Solium - personal research and development

kuligs2

Ok so i looked at the code and applied the same i did for the animation player:

func physics_update(delta:float) ->void:
	amt = player.velocity.length() / char_speed  
	
	player.anim_tree.set("parameters/Walk/blend_amount",amt)

For now it works. But it works only for movement. Not sure how to use this for attacks. I guess for attacks i need to lerp.

kuligs2

Well.. i cant decide how to organize the animation tree.. I like the simplicity of statemachine, but this limits me to for instance filter out bones for some advanced animations like run n gun. And using blendtree will force you to have like these stupid set/unset type parameters, where you have call them every time your state changes. And for adding new states this will only give more headaches because you have to replicate the calls across all states.

Here is an example of my walk state:

And that is just one parameter, imagine you have to set for Run, Crouch, Crouchwalk etc etc.. not to mention attack animations..

Not sure how to approach this problem.

Using animation player kinda simplifies things and it works, but you loose the ability to filter bones. If i could have that, i wouldnt need the animationtree

MikeCL

kuligs2 You can have BlendTrees as states in your StateMachine. And also a "pro-tip" is that you can set a CharacterBody3D as the "Advanced Expression Base", this will give you access to that nodes properties and methods. So you can control your transitions with conditionals there, or if you have variables that controls state etc. This way you wouldn't need all the logic and "manually" set the traveling states in the state machine.

Then you could do something similar like (in your player script):

enum STATES {IDLE, RUN, CROUCH, JUMP}

var current_state: STATES = STATES.IDLE

func change_state(new_state: STATES) -> void:
    current_state = new_state

Then in the advance expression in your transition just check the conditional current_state == STATES.RUN for example.
Or, when it comes to something between idle, running, and sprinting, you could also check for the velocity. velocity.length() > 5.0 as the CharacterBody3D gives you access to this.

So the animation will travel towards the state that you currently have without you manually having to trigger it. Keeps the code a lot cleaner

Gowydot

kuligs2

I use Transition node. It acts like enum state machine and I just put the set(parameters) at the beginning of each transition.
IIRC When you change the transition by code it should "forget" whatever set(parameters) were from prior transition.

kuligs2

MikeCL I need to try that BlendTree as a state.

As for the Advanced expression base, well this will force you to keep animation conditionals in the UI, and this will later give you headaches when you want to change something and forgot how it was set up because the condition is hidden in a specific UI element in some Animation tree editor.. and if using node within a node within a node this can get too complex real quick..

Im trying to simplify things.

I have current state tracker, so the idea of Blendtree as state seems like it could work. I just need to set it up first. Thanks. But again ill have conditionals in the UI 🙁..

Unrelated, but render server is a must!

This leaves me with the need to replace my "Node" based statemachine with something that does not use nodes.

kuligs2

Gowydot After a while of playing around with transition node, ive finally set it up to work like animation player and with bone filtering/blending animation,but ... THis but i dont like.

So currently it looks like this:

But this is not scalable.

Also my states gets crowded too

And now imagine if each item has its own animation you would have to double or tripple it across all possible states.

Another thing i noticed that custom_tracks are ignored on the blended animations. Which sucks, because now i cant detect when my sword-swing animation has ended.

When playing it raw, it works but when playing it throughblend2 it does not trigger.

Works:

Does not work:

There is this writeup
https://www.notion.so/particular-base/III-Fancy-jump-Combat-system-23af9b11c9c48108ab7fd55eb54d0bb1
But its kinda convoluted.. not sure why im not getting how to set this up...

kuligs2

To expand on the write up, here is another video explanation:

Sounds kinda intuitive and this is what i need.. i just dont understand that visual pairing thing.. hmm..

Gowydot

kuligs2

Try to think of each Transition input as a little statemachine. In my example, I have one transition input called "Crawl" then I add a BlendSpace1D node "Crawl_Actions" that handles all the Crawling animation.

