4/22/19: DESTRUCTION

4/22/19: DESTRUCTION

Ok, here's the primitive process I've currently got for Destruction. I feel that I will get better at it once I learn modeling and texturing to create better details.

I first export a selected wall from UE4 into .obj file format. Then import that into Blender. Scale will be large, so reduce it to 0.1 to fit Blender's scale. (With metric settings set to 0.1 in Blender, it'll scale right back up on export)

Now with that object, turn on the cell fracture add-on and cell fracture it. It will be placed into another layer. In order to get the physics to work, you gotta select 1 piece and apply rigid body physics.

Once you apply physics and turn on 'start disabled', highlight all the other pieces and use 'Copy from Active' to apply those same settings to the rest of the pieces.

The green box is actually just a cube with visuals set to wired in the display setting. You want to set its rigid body settings to PASSIVE so that it interacts with the wall pieces. That's technically the only ground those pieces have, so spread it out. Another factor you'll need are the wrecking balls for the destruction. See that weird snowman? It's objects parented to Rin to act as collision. The thicker the object, the better the collision.

You'll want to set these objects that are parented to the correct bone to 'Animated'. This way it actually follows what your character does. Another important factor is collision groups. I wanted the wall corner to be destroyed first without the rest of it falling, so I set it to collision group 1. The rest was collision group 2.
I shift-clicked the green box to be both collision groups so nothing falls through. This also applies to your parented objects. Speaking of those, make sure all destruction-based objects are on the same layer or they don't work. Use 'M' to move them to the same "layer box" as the broken wall.
Another thing about the wall is that sometimes you don't want a piece to fall at all. I set those pieces to passive so they wouldn't budge. I did this for edges of the wall.

Last bug fix about gravity if things look floaty. Go to world settings and HEAVILY increase the gravity! Also, while you're there, you can set the range for rigid body cache. Pretty important for timing when your destruction works.
For export prep, you need to create an empty axis. There needs to be one at the center for the object to act correctly in UE4. Then create a bone and parent it to the empty axis.
Lastly, parent every piece of the wall to that bone. You can select them all at once and parent them.
The reason for this process is so the UE4 object is all counted as ONE skeleton. If you don't do this, then EVERY SINGLE PIECE has its own skeleton and its own animation. Yikes!

There IS baking keyframes, but I just found out a few minutes ago that, as long as the rigid body cache is set up in the right time-frame, the export process will record the physics anyways!

So you imported the wall and everything. How to use it? It would just intersect with the wall that's already there!
In the sequencer, set the perfect wall to hide and the broken wall to unhide at the exact 2 frames when the destruction is expected! Nobody will notice with the smoke and other stuff going on.

The door was manually animated in UE4. Some things don't need to be cracked to get the job done, you know.

Here's what my destruction looks like for now. Very basic, but it's a start. As long as the actually destruction workflow is there, I can begin to work on getting better at it.

And another angle. The best part about all this is that, since it's also an imported animation, I can set it to reverse itself! I'm gonna use that trick for Marin's vid! Oh! I also suggest re-applying the original wall's texture to the broken one. Although that's probably not gonna look as good as it did before, at least the textures will match up.

-----

4/21/19: SUBDIVISION

I know I usually don't work on Sundays, but I couldn't resist researching.

So my models have looked low polygon at times due to the fact that subdividing the model, for export to UE4, was impossible since the shape keys kept getting in the way.

Telehypnotic told me he cut body parts off and subdivided them. That didn't click with me until just right now in how it could be used for Unreal Engine!
You're supposed to cut off the head from the body so that the body can be subdivided FREE FROM SHAPE KEYS!
Although cutting off body parts near clothing leads to less fix-editing in the future for edges. It also allows hiding the seam.

Ok, so that's cutting for subdivision that I need to master. This is definitely a process for final export since it can easily slow down animations further.

Once those areas are cut and subdivision is applied, (don't forget to delete shape keys on cut body parts) then you're free to export! Since the parenting stays correct, the bones still affect everything correctly!

