would most likely scrap the idea. :cry:
First of all, that would really fuck with the DX design ethos, but okay.

Secondly, what on Earth do BSP errors have to do with character animations? <_<
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Post by metche_steele »

Akerfeldt wrote:There really is no way around it, we need to reanimate all the DX characters meshes with skeletons.

In the interim though, what I did for DXR was make a joint for every vertex and turn those tonnes of models back into a skeletal mesh :D . CPU friendly? No. Quick and dirty? You bet.
Tbh with HDTP I recon we'll end up releasing our final product without characters. Theres just no one that can hack doing them - and believe me i've tried hard to recruit someone.

Its madness - and i'm gutted because the models and textures were fabulous - i mean really head turning top notch stuff. What can I do? No one can do it so i'm left with no choice.

The only other thought I had was to retex the old models with the new stuff ...i think that would end up looking incredibly naff.
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Post by justanotherfan »

I was going to agree with Dead-Eye in the last page, but didn't want to post my idea. Now I can ;-)

DXR is very much a mod for modders, but as a user I've always been excited about it. It'll fix the bugs that DX has on my platform, and pave the way for incredible new mods. There's even a chance for a Unreal 3 update. But HDTP actually makes Deus Ex look great. HDTP is limited by the Unreal Engine. While it's important that DeusEx.exe will have HDTP, Unreal2.5 appears to be the only way forward (at least for character animations). It can use higher resolution textures, more polygons in models, and it makes it easier to do.

I didn't want to suggest that HDTP rely on DXR. Since HDTP has gone on for a long time and I've of it's read members waiting for it to finish, my idea might not be welcome ;-). Maybe HDTP can continue on after the release of DXR to increase the quality of Deus Ex beyond what can be done with DeusEx.exe. I'm sure DXR would be excited to have the new HDTP characters available uniquely in UE2.5 if it is far too difficult to do otherwise. After HDTP's next release, I'd imagine it would be more about tweaking and replacing individual objects rather than rebuilding everything, so the stress and forum arguments are very reduced. Too much potential. This depends on DXR's release of course, and HDTP being willing to create things for it (eg. character animations).

Maybe as a user, I don't want HDTP to make a final release and disband :)
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Post by metche_steele »

justanotherfan wrote:Maybe HDTP can continue on after the release of DXR to increase the quality of Deus Ex beyond what can be done with DeusEx.exe.
Unfortunatly that just isn't going to happen - im at a crossroads in my life ...like others on my team ...and well ...real life has just taken the front seat these last few months. I know i'll mod again someday but it wont be for DX :)

Wanna thank you for your support man :)
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Post by DDL »

The current plan (as far as I'm aware) is to let the DXR folks have full access to all the HDTP content, so they can incorporate any or all of it as and when they want. This includes the characters, and doesn't need any further support from us HDTP folks.

I assume it's non-trivial to add a skeleton to an existing character mesh (bones! Ghaaa! The horror!), but it's probably easier than making a character mesh de novo and then adding a skeleton to that.

So while we probably won't have HDTP characters in original DX, there's no reason to think we won't have them EVER.

:)
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Post by Phasmatis »

DDL wrote:...I assume it's non-trivial to add a skeleton to an existing character mesh (bones! Ghaaa! The horror!), but it's probably easier than making a character mesh de novo and then adding a skeleton to that.

So while we probably won't have HDTP characters in original DX, there's no reason to think we won't have them EVER.

:)
Yeah that's the problem, making a new character from scratch takes a lot of time, you can get away with using the same mesh for a lot of them but the different textures still have to be done.

Although I'm repeating myself here... Once the model is done and textured you then add the bones, then import a sequence, export to a .3ds file then repeat with all 64 sequences. That's for every character that uses a different mesh!

However, with UT2004 you save all the animations or infact use the original UT2004 animation as long as the skeletons match and you can simply add bones and import the character. You still need to model and texture everything obviously but it's a hell of a lot easier than making them for Deus Ex.

So yeah I agree with DDL I doubt very much there will ever be hirez characters for Deus Ex but there might be for DX:R.
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Post by ewanlaing »

these character models simply MUST be included somewhere. i vote to include them in DXR. they were just about my main reason for looking into this mod.
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Post by Dead-eye »

Thats too bad, the JC Dention model is one of the coolest thing I have ever seen.

Did Alex leave the mod team? Everyone got all pissed off about the assault rifle and I don't see him posting anymore so I would guess he left. At times like that the Mod leader just needs to step in and tell everyone how it's gona go down and love it or hate it that's just how it is.

I'm sure the will see more models in Deus Ex Reborn, I don't think I will ever give up on Deus Ex. Maybe someday (If Deus Ex 3 rocks) we will see a remastered version of Deus Ex come out with a SDK.

well I guess this is sort of Good by to HDTP? the new versions due out soon and after that HDTP's done? Well I'm really glade you guys got as far as you did. You give the rest of us some hope. Now Let's get DXR done.
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Post by Lexx »

Arg, this isn't a good thing. :O I mean... the new characters are one of the main reasons, why I waited for the mod this long time. I love the new Gunther modell and I love the screens of the other characters. It would be a shame, if this can not be used in some way and I hate it to think about waiting another 5 years for something, that makes look DX better then the original. I mean.. yes, I also love DX without any graphic updates, but since I saw some screens from the HDTP project, I don't want to see it without anymore. The new scenery, the new look, and so on... this is just fantastic.

Isn't it possible to use the old character animations? (at this point I have to say, that I have no clue about the old Unreal editing)..


I am depressed now. :(
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