Each of those dot represents my crawl animation

Then I change the BlendSpace1D (Crawl_actions) value to whatever crawl animation I need. (eg. 0 = crawl-idle, 0.1 = crawl-forward, -0.1 = crawl-backward..etc)

So for you "Jump" could be something like an "Air" Transition input then Blend1D with Jump / JumpMidair / JumpLaded animations.
or "Ground" with Idle / Walk / Run ..and so on.

Remember that you can add any Node to each Transition input (eg. Blend1D/2D, Add2, even another Transition Node) so you have a lot of flexibility to control how to display your animations. In my example a "Floor" Transition state I use BlendSpace1D, BlendSpace2D and a Blend2. 1D for walk-idle, 2D for Aiming, and Blend2 for blending both of them.

Learn how you can use those animationTree Nodes and plan your animations. I suggest separating your animations into related groups (like ground-actions, air-actions..etc) and see which Node that works best for that animation group.

As for your StateMachine scripts. I think could also simplify it by grouping them too, like have jump state script with Enum "Jump", "Midair" and "Landed"? but I'll let someone better at coding than me to answer that😃

kuligs2

Gowydot This is what i was trying to avoid, give that all the conditionals end up in the UI resource and when you come back after weeks of a break and try to figure out how it works its a pain in the ass..

What im willing to compromise is to pre make the let say blended animations, such as: walk slash, run slash, crouch slash - where you blend walk/run/crouch with a slash animation (legs and arms filtered). Save these as resource and then call them with statemachine just like a state.

The convoluted problem is to describe the state in code. Like how to describe the state run-slash? or walk slash, or any other combination of -slash?

For run walk and crouch its simple, it gets complicated once you want to mix and match and maybe experiment connecting the states like multi punch/slash type state or something... And then another weapon type...

The thing that i need it seems is in the previously linked writeup https://www.notion.so/particular-base/III-Fancy-jump-Combat-system-23af9b11c9c48108ab7fd55eb54d0bb1 and video

I will study this and see if this works. Because it seems that they just define the movemnt state and then attach the sugar to the state and can expand this with additional substates. I just didnt find how they mix the animations..

kuligs2

Looking closer at the https://github.com/Gab-ani/Godot_Universal-Controller-tutorial/tree/episode-3-jumps-and-combat-system system, seems like the animations are hardcoded. Like He dont mix with bone filtering, animations. And just use plain animation player and switch them based on the state.

The state machine, seems a bit fragmented and hard to follow what goes where.. but it seems pretty simple in concept.. i wonder if i can simplify it more.. without reinventing the wheel.

Another discovery i just made researching this and that - Root motion. This is what i was looking for. I just didnt know what it was called or how to use it.

Videos below does not explain how to use it in godot, just concept, but in the docs there are few lines of code you can use to calculate the char velocity.

Godot - applying and calculating character velocity based on the root motion.
https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_animationmixer.html#class-animationmixer-method-get-root-motion-position

All my efforts, all the time i spent animating the character in place (no moving roots) and then matching frame by frame in code to the velocity, when you could just have animated the walk in blender, and linked the root bone in godot and few lines of code..

Sheesh..

Now i have to redo all my animations... again (v3)..

Either way i need to redo my state machine so i guess its better time than ever to redo the animations.

Question to all:
Does anyone know if i can bake an animation into resource in godot by blending animations?

Atm, i see that i can save Blend2 node as .res but this wont work if i plan to use animation player for my animations..

EDIT:

I guess it would be easier to mix animation tracks in blender than to mess with the bones in godot.. For now ill drop this quest.

kuligs2

Man that system that that guy had is painful to traverse.

So what i got from it is this in its simplest form:

Player class

Checks input
Choose and switch state based on input

State class

Apply player movement and physics based on state and or input.
Apply animation based on state and or input.

Choose state function

Checks input (custom class) for if its movement and or combat
Priority state is combat state

Combat state

Checks input if there is consecutive input/next combat move
Switches to next move/state based on input.

You nest states that are a subclass and this way you create allowed combos.

