HORSEY TIME ZEEHAW

[muted ridge]

And now y'all act like I'm a dick with you all or what ?

[limber plinth]

No

It's not that deep, just kind of weird to hammer in "wtf is that" twice

[muted ridge]

So to you this is obvious this is a braid ?

[short cloak]

i don't really get why you're dying on this hill

[muted ridge]

I'm not but you are all taking me like a bad guy for just making my comment

Everything was chill and I just come back to paddle going crazy over how I talk once more even tho he got so many examples that I do not mean to hurt anyone

I'm just tired like why do I come back to that

Mb guys for saying what my first thought was when I saw that image uh ?

[limber plinth]

I don't think people are attacking you personally, I know it can be hard having people dog-pile on you. But looking at the context of "first attempt at modeling", asking for feedback, they also clarified what it was right after-- so your reply, and later doubling down, wasn't constructive.

Speculating here, but the issue is tone in text being easily lost. Including "wtf" (or any "harsh language") would alter the tone to be negative or amplified. If you had said "what is that?" I don't think people would have been taken back.

For what it's worth, I don't think Bunny took it poorly-- so I also don't think this conversation should have been dragged out.

I'm not a modeler, but wouldn't a single shape with ridges be less polygons or what have you -- the braid effect could be handled as a texture. The scale of detail would be so small.

[eternal briar]

best to let them decide the end detail, stifling the idea early with 'oh too detailed!' kills enthuisiasm fast..

[limber plinth]

Ultimately yeah, they should do what they want-- just wasn't sure if it could be easier

Last time I modeled something it was very grating

Also, speaking of textures-- I'd like to give that a shot, is there a (not sure what it's called) texture map(?) in the repo?

[topaz meadow]

I believe the model's FBX is inside the repo and you can extract the UV map from there-- the specifics on how are beyond me as my experience with texturing is very limited.

[silver holly]

Oh I guess I could just texture draw it on! I was thinking of like animating the hair too but that might just be an extra step too much.

I've never done a model before so I'm kinda proud of it! It sorta looks like a braid lol

Also - While yes, negative comments are discouraging
If they can be constructive I love criticism and comments, it can be so helpful
Especially bc I have NEVER done any of this before!!!

[silver holly]

Like the texture for the horse? I can link the PNG if need be!

[limber plinth]

Yes please, I'd like to give it a shot

[silver holly]

Somewhere in the discord paddle linked the blender file

Send pics of what you come up with!

[errant coyote]

I would love to make Clydesdales but surely that would require some sort of 3D hair layer clothing item to look proper

[silver holly]

Ohhh I thought about that too

Gypsy Cobb, clydes would be so neat but I feel like that would need an entirely different model entirely

Just bc their bodies are so different

I would die for a freisan tbh

Also would require a new model tho

[fathom rose]

Let's goo

Even Chuck is jumping in

[mighty flower]

honestly, it does look like a braid, but don't be discouraged, at least you have a stylist option

Honestly I would like to help you in your project, but I have no modeling knowledge, I only know some programming.

but I really don't mind learning new things in my spare time.

[agile shoal]

All help is welcome 🙂

I cant really work on it because of uni projects so the more people helping the better

[hexed pendant]

Shits a butt plug

Honestly looks like braided tail

[silver holly]

Absolutely no rush on this, but I'm curious what you came up with!

Was thinking about trying to texture paint on a mane today

[limber plinth]

Unfortunately will be traveling

[silver holly]

Fs! Safe travels

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/1axkOtV

adding animator on my resume ✨

for some reason im having a hard time getting the neck and the tail to keyframe (?)

[silver holly]

kinda looks like coffee beans

im not sure how to approach this

[agile shoal]

I think the issue is that your little braid buns vary too much in size and shape

Also if you need any help with learning animating just lmk!

I cant make anything for the mod atm because I have to focus my effort on a uni project but im here for help and advice

[silver holly]

I'm really never gonna sweat it

Dw real life comes first

[silver holly]

Might be onto something bere

[silver holly]

Thank you! It's kinda making sense, sorta like stop motion. For some reason though I just can't get a few to wanna key - or like I'll key it but it won't play(?)