Here's a pic cut at the neck. I did that as a test to see the difference. MASSIVE. You can also see weird edges on the clothing. This is why clothing doesn't get subdivided.

Huge difference for appendages! I'll be able to use this technique for Neko vid! Should absolutely boost the quality! The model will probably still require some edge fixing in areas like Marin's sandals sinking in here. To do that, I can use shape keys to "edit" the mesh without screwing it up in some way. Just have those new shape keys permanently on.

So model quality will be permanently boosted in all future videos starting with Neko vid.

THAT ROCKS!

-----

4/14/19: Long Week & Weekend

A lot happened, so I'll try to sum it up. Most of the week was slowly animating Rin slowly walking up to Neko and doing a down smash- er, I mean doing a swing with the bag into Neko's mouth.

I decided to try doing an advancing throw myself to see what a sloppy technique would be like. Not only is it sloppy, it was incredibly hard to animate! Swinging counter-clockwise, your left foot pivots for a bit when your right foot steps forward in an L kind of formation and it kinda keeps this weird rotation setup going until the heavy object is thrown.

Of course, maybe I just throw really frickin' weird.

I believe Wednesday was when I decided to redo the part after Rin throws the bag into Neko's mouth. It SUCKED! Literally! It looked like Neko vacuumed her into her mouth like Spaceballs does with the air of a planet. So Thursday was spent redoing this entire part to make Rin be more like spaghetti and boy does it look like a damn good slurp. I also slowed the part down and had Neko move less so the shape keys making Neko's cheeks puff a bit when Rin would "hit" the inside was more obvious.

I thought it'd be cool to have a costume change to Rin's classic clothing. Another thing I worked hard to bring back was spurt growth. That was really weird to figure out again, but it looks smooth yet sharp as it should for Rin here.

Friday:
Now for things to go sideways starting Friday. Rin's legs were having the judder again and I had to dedicate a 2 hours or so stream to just fixing that bastard. Very boring, but jesus did I finally fix it. It's straight up parenting issues in the armature. But not quite like what I was used to with double parents. No, this time it was the shadow bones causing the problem due to their "bridge-parenting" technique to do... idk what.

So there's a dummy bone on the knee that simply hangs out there. The shadow bone copies what it does while being in the exact same spot yet on a different layer. Then a LegD or KneeD (Knee 2) simply adjusts the rotation of the shadow bone to fit back into place for some reason. Idk wtf all this is for, but I deleted the shadow bone and had the 2nd Knee thing copy the transforms of the dummy bone. I STILL don't know what this is all for, but it's one less parenting object for UE4 to be pissed with and the judder is gone!

I was absolutely exhausted from all the problem solving and Neko isn't even animated after spitting out Rin. So it looks very bad and I needed to sleep immediately afterwards.

Saturday:
Prime Saga is here! I can show off my Samus gameplay I've worked months on!
Except I went 0-2 against 2 incredibly easy to fight players simply because every single possible bit of bad luck was helping them out. I've just had to drop Samus from my main because of how I was fighting the game for her to work right rather than the person. Now I realize I was playing like Greninja within a tank, so I've switched to him and can't wait for Joker to come out!
Anyways, after hours of driving and feeling like I wasted everything, I decided to help my other Samus buds get to top 128. So it wasn't for nothing and I got some sweet posters. Still, going 0-2 in my first major has absolutely destroyed my attitude then. Good thing I can hang out with my friends over at the local gaming lounge...

Sunday:
Hey, that gaming lounge shut down and is selling off what's inside. Goodbye to my relaxing days with friends at the good ole' D&D table. We're currently trying to find another spot to play it with so many people.
The GOOD news for work is that I picked up a new monitor for cheap from the lounge so I can get UE4 work done more efficiently. I also took that damn Titanfall poster I always wanted from them since day 1!