There is also the need for additional functions for checking the weapon for combat moves and states that this current weapon is allowed to transition to.

My current flaw with my current statemachine is that there is no one place that checks input and chooses state. I check input from within the state and so i have spaghetti code copy pasta in every state.. when you have 3 states its no problem but adding more states you have to update all other old states with the new state which sucks.

For example:

Idle state

walk state

run state

My player class defines and updates those booleans upon which i base my states. (is_sprinting, is_falling etc..)

I kinda want to know if using root motion animations is gonna solve my animation problems, and i decided that im gonna use simple animations with animation player.. Each state gonna have its own animation.. Im not going for realism, i just want it to feel good when you control the character and not feel clunky.. I looked up how to mix animations in blender and its not that hard.

Now need to see if that root motion will help or complicate things 🙂.

Gowydot

Maybe this might interest you. I didn't really watch it though.

kuligs2

Gowydot Yeah this is too complex to follow. I mean not complicated but convoluted as it too has too many hidden refferences and this is a unique system.

What im trying to figure out is something more simple.

Im now rewriting the whole statemachine to include combat actions/states, not sure..

Breaking my head because not sure what references would i need in future so that i dont have to rewrite things later..

For now it seem that what those previous guys did was to have combat moves/states already predefined inside the player, that means if you have n-th amount of weapons that have lets say different animations or states then you would need to predefined these from the get go, so when you pick up weapon you can animate the weapon accordingly.

Another way would be to keep weapon related states on the weapon scene and once you pick it up you add this to your player as being able to execute and switch to those states.

Now that i kinda have an idea, it could look like this:

StateMachine
    Run
    Walk
    Jump
    PrimaryAttack
        Slash1 #<---- instantiates from weapon
            Stab
            Kick
        Slash2
            Swing
            Slam
    SecondaryAttack
    Crouch

And you could maybe make premade scenes that you can add to any or typed weapons and just add more nodes to the scene for the consecutive attacks that can be made to make combo attacks.

Each state controls the character physics.
State switching is based on input
StateMachine is child of Player
Player class checks inputs, and then based on input switches states. And based on how many times you press the same "attack" button you switch to the next state that is from top down (in the scene tree).

Now, this is theoretical, but i think this is gonna be taxing on CPU because you will have large player node tree with lots of branching nodes. Its not gonna be hundreds of thousands but still lots..

Maybe there is better way to do this?...

Someone is whispering Resource .. not sure how could i stack attacks to be executed consecutively if allowed... I could make a resource hmm.. maybe i need to explore this..

I mean States that are input based are finite. The attacks is whats gon be dynamic and unpredicatable. So it makes sense to make them into a resource.

kuligs2

Man.. been trying to make the statemachine based on the previous posts.. and im stuck with stupididty that its not working as it is written.

For some reason, if the animation_name of the next animation i want to play is the same as previous animation name, then when you run play() it wont start from begining, but will continue from previous position.

Changing to different animation kinda fixes it, but its not what i want.
As i was writing this up, i figured it out - Have to call seek(0.0,true) every time i enter into a new 'combatmove' state with the same animation - in this case its slash.

func enter(_previous_state:State=null) -> void:
	queue_next = false
	previous_state = _previous_state
	player.anim_player.play(anim_name,anim_blend)
	player.anim_player.seek(0.0,true)
	player.anim_player.animation_finished.connect(anim_finished)
	is_blocking = true

Sheesh, started writing this post hours ago, but now its finished.

Now i need to figure out how to make it feel good when you chain next combatmoves right now, it checks if attack_button was pressed when animation wasnt finished then it sets the next combat_move to be executed once current animation reached a certain time position.

And as it is right now it feels clunky.. you have to spam the attack button until it registers so that you could do a 3-slash moves

kuligs2

Also maybe i need to redo animations to work with root_motion so that i dont have to mathematically figure out feet positions.
But im kinda dreading this.