[agile shoal]

Stop motion is a great way to think about it

My preferred method is keyframing the most distinctive poses in an action rather than the 2s or 5s approach some people teach (if you have heard of those before)

[silver holly]

I have not lol

Idk why my phone changed key to let

[halcyon monolith]

I think it's easier to do the big and main movements first, and then do subtler keyframes as you go along

so like if the leg has to move from one part to another but smoothly, i'll put 2 keyframes, one at the start and one at the end. then I'll go back into the middle of the animation and add in more to smoothen the anim

though nor am I an animator lol, just what works for me sorta

[eternal briar]

• step Wun
  Move in 3's.

base pos, keyframe it.

Move HUGE. to the Apex of the possible furthest frame.
Keyframe it.

Interpolate the frames between & Tweak accordingly

[silver holly]

I'll give it another go tonight!

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/klNVk5X

skedaddling

https://imgur.com/a/ZNrFatb

[agile shoal]

Skeddadly doo

What you need to do is put the reference image into blender

When in object mode, press Add>Image>Reference

[dreamy prawn]

it might be prudent to spend $100 on a game asset that comes with a few hundred animations, different stances, gaits, bones for the rider, and of course the model. all the walking/running/galloping animations will need dozens more for stopping and turning different directions and it would be a ton of work to do all that from scratch

[astral rover]

pretty sure that zomboid uses weights when applying animations

[dreamy prawn]

i'm not familiar with how PZ animation system works, but i have worked on a nonanthro cat avatar for unity/vrchat and even with weights and blending you still need like 100 animations to make it look like a cat. just spitballing that making those by hand will be cost more time/money than starting from a premade collection

for the code it seems like this would share a lot of code from a bicycle mod

[agile shoal]

We could certainly try, ive never tried mapping an animation from one armature to another but its possible

[dreamy prawn]

last time i tried in blender it was a one-at-a-time thing with a clunky workflow but it worked

"retarget" is the keyword for that operation

[silver holly]

I was looking at that! I'll try it out next time I get around

[silver holly]

I'd agree it would be less faffy and less work - in fact I did actually message a company who has such a thing however I'm sure it'd be more like in the thousands.

If we wanted to crowd fund something like that sure?

But at the same time, I feel like it's so valuable to be doing this from the ground up.

At least to me I guess. The community collaboration, getting to learn new skills, watching each other succeed and cheering on one another - it's been so special

Sorry I don't mean to shoot ya down! I definitely agree it's gonna be so much work - we've got a crazy long list on trello that can get even longer the more we think

[silver holly]

Definitely worth a try o: thank you!

[dreamy prawn]

oh likewise, i don't mean to shoot down building it from scratch, that is certainly valuable on its own, just trying to help by thinking of ways to use shortcuts or references. for example there's a decent looking horse with 100+ animations on unity asset store for 100$, but most of the unity/unreal parts of it would not apply in PZ. it's a cool project and makes me want to search for animated horse models :)

[silver holly]

I'm not totally against it tbh! It would be a big help that's for sure.

Maybe link some here if there's one that really seems like it would fit the low poly bill!

Also not in any sort of rush, honestly I'm thinking this project will have a timeline of a year or more.

[silver holly]

i cannot seem to reason why some of these bones aren't keying

[fathom rose]

hmm not sure but make sure you're hovering over the 3D viewport and have the bone selected before clicking "i"

that's gotten me a couple times

[silver holly]

i thought it was that

but i can like see it keyed

but it wont play(?)

[fathom rose]

hmmm its hard to tell from just the picture...

could be "rest position"?

nah doesn't look like it cause the horse would be with all 4 legs on the ground

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/bzZuzyo

it clipped weirdly

im trying to key that neck bone which you can see in the top left is selected, and i can see it in the timeline

[fathom rose]

weeird

[topaz meadow]

i've had very limited success with re-targeted animations, especially since many assets we could buy would have dramatically overcomplicated rigs/keyframes that probably aren't suitable for Zomboid imo.

