Tennogen Skin going Universal

[Bacl]

On 2019-05-23 at 6:09 PM, (PS4)wintersfrozen said:

So I think the issue comes down to a misunderstanding in the differences between a Skeletal Animation and a Mesh. Skins that we see used in tennogen only effect the Mesh as they essential replace the color of the preset model, while yes it is likely that all warframe models share the same generic skeleton the mesh or rather the 3d aspect of that skeleton is different.

"So what exactly is skeletal animation? Skeletal animation is the process of taking a skeleton, which consists of a set of interconnected bones, animating it, and then attaching the vertices of a mesh model to the skeleton. Then, when the skeleton is posed and keyframed, the vertices of the mesh go along with it. The skeleton serves as nothing more than an intuitive handle for the animation process." 1 "Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character (or other articulated object) is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character (called skin or mesh) and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones (called the skeleton or rig) used to animate (pose and keyframe) the mesh." 2

Its a little hard to explain so please try to bare with me. Best way I can think of describing this is to look to dolls. If I give you say a Barbie doll and a ken doll, they can move in the same ways. they might have some slight differences in height and build but for the sake of argument that's kind of the point. (after all Atlas and Oberon do not share the same build) but the important thing to note is that Barbie's cloths aren't necessarily going to fit on Ken and vice versa. The reason for that would be the joints that allow them to move would be the skeleton while the "mesh" would be the plastic for the dolls themselves and the molding that goes into their creation. 

The clothing would be the tennogen skins in this case. As you are likely to find some items that with a bit of stretch and pull could easily work from one to another while other items wouldn't work in the slightest and would leave patches of uncovered plastic (or unfilled mesh for the game). With the amount of work it would take to make some skins work on all frames it would be more of a hassle then its worth.

I was an animator in the videogame industry so i know how things work so no need to into dodgy parallels ( no offenses intended).

To come back to the Atlas and Oberon example, Atlas got its own animation and Oberon got its animations as well, now a rig artist (like i used to be) would attack and link the mesh to the skeleton underneath and i would optimize my mesh to allow for certain animations. Each frame do not have a custom built skeleton per character they must use a universal one otherwise it wouldnt be possible to use Titania animation on Rhino without some major clipping issues.

However right now in Warframe any frame can equip any animation sets because they all use the same skeleton and they are all rigged the same way ( well to the universal skeleton). Being able to switch animation implies that all frames share same proportions and relatively similar rigging  methods.

Using a skill triggers a custom animation and that could be the ontly thing i can think of that could represent a problem but like all other animations i m pretty sure these could be modular as well. Using a Graxx skin on Oberon should be the same thing as equipping Atlas with Oberon animations (like idle and casting) and casting Oberon spells instead, of course it the other way around its Oberon equipping a skin from another frame casting its own skills but all the job is done there shouldnt be any limitation to this.

Edited May 30, 2019 by Bacl

[EmberStar]

On 2019-04-13 at 7:32 AM, Bacl said:

Warframe has a very complexe but cleaver unified or universal system allowing you to swap animations on the fly in the Arsenal.

I would assume that this is possible by following a strict rigging pattern and the same rules do apply to Tennogen skins as well since you can swap animation using those extra skjns and enjoy the compatibility.

Now thats out of the way, why not make Tennogen skins Universal?

 

You could make all the different warframes use the same UV mapping.  It's not impossible.  But it's really not desirable.  You can actually see how it looks in a lot of older games (IE, often ones that look like crap by modern standards.)  To save on graphics memory, especially on consoles, all of a given type of NPC would have the same UV mapping, just with different textures.  The result can work, but it doesn't look great.  Because a texture map that fits *every* model doesn't really look good on any of them.

Animation rigging is basically a shared stick figure that can wear all of the models as "clothes."  All you have to do is make sure that all the models are basically the same size, and constructed so that the joints are in the correct locations.  (And a bunch of other stuff I'm not qualified or experienced enough to explain properly, such as making sure that there you have enough polygons in the joints so that they don't tear or buckle or stretch too badly.)

The texture mapping is the image that you wrap *around* the model so that it looks like something.  This usually needs to be made specifically for each model.  Wisp has her hip cloths and "almost syandanna" helmets, but Mag and Nyx do not.  If you tried to make a texture that fit just the three of them, you'd end up with all three looking pretty awful.  And that's for three somewhat simple female models that don't have a lot of extra geometry.  Mirage would be harder to make look decent, and Mirage Prime... nope.  Saryn Prime has wiggly tentacles on her helmet and shoulders.  My understanding is that Equinox (and Equinox Prime) actually need *three* different sets of textures, one for each mode.  It's apparently a part of the reason why there isn't a ton of Tennogen for Equinox.  Making anything for her is a *minimum* of three times as much work as almost any other frame.

And that's not including the Warframes that do / do not have skirts, kilts, capes, coats, extra spikey things on their arms and legs and helmets...  Even the normal and Prime versions of Warframes would have trouble sharing textures.  We've already seen this in action, when some Tennogen skins warped and tore if you tried to equip them on a Prime.  So much so that if I remember, DE originally considered doing so to be a *glitch,* and patched it out because it looked so awful on some of them.  They had to rework the textures, essentially making a separate Prime Compatible version of each Tennogen skin.  This is apparently *NOT* a trivial thing to do.

Edited May 30, 2019 by EmberStar

[(PSN)wintersfrozen]

16 hours ago, Bacl said:

-snip-

 

15 hours ago, EmberStar said:

-snip-

I think what Ember said pretty much sums up why it wouldn't happen. All of the graphics would end up distorted to the point where its going to look right.

[FlusteredFerret]

On 2019-04-16 at 9:48 PM, (PS4)lokaspoka said:

my homie wants helmets to be shared between warframes

thats a possibility see as the stalkers group

frost,excal,obern all share the same looking stalker helmet

Well thats just bloody stupid, seeing as the heads / helmets are one of the key defining features of any frame.

Also you are confusing SAME with SIMILAR...and they are not even that similar IMO.

And if your friend thinks they are so similar...why even bother swapping them?

 

Your "homie" is wasting his time on wishful thinking...never gonna happen. These aren't Lego figures where you can just pull the head off and stick a different one on for lols. A lot of these frames have their own back stories, as well as unique overall looks. Swapping bits around would just destroy that.

Same thing applies whether they're vanilla designs or Tennogen.

 

Edited May 30, 2019 by FlusteredFerret