Let's get a better understanding of the costume creator
By
bAss_ackwards,
Posted on: 2010-02-02 18:01 in CoH and CoV General Discussions
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Think of it this way, it could have been Power that decided to do this |
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Are you for real?
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"YOU DID NOT READ THE THREAD. GO READ THE LONG, LONG THREAD.
Then, perhaps your butt cheeks will relinquish their grip on your chin." -The_Zekiran
Completely....there seems to be a lot of questions referring to the costume creator floating around out there. A lot of them i find myself with an answer to but no real reply to the actual post. You'd be surprised how much information lies in a saved costume file. This is my way of trying to answer those questions. If you don't believe me or think this is just a big joke, feel free click something else.
Edit: Really, this isn't me trying to show off how much i know or anything like that. I always like learning something new about this game, especially when I have questions, and now that I have some area of this game that I'm knowledgeable in, I'm doing the same for others.
Not all hair-styles would require exactly the same effects as capes, though that's probably where they'd start. Looped braids, for instance would probably have little give, but would move.
Do wish for more movement in hair, but I'd be happier for some revamped textures (I'm looking at you, old metallic body...)
Still here, even after all this time!
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Maybe it's just me, but I always thought "our" costume creator was pretty darned up front.|
Originally Posted by DumpleBerry
Are you for real?
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I have never had a question about it >.>
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Same here. I thought it was Going Rogue that everyone wanted answers about.
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Originally Posted by Perfect_Pain
Maybe it's just me, but I always thought "our" costume creator was pretty darned up front.
I have never had a question about it >.> |
Storm Summoning is great because it makes you better than everyone else in the game. - Camma
Knockback is mitigation. It won't be removed just because meleers ***** and moan. - Chaos Creator
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This thought scares me. It scares me a lot.
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Originally Posted by MortisEques
Think of it this way, it could have been Power that decided to do this
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Well if you see holes in information in other posts when not collect those and post them in here for us. Not sure why you can't post as replies but if you think you've got something new to add the reason there is no question is probably because no one is looking. Go ahead and just share what you have.
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Animated hair doesn't have to be cape hair. It could just be animated, like it is in something like WoW, or even Neverwinter Nights. Or, hell, like in Aion. What WoW has is a few animations for hair, or a pony tail as I've seen. You have it wave while you run and trail as you fall. I don't think we need special animations while we fight, even if I wouldn't refuse to have those. What I saw in Aion, on the other hand, was curly locks that only really trailed a bit, and short hair that sort of just wobbled. Attaching a cape system to the head is actually a pretty bad idea, as it creates and uncouth mop glued to the head, ala Ghost widow.|
Originally Posted by PownUnoobs
Basically, animated hair is a cape. It functions and is treated the same way as one anyways. As a result, the amount of hairstyles in the game that would be compatible with this are severely limited. Also, because this is a cape, any non-moving parts would have to be saved as a separate part in the costume file. As a result, this would look funny on a lot of hairstyles. The final reason, is because of the character budget, we wouldn't be able to have capes and moving hair. A lot of people wouldn't mind, but I'm sure the devs don't want to listen to people complaining because they can't have both.
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OK, question:
Given the normal palette of colours we can choose from for normal costume pieces, am I correct to say the following:
We are given full range of hue (0-240), with the rest of each row split in half. First half is the colour's hue, 240 saturation and luminance going from 240 to 120, with the second half having the colour go from the colour's hue, 120 Luminance and saturation going from 240 to 0.
As I see it, our colour rows basically trace the colour circle, and go from pure black, to a vivid colour, then back down to a bright pale colour after the mid point, ending in what is almost grey. That's the best I can approximate without actually diving into the data, and given that our colours are still saved in RGB, wouldn't be trivial to tell.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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I like the way animated hair is done in Aion. 
Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
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judging by the response here, that's probably what i'm going to end up doing|
Originally Posted by LISAR
Well if you see holes in information in other posts when not collect those and post them in here for us. Not sure why you can't post as replies but if you think you've got something new to add the reason there is no question is probably because no one is looking. Go ahead and just share what you have.
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| Animated hair doesn't have to be cape hair. It could just be animated, like it is in something like WoW, or even Neverwinter Nights. Or, hell, like in Aion. What WoW has is a few animations for hair, or a pony tail as I've seen. You have it wave while you run and trail as you fall. I don't think we need special animations while we fight, even if I wouldn't refuse to have those. What I saw in Aion, on the other hand, was curly locks that only really trailed a bit, and short hair that sort of just wobbled. Attaching a cape system to the head is actually a pretty bad idea, as it creates and uncouth mop glued to the head, ala Ghost widow. |
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]OK, question: Given the normal palette of colours we can choose from for normal costume pieces, am I correct to say the following: We are given full range of hue (0-240), with the rest of each row split in half. First half is the colour's hue, 240 saturation and luminance going from 240 to 120, with the second half having the colour go from the colour's hue, 120 Luminance and saturation going from 240 to 0. As I see it, our colour rows basically trace the colour circle, and go from pure black, to a vivid colour, then back down to a bright pale colour after the mid point, ending in what is almost grey. That's the best I can approximate without actually diving into the data, and given that our colours are still saved in RGB, wouldn't be trivial to tell. |
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"Cape hair" only really works on that one specific hairstyle and could possibly work on a mere handful of others. That's not a big deal for Ghost Widow, since that one specific hairstyle is all she has, but it is inapplicable to player characters, since they have to account for more variety. It's a popular concept for NPC costumes to have player-inapplicable pieces, either "just because," or very often because they're hard-coded into the NPCs themselves and won't work on players anyway. Backpacks are a good example, as are the "skull pants" which are actually part of the Skulls' monolithic, inadvisable models.|
Originally Posted by PownUnoobs
You're right, but cape hair is how it's currently handled. If I had to guess I would say it's a limitation of the game engine, but perhaps it was just the devs choice to do it that way.