You could do it, and I have done it before with certain mo-capped animations for human rigs for Zomboid.

But it's a task and a half and it mgiht almost be easier to just do the anims ourself.

[fathom rose]

works fine for me... i dont know what may be wrong

[agile shoal]

What versions are yall using

[fathom rose]

i just got the one in HorseMod/Blend Files/PZ_HorseRig.blend

or blender version?

i'm still using 4.3.0 at my home pc

[silver holly]

i added muscle

[agile shoal]

It looks like you are keyframing the DEF bones

You only want to keyframe the CTRL bones

Those in turn move the DEF bones

[halcyon monolith]

it looks so goofy when stuck in-place

adding head/tail anim will be pog tho

[silver holly]

Oh I know lmao

It's giving Scooby doo

[halcyon monolith]

frrr

[silver holly]

I haven't been able to get the neck or back bones to key though

I was posting about it last night

[agile shoal]

Can you send another screenshot?

[fathom rose]

nah i was using the ctrl bones, just had the def visible

or you meant her?

[dreamy prawn]

some free horse models with animations, still looking around but free options are pretty bad so far:

free full horse, bad animations
Horse Rigged(Game Ready) https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-riggedgame-ready-bc64f4ff7966474ca9bacd42fa73a754

free horse, only few clunky idle anims
Horse https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-041e84c8a0c34944a38b948a2c58fc0f

for reference only, no rig and animations are baked into shape keys:
Horse Walk https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-walk-93b53ddcec414592842753d1819f3133
Horse Trot https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-trot-7e24b8c46d284b519d416035e6445903
Horse Run https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-run-b7421fcc3b9b4065b2b330a3bc7e9a79

1 idle anim, baked into shape keys, no rig
Horse Movement Study https://sketchfab.com/3d-models/horse-movement-study-3fa2b3ca0be247898db8da71f5fc3654

best paid horse i found so far, with lots of horse anims and rider too! $70 https://www.fab.com/listings/e0fc6520-8c9d-425d-9d25-3b6dc9ed56f8

[silver holly]

Oh shit !!!!!

[silver holly]

Whenever I get back to my PC!

Anything specifically you need a sc of?

[agile shoal]

Just any hiccups youre having during the animation process i suppose!

[limber plinth]

Came back yesterday, and currently at work. I'll try to take a crack at this when I can as I'd like to see what I can do.

Is there a way to view the model in game / load the textures live / preview it?

My main goal out of curiosity is if one could paint in shadows and muscle definition

As some of the more solid textures seem very flat - especially the tan horse.

[silver holly]

There is @muted ridge and @agile shoal have done it, I've asked for them to show me how but I think they been busy.

[silver holly]

We did actually already talk about how the horses with no pattern seem flat, I'm curious what you can come up with

[agile shoal]

Ah hello!

[silver holly]

I have already painted in muscle definition on all of the horses, although it is very subtle.

I have also attempted to shade and highlight one of the horses which I've been asking for pictures of in-game multiple times however I haven't seen anything.

[agile shoal]

I can make a quick little guide for yall to test it out in the game

[silver holly]

Please!

[agile shoal]

I can do that tonight

Ive had to devote all of my effort and time into my animation project which is why i couldnt help 🥹

[silver holly]

Examples of the muscle definition - it's very subtle as I'm not sure if dark lines will translate well in game

[agile shoal]

Yeah i think that would help

Ill send images tonight

[silver holly]

Thank you! And not a worry if you don't get around to it

More examples of shading and muscle definition although very subtle - again I haven't seen it in game or how it's gonna translate

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/Tsyf1ed @agile shoal sorry i took so long getting around to this

fuck

why is it cropped

hold up

https://imgur.com/a/zLr8B8h

also. is there any way to key rotation?

[fathom rose]

yeah its right there... i think you're clicking on "location"

below that option is rotation

or you can just use the letter "i" and it'll keyframe all the transforms

[silver holly]

oh lmao thank you

would you by chance have a guess as to why some of these bones aren't working though?

it's gif has sound on imgur

[fathom rose]

i haven't found any bones that don't work

some of them you can only rotate

but thats just how the rig works atm

[silver holly]

oh for sure.
i actually posted a link to a video with sound on imgur that kind of talks about what's happening.

it looks as if it should be a bone that is able to key location rather than just rotation, however when i go to key it - it doesn't play.

it could be a user issue

[agile shoal]

@silver holly What textures would you like me to test?