Back to work topic, I'm sorry for missing the snippet this Friday, but I feel like everything that IS there so far will probably require re-doing or more editing just to be in a spot that's acceptable to view to me. It was a lot of testing to see if the judder was gone right after Rin got spit out. The thing that's worrying me most is that the video just doesn't feel polished to look at. But that should go away after everything is fully animated and I get back to polishing with stylized lighting and post process.

-----

4/8/19: Cat & Mouse

Starting off, we have the wall breakthrough part but with changed lighting to make things more bright and colorful.

I did the same technique for Rin here that I used with Green dude in Samus vid. She's actually running in place and the root is moving her forward. That way, it's easier to loop the run for long hallways like this. Wow, i'm tired. I already said this just below.

A small detail here, literally, is that Rin trips over and has the loaf fall onto her due to Neko's accidental growth spurt here.

Well I BET you didn't know that I added a second shot to when Neko grows in the hallway, but from what's going on in the room behind her! I can't wait to smush that bed into the wall for this!

Instead of running in this shot, I had Rin trip over for Neko to feed her a treat. It still establishes the size difference, but I have an even more powerful shot after! I swear Rin was supposed to be more forward for this shot. I'll have to double-check this.
Anyways, you can totally tell just how much I changed the lighting to be softer here compared to the shots below in a previous post.

I took an editing shortcut for this part where Rin is dropped from Neko's hands as if she was turned around. We never actually see her pick Rin up to do this, but it's implied and works a bit since the audience can fill in the part with their mind. It'd also be kinda tough to animate the whole thing. No facial expressions for Rin done at this part at all, but the motion does carry through enough where I can continue without them for now.

After providing face lights, the close-up scenes look much better.  I still want to find a way to make the shadows better, but it's good enough for now. I definitely want to add little chunks of bread flying all over in the corner to imply Rin eating the HELL out of that thing!

Awesome size comparison shot here! I had Rin wave just to have the shot last longer. Also because people want more filler shots to make things last longer. I'll be practicing that!

Ok, I fixed Neko's finger with a shape key before this. I just have to import a brand new version of her into UE4 for the shape key to show up. (Mesh re-import surprisingly doesn't work for this)

Kinda cool dynamic growth thing here for Rin. Now to figure out how she'll get the treat bag to Neko and have Neko fully in the living room. Maybe while Rin goes for the bag, Neko slips through? Worth a shot.

-----

4/2/19: Animating Part 3

With all that I want fixed for part 3, I decided to start from there. I finished animating up to Neko getting stuck in the hallway!

Already, my work on Samus's vid seriously helped with Rin here. She had a shitload of space to cover and because I took a day to learn animating that one dude running away from Samus's hand, this part took half the time due to the practice!
I also found out that the lighting is kinda weird because the cameras seem to be WAY overexposed as there's no ambient lighting or sun lighting. I guess I turned them off because that = night time. Nice past self. Still looks pretty good so i'll keep with it.

-----

4/1/19: Wall Destruction

First, export the wall from UE4.
I found out the best scaling in Blender is metric 0.1.
So when you import that wall into Blender, you have to scale it down by 0.1. Which is totally fine since exporting it will be back to normal scale... Or this project is screwing me up and I need to double check again later. I know that Marin exported perfectly at 0.1 and I never changed her scale at all from when she was initially imported.

Once the wall is in, crack it.

Idk what the hell any of these options are, but I bet once I do, everything will look better than the basic look I have now.

Once it's cracked, you're free to edit the pieces as you wish for creative control in the second box layer. It's ok if not everything matches up for now since the wall isn't the focus of the video.

Next is to pick 1 piece and add some simple rigid body physics to it. Turn on start deactivated too. Then select all of it and use the copy from active thing in the physics tab to make everything have physics. All outlines should turn green.

Also turn on start deactivated. Next will be to create a ico sphere or whatever you want and animate it going through the wall at the same time as the character. Turn on rigid body physics and animated for it to react to the wall without dropping from the sky.

Use passive rigid body boxes (not collision) to somewhat stop the destruction from going everywhere then boost the fuck out of the gravity so it looks natural. You can make the boxes be in wired mode by using the display tab under the object settings tab. Very useful!