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You are correct - cape hair is completely inapplicable to player models. But finding a good alternative is still not out of the question, even if it's somewhere between pigs flying and hell freezing over in terms of likelyhood.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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As do I |
Originally Posted by bAss_ackwards
I like the way animated hair is done in Aion.
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Pity the game itself is an unashamed Lineage-meets-WoW clone, which I physically cannot stand to play.But their hair is actually pretty interestingly done. The curly locks hair I tried looked like each curl was a separate semi-free-floating object which simply traced after the head as it moved, similar to Raziel's wings in Legacy of Kain. I really think they ought to do something more with hair, though. I'm tired of my hair jabbing through my cape.
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Originally Posted by Arcanaville
Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.
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What makes me boggle is in AE, when messing with customising Standard mob colours, just where they hooked some of the parts for them. I mean, some of the PPD bots have leg details hooked into their shoulders and stuff. And I think one of the head details was actually the covers on the gun arms?
That said, looking at the PPD Shell suits, I still cant figure out how it wouldn't work on PC's. If it was a mutually exclusive chest option, say ('Power Armour') then it could cut down on the clipping issues, for one..? *shrug*
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Originally Posted by Zwillinger
GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.
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Originally Posted by Captain_Photon
NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.
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Close, but not quite. The real reason, from BaBs himself:|
Originally Posted by PownUnoobs
I'll start things off with a demo question that seems pretty popular:
"Why can't we have animated hair?" Basically, animated hair is a cape. It functions and is treated the same way as one anyways. As a result, the amount of hairstyles in the game that would be compatible with this are severely limited. Also, because this is a cape, any non-moving parts would have to be saved as a separate part in the costume file. As a result, this would look funny on a lot of hairstyles. The final reason, is because of the character budget, we wouldn't be able to have capes and moving hair. A lot of people wouldn't mind, but I'm sure the devs don't want to listen to people complaining because they can't have both. |
There are two animation systems in City of Heroes: the skeleton system and the physics system. The skeleton system is used for most of your character's motions: walking, powers, reacting to attacks, and so on. It's cheap CPU-wise, but requires a good deal of development effort, since every action needs to be scripted. The physics system is used for capes, flags, and one NPC's hair. It's CPU-expensive because it's simulating the physics of cloth, but development-wise it's easy: describe the object and the forces acting on it, and let the physics simulator do the rest.
Animated hair could be done using the skeleton system, but it would be hard: one animation for each possible motion for each hairstyle, eg. an animation for "low ponytail hair during the transition from a rising jump to a falling jump while spinning clockwise", an animation for "high spiky hair during knockback", and so on.
More likely, animated hair would be done using the physics system. Development-wise, this would just need a physics description for each hairstyle, but the CPU requirements would be heavy. According to BaBs, each additional physics animation gives the same framerate hit as an additional player. For example, adding a hundred players to an otherwise-empty enviroment cuts your framerate in half. Giving those players capes cuts your framerate in half again. Giving them two more physics animations (eg. a buttcape and animated hair) cuts your framerate in half twice more.
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Where dat?
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Originally Posted by PownUnoobs
I'll attempt to answer this when I make my full, in depth post.
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Playstation 3 - XBox 360 - Wii - PSP
Remember kids, crack is whack!
Samuel_Tow: Your avatar is... I think I like it
Hey everyone, my goal with this thread is to help everyone better understand the costume creator as it currently is, with all its potential and limitations. Basically how this works, you ask a question about it, and I will try to answer it, if I can't, someone else who actually knows is welcome to step up.
Now, I bet you're wondering, what makes me so special? Well, I have spent an extensive amount of time working with costume files, tweaking them and viewing the results in the load costume screen so as to get a better understanding of the system. As a result, I have a pretty good idea as to the inner workings.
I'll start things off with a demo question that seems pretty popular:
"Why can't we have animated hair?"
Basically, animated hair is a cape. It functions and is treated the same way as one anyways. As a result, the amount of hairstyles in the game that would be compatible with this are severely limited. Also, because this is a cape, any non-moving parts would have to be saved as a separate part in the costume file. As a result, this would look funny on a lot of hairstyles. The final reason, is because of the character budget, we wouldn't be able to have capes and moving hair. A lot of people wouldn't mind, but I'm sure the devs don't want to listen to people complaining because they can't have both.
So there ya go, fire away.