[silver holly]

Could I please see
Aqh.png and GBA2.png

Top two on the trello

[agile shoal]

Also I took a look at that Imgur link u sent, I'm not sure where you were clicking; were you clicking on the head control bone?

Ok, so the more monotone horses look WAY better now

I think that once we get around to looking how we could implement manes and stuff it would help even more

There does seem to be a weird shading glitch that happens when the horse looks to the side (it looks darker) so that's something we will look into at some point

[silver holly]

Do you think that's what was wrong with the other textures?

[agile shoal]

No, thats not it

See in the images where the horse looks to the side it has an entirely different color?

The game seems to be rendering them incorrectly

But, that's not on you :D

Either way, the muscle coloring helps a lot

[short cloak]

i think that's the game's weird ass lighting

[agile shoal]

Maybe I could look into writing a shader for it at some point that is slightly modified

[silver holly]

Yeah i see that! maybe the other textures are actually not as bad as we had thought(?) would it be a bother to ask you to try the other ones again?

[silver holly]

Oh interesting !

[agile shoal]

Well you can see the glitch in these older images

But, you can see the horses that are still lit correctly and they still looked flat ish imo

[silver holly]

Yeah I'd agree!

[agile shoal]

BUT I think we are on the right track

[silver holly]

Me too! Just more time an practice.
I'm interested to see what Chuck is gonna do

[agile shoal]

You are certainly getting much better

I feel bad that I've put this project to the side for now since you're doing so much for it but after finals hopefully Ill have more time

[silver holly]

It's really not a problem honestly - real life always comes first. Especially since I'm not paying you for your time, this isnt something I expect to be a priority for you

Hope finals go well!!

[silver holly]

does anyone have any guesses as to why i can't get the CTRL_Neck bone to properly key?

https://imgur.com/a/zLr8B8h

i can share my screen

[astral rover]

check in bone positions if any channels are locked (rotation, location,etc)

or if there's a modifier preventing you from moving it in an axis (blue bone icon)

[limber plinth]

I booted up the mod to check out the texturing and the horses are basically meatballs 😅

[agile shoal]

Are you on Linux?

[limber plinth]

Nope

Is the repo up to date?

[silver holly]

Really nothing that I'm seeing o:

[silver holly]

Meatballs? I need to see this

[agile shoal]

I think i know what you are talking about, I believe there was an issue with capitalization in the file directory pointing towards the animation files

But i cant remember which one exactly atm

[short cloak]

the mod must be enabled from the main menu and then the game restarted for the animations to load

it's a bug with animations meshes added by mods, there's oversights in the way they're loaded

[astral rover]

Couldn't someone with more knowledge fix this?? The process is slowed a ton having to reload scripts all the time

[short cloak]

the issue is in the java side of the game

the fix is pretty simple though

[eternal briar]

The game has a High chance to fail to load assets sometimes, and only a menu and back will force the fix,

devs should have fixed this -_- ....

[short cloak]

that's a different issue

[eternal briar]

Idk bout that

her anims are ruined, and char display is also wrecked, occurs randomly, with the only fix being a menu return

[short cloak]

looks like the same issue, it's not a chance, it always happens

the game loads animations meshes async but doesn't wait for them to finish loading before trying to load animations

[eternal briar]

sometimes i dont notice it perhaps, its a really odd one for sure

[short cloak]

it refuses to actually load the animation if the animations mesh isn't loaded yet so it never actually loads them until the second try (they are never removed from memory so they work for successive attempts until the game closes)

it works when loaded from the main menu because the game does actually wait for vanilla animations meshes, and this coincidentally covers mod meshes

[eternal briar]

i foresee that being a lovely issue if its not fixed before mp...

imagine having to load SP first, then back out, then Load into the MP server

[short cloak]

but the vanilla ones are not reloaded ever so they're not covered during lua reloads from changing mods

[silver holly]

horsey

fantasy horses could be cool but idk i was just bored

[halcyon monolith]

you could skin a unicorn too lol

[silver holly]

aaaa i thought about that! like the last unicorn unicorn

[limber plinth]

Trying to add some basic shading to help the form

Got the legs backwards I think

wasn't sure where things were lol

[silver holly]

Its ass but honestly just painting on the model is so much easier

[silver holly]

But oooo! Is this like a transparent layer? O: it looks great!

Does it work for just this horse or do you think it'd work for all?

also I don't like that texture now I gotta redo it

[limber plinth]

I seperated it on PS layers so it can be applied to the rest

Going to make a color map to know where stuff actually is

[silver holly]

Oh that's beautiful

[silver holly]

Oooo!!!! Would you share? That's so smart!

[limber plinth]

You might have an easier time doing it(?)

Havent checked what it looks like in game yet

I'd like the inside of the legs to have more shading

[silver holly]

Oooo I see where you're going with this

I'll give it a shot

[limber plinth]

I mean I can try - it's just shooting in the dark though lol

noticing some issues with the left front leg

the texture wraps around a bit farther

Could also be how inprecise this can get as a few pixels can be stretched

[silver holly]

this is how im going about it

[silver holly]

kinda like this?

[limber plinth]

Far easier I assume 😅

[silver holly]

way easier in my opinion

[silver holly]

oh very interesting

i like the dots idea

[limber plinth]

That was to tell which side is up 😅

I assumed for the legs the wider end was the top of the leg

but other parts were less clear

the neck texture is throwing me off the most

[limber plinth]

btw is this blender?

[silver holly]

heres how i'm doing mine. i added dots to the top of the segments as well!

[silver holly]

yeah

are you able to use blender?

[limber plinth]

I had it installed at one point - not sure if I still do

[silver holly]

i'd highly reccommend

comes at a great price

(plain black model)

[limber plinth]

Overall the form feels a bit better

there's still some parts that the gradients are way too sharp

[silver holly]

too sharp?

[silver holly]

oh! shaded areas!

i'd agree it seems pretty sharp, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to blend it into the chest a little bit

[limber plinth]

A bit easier said than done working off 2D 😅

I think that's good for general forms

I'll do finer anatomy details tomorrow

[silver holly]

Props to you lmao I couldn't wrap my brain around it

I'm sure it'll be easier with the key map now

Can't wait to see what you come up with!!

[limber plinth]

This is what it looks like currently

If you can send me what you made it might help with atleast the seams on the legs

Curious what it looks like on the tan one

I think the lighter colored horses suffered the most with no shading

[silver holly]

that looks WAY better

the darker colors being the inside or "shaded" color

vice versa

its kinda sloppy oops

[limber plinth]

the layout is different?

[silver holly]

it is a lot different

hrm

oh i see

you're using the old one

https://media.discordapp.net/attachments/1345522089720942665/1349200228938682418/image.png?ex=67fc6c21&is=67fb1aa1&hm=8a985907c8b4a259cee878da2322c8c35f3374eaf19b1c8afba6d0c5c8d0d7f3&

left is old right is the newest model

[limber plinth]

ah

I pulled it from the repo

[silver holly]

my bad i should've noticed sooner

[limber plinth]

is the repo old?

[silver holly]

repo?

[limber plinth]

github repo

#1345522089720942665 message

[silver holly]

uh

@muted ridge took that aspect over, i didn't have any involvement

[limber plinth]

ah

[silver holly]

yeah i'm not that intuitive lmao

[limber plinth]

Github desktop is pretty easy to use

how/where are the project files being shared usually?