Also also.. i think the animation workflow should include animating moves in a way so that you include a lead-in and lead-out transition sub animations, or some transition animations. normal->swing->land_hit->hold->retract->normal

For example, swing sword and when swing ends, keep hold of the sword in that position with stretched out arm and for a second or more, retract back to idle or normal postion. This way you can chain the next move/swing to start from that swing-hold position and not from the middle or end transition frame where it retracts or something.

Another way would be to have one animation sequence, where you do all the sword swings in one take, like 3-swings -> side, otherside, and from top (finisher), and use seek(to_position) on the animation...

Hmm.... maybe this is what i want... not sure..

BTW, does anyone know how to use root_motion on the blender metahuman or what its called -> rigify? My question is: when im exporting only deform bones (not rigify bones) there is no root_deform_bone. Rigify Has root bone control, but it does not seem to be parented to any deform bone.

Not sure yet how to add deform bone without breaking all the parented bones.. Not that advanced in blender..

kuligs2

Well too late now, but i just found this guy video, which has pretty much similar idea that i wanted to have, but much better implemented..

sheesh..

kuligs2

OK the first attempt in root motion sucks..

There needs to be a dedicated Root bone (deformation bone, that is parent to all other bones, otherwise you get bone stretching)
Secondly, the looping animation jerks around.. not sure how to fix it.. i mean the character sort of moves in direction but when animation loops then its jerks back to its position.

In blender all is smooth, but i dont have the deformation root bone..

Marking that rigify root as deform didnt help, it still a parent to just few spines. All the bones needs to be child of one root bone in order to fix the mesh stretching..

I tried the code from these, https://docs.godotengine.org/en/stable/classes/class_animationmixer.html#class-animationmixer-method-get-root-motion-position and nothing seems to work correctly..

As i was writing this, i experimented.
Added a bone and parented all other bones to it. so that in godot it looks like this:

Now the animation isnt jerking.. the directional rotation needs work as it only moves in one direction, and mesh is messed up after parenting deformation bones.. But its working.. hmmm...

I need to figure out how to fix the rotation, so that it is walking where mouse is looking or where the WASD is pointing relative to mouse camera view, like before..

kuligs2

So more experiements with bones..
Reversing back the changes and exporting it like this

Produced this bonelist:

And setting the rootmotion track to the "root" bone, will give stretchmarks

Exporting like this:

Produced this bone list:

As i understand that MCH are the helper bones from rigify

And for some reason there are no arms or feet parented under root bone, only spines

Maybe its enough with IK .. idk..
But now i can set the root motion bone to Spine and it works

No more stretching.

EDIT: Scratch that, idk why but its not consistent.. i did same export and set up same bones and now its not working..
Yeah.. something wrong with godot, because sometimes it works sometimes it doesnt.. Switching bones and animations in editor sometimes works sometimes some bones lag behind and are keyed from previous animation that was playing.. and in game, its not working..

Damn.. i was sure i cracked it.. i guess back to parenting a global DEF root bone..

EDIT2:
So i guess this exist too:

Just what i needed. But it sucks that all my animations are down the drain 🙁.. for the fourth time or something..

Yeah because the Rigify does not have hierarchical bone structure for some reason.. that is why im having problems.. with root motion.

kuligs2

Ok so i "fixed" the char rotation

It works, ofc the mesh is messed up because of quick bone parenting but atleast now i know how to and not to.

Had to reverse (negative) direction for some reason.

input_dir = Input.get_vector("k_left", "k_right", "k_forward", "k_backward")
direction = -(player_camera.transform.basis * Vector3(input_dir.x, 0, input_dir.y)).normalized() #<------

And this is how velocity is set:

var _velocity = (anim_player.get_root_motion_rotation_accumulator().inverse() * get_quaternion()) * anim_player.get_root_motion_position() / delta
set_velocity(_velocity)

And the foot work is so smooth 🙂 i like it, and it slows down automagically, no need to lerp or anything.. Root motion FTW!!!!
Only walk animation is root motioned.. just testing...

EDIT:
Not sure why my previous 2 posts are hidden/ awaiting approval..??? @MikeCL

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