Choose the pieces around the edges you don't want flying all over and set them to passive. I do this on wall edges that should stick around.

Bake physics using the physics tab in the left viewport toolbar before parenting. Next create an empty axis for everything to parent to, BUT also make a root bone for it. THEN parent all those pieces to the root bone. This will make sure that when you import into UE4, every single piece isn't its own skeleton!  Do parenting last or your active wall pieces will be rotated weird after the baking process.  

Save often because you might crash any time. Select the empty axis hierarchy and export as if a model. Once imported into UE4, everything acts as if it was a regular skeleton model. I grab the original wall texture and apply it to the destruction one.
Lastly, the technique for destruction at the moment is to have the perfect wall visible until it's hit. Then swap out to the destroyed wall. It all happens in 1 frame so it still looks really nice. Especially when smoke and particle effects are added.

-----

4/1/19: EVERY PROBLEM IS HERE!

Hoo boy. My decision to back off Neko vid for smaller vids was completely correct! I didn't realize just how bad everything was.

Every problem from each video I made after Neko has shown up. Solved every single one because I could focus on them individually.

Pyra:
Corrupted shape keys.
Ik bones that don't scale.
How to bloody use the UE4 sequencer properly.
Perfect hand ik figured out.

Bowsette:
Vertices randomly weighted to the wrong thing. Causing spike to show up on a mesh.
Found add-on for Shape key vertex resetting to help with BAD shape keys.

Samus:
Figured out hair physics without need of ik hand-animating hair.
Using the action editor for new parts of an animation without creating a new project.
Turning ik on or off in the middle of the animation.

Neko vid:
ALL that but add being a novice to it.
Half-knowledge hand ik where Rin's right arm was done but the left... wasn't? Not only that, it didn't use hand rotation with it. NOT ONLY THAT, but I decided back then to delete animated work to make room for the new technique when I could've just animated the ik turning on.
Splitting the project into 2 different files with model edits that are different from each other.
Just a mess. I wonder what I'll run into next? Can't possibly be too much more in the way since I solved all of this.
Oh yeah, hair has about 10 - 11 ik joints because I was all about that back then. Nice.

-----

3/26/19: We Gotta Go Back, Marty!

Oh boy. Neko vid is a mess. I'll start in Unreal Engine since that's the easiest.
It seems that I cut each little part into its own level sequence... Wtf was I thinking?
That's about it on UE4. So that's great!

But everything else was just botched incredibly bad in some way.
I'll start with the textures and saving. I seemed to have lost my folder with the environment textures so I had to re-export some stuff from UE4 for the textures.
Luckily the character textures were safely stowed in their own folders.

Unluckily is how I saved this project. Jesus. I have part 1 and part 2 in their own project files rather than using the action editor to simply create a new animation layer. (Learned with Samus)
Not only that, part 2 begins on frame 976 and there's no way to bring everything back without losing timing. So I'll just start rendering from there.

Here's something fun. Part 1's rig had half-hand ik because I never fully learned that technique yet. Yet part 2's hand ik is like I finally got a handle on it. Sadly, I moved the bones in edit mode and there's a massive difference between the 2 points where animation import is impossible for the hands. So I gotta keep both project files separate. Which is ok since I can do the hair physics easy. The models will have to be swapped out at a camera swap somewhere in UE4.

What else was a mess... OH right! The vertex weight mess is now completely fixed! That's where there'd be random spikes coming out of the person. Not only did I learn how to remove bad weights, but fix ones that were missing from the list when they should be there.
Look up the vertex next to the spike and see where its weight is parented. Then assign that vertex group to the selected spike. Takes some slider adjustment in the vertex weight tools on the right of the 3d viewer but it will fit right back into where it should be soon enough!

Lastly, I ended up finding out I need to animate Rin's right arm in the 2nd part but with her "new" hand ik. Guess that's where I left off. The project is back in working order again! Whoo!