[silver holly]

https://trello.com/b/7qt7QpBM/horsey-time-zeehaw i believe(?) this is more so up to date, at least on my side

but for the most part honestly just via this chat

[eternal briar]

so theres....a mod ingame with the stuff or

[silver holly]

🤷‍♀️

i'm honestly not sure how people are getting the model in the game

magic i've been assuming

[eternal briar]

repo looks like a mod template to me

[silver holly]

you'd know better than me lmao

[eternal briar]

time 2 find out 🙂

[silver holly]

if you do, would you please help me? 🥺 i've been asking but i think everyone's been really busy

[eternal briar]

sure ill dm a template mod complete for you

[silver holly]

i don't know what that means

[eternal briar]

all g, ill help set it up

[silver holly]

🥹 thank you

[limber plinth]

The repo works as a mod

If you install GitHub desktop you can have it in workshop/ to update off of

[eternal briar]

i just built one myself, easier

[eternal briar]

SO LIFELIKE GUYS OMGGGG?

IS A REAL HONSE

i like the moo noise left there aha

[short cloak]

the repo should be up to date but textures go through trello first so they may not be added to the repo yet

i'm not really sure why you're calling the repo a 'template mod' or why you made your own but if it's working now

[topaz meadow]

The texture shading definitely adds a lot of depth that the model was missing.

[silver holly]

Definitely!

Excited to see it on the new model / with a new texture

[eternal briar]

he is doing his best

[limber plinth]

Is this an automated process or one that's manually done?

Trying to see if I can get the mesh to test textures on -- not sure where that'd be

[limber plinth]

Downloaded blender, and it is easier to just paint general shapes onto the form lol

This looks like a crackhead was at work- but I promise it'll make sense lol

[limber plinth]

wip obviously

[agile shoal]

Whoa great work guys!

[limber plinth]

It's not super-duper great, but it's something

I'd probably need to look up tutorials to see how to paint in blender / use PS with it better

[silver holly]

Ohhh that's looking really good so far

I'm not sure if I'm super sold on the veiny-ness though

I'd have to see it in game

I think the face and head is fucking perfect though

[silver holly]

Oh good lol

[thin crescent]

oh damn that looks great

tho I notice there is still one fairly large thing missing from the horse model to keep it on par with indie stone standards

[silver holly]

I don't want balls in my face 😭

We might(?) need a system for male/female if we do breeding tho which means identifying m/f
Or they can all be gays and theys ✨

[eternal briar]

[topaz meadow]

There’d also some custom brushes and addons you can add to blender too

[thin crescent]

minecraft method.

[eternal briar]

generally had some trouble using the newest model of Horsey, Was completey Wrecked ingame

[limber plinth]

I do suggest anyone contributing to use GitHub tho

As rn any changes without it would need a middleman

[silver holly]

I can start uploading textures there

Do I have to request access?

Should I just make one?

[topaz meadow]

Yeah you'll need a github account and can ask for access from Albion I believe.

[eternal briar]

i need the updated default horse model. that isnt ruined if anyone has that,

for reference, Horsey on the left here works great as the reference model in models_X

horsey on the right is a file i got given...

github IK horse isnt particularly usable for this either atm.

[limber plinth]

I'd just request access to the existing one

You could make a fork to keep your WIP to yourself and send pull-requests to the main one
-# pull-requests are suggesting changes to the main, and generally need to be approved

bonus would be:

• You don't accidentally break the main one
• Also, people could copy yours directly instead of the main

[eternal briar]

i need this, but New Horsey

most outcomes lead to Unhappy Horsey Mode.
( i dont have mental time to deal with that outcome.. )

[topaz meadow]

You mean the one to use in Blender, or?

The .blend file should be in the repo.

[topaz meadow]

And for this you just need to enable it in your main menu and relaunch your game.

The animations meshes don't load properly the first go around.

[eternal briar]

old horse model worked fine...

im aware of that bug, its gonna do it regardless

if you have an exported Horse.fbx from Models_X with the new model,

• Gimme

[limber plinth]

Unfortunately I think Sum is the only one with it

[limber plinth]

This happens when they die (for me)

[short cloak]

we only have a couple animations, the animations bugging out is expected

if you mean the one from a few weeks ago just clone the repo, that's the one in there

[silver holly]

this is the one that @agile shoal gave me and the only one i have - it should be in the github(?)

however it's the same model i already gave to @eternal briar which is apparently having some issues

[agile shoal]

Are the issues the fact that theyre buggy in game?

I think its brcause we have the new model referencing old animations

[silver holly]

that's what i keep thinking

[eternal briar]

likely. as replacing the reference model shouldnt hurt it, other than the current,

perhaps they are require to "Match" as a set

[short cloak]

as long as the skeletons match you shouldn't get the meatball, but animations for the older version do appear incorrectly

[silver holly]

scratch that lmao

[astral rover]

bro textures too 😭

[limber plinth]

?

[astral rover]

man Ive known you for your mods, pretty sure you're good with lua too, you helped me out a while ago

[limber plinth]

Oh, that I texture 😅

I thought it was related to the collapsing horses

[astral rover]

For some reason that happens in b42 now... it happens to the rifle shoot anim when it plays too fast, and the issue with zombies now

[silver holly]

Let's try to keep this chat clear for horsey talk? 🐴

[astral rover]

Like this you mean?, I saw on the pinboard that you guys needed a saddle, I fit it to the model and tried to make it stylized, don't know if it could be useful to you guys

[astral rover]

I'll upload it here so you guys can upload it to the pinboard, hope it helps

[agile shoal]

That looks AWESOME

Great work!

[silver holly]

Oh my GOD! This is amazing!!!

Thank you so much!!!!!

[silver holly]

Hey y'all, I just wanted to take a second to speak to everyone again.

Again thank you everyone who's pitched in, literally every little thing helps make our horsey dreams come to life. And if you've been busy then I hope your'e taking care of yourself!

I wanna be really clear about one thing about this project - And I guess take it with a grain of salt if you will, but I guess as the person who kicked this project in ass to get it going I feel like I can say this.

I also wanna preface this with I understand that at times AI is used with coding and very technical difficult things like that but

As much as possible, I want to proudly say this project was done without the use of AI

[short cloak]

i'm not sure if this was prompted by something, but i will add that no work i have ever produced has used any ai assistance, and that i would feel uncomfortable contributing to a project that uses ai

[silver holly]

To be clear, nothing really prompted this except my own very unfortunate experience in the past that has lead me to a very deep hated and discomfort with AI. And it seems to be more and more of a discussion/prominent thing floating around so I'm putting this out here now

[agile shoal]

Im with you there

AI fucking sucks

It could have been a great tool used for scientific research (and it is by some people) but the main use it is being marketed for is trivializing human contact, creating soulless images in leu of paying real people, or cheating yourself out of an education

Ive met people in both my Japanese and American unis that are so overreliant on AI it is sad

I do think the bubble is beginning to burst though, since investors are starting to realize these ai products are 90% hype and 10% reality and thus dont really make money

But thats another convo lol

[eternal briar]

I had several Hunches

DOWN BOI

[pine meteor]

the progress is stunning, i'm curious to see how players will ride horses once yall get more stuff done

[silver holly]

@short cloak thank you for updating the github!!!

[thin crescent]

now giant cats

ride a tiger into battle like ezekial

[eternal briar]

we are limited by the lack of usable walk anim atm, it genuinely hates it

[short cloak]

works on my machine

i have been meaning to ask if the walk animation isn't supposed to have any translation data because it doesn't seem to (or it's not moving for some other reason)

[eternal briar]

your horsey works? and walks as in moves tiles

[short cloak]

it doesn't move but it works

it plays the idle animation and switches to the walking animation when it wants to

[eternal briar]

yeah that works, just no translating 😦

[short cloak]

i just figured the animation didn't have any translation data

[eternal briar]

if you fix the translation data keys, he ZOOMS
but fails to play the anim properly

[brisk iris]

Awesome work so far everyone, truly some cool stuff happening here!
I'll try to help out with some animations in the next couple of days. Is the spreadsheet in the pinned comment up to date?

[topaz meadow]

The trello and the github should both be the most up to date!

[silver holly]

Very excited to have another helping hand! Thank you!

[brisk iris]

Haha we'll see how helpful the hand ends up being, I've never animated an animal 😄 But I'll try my best and see if it's usable!

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/c8Lbj0W still trying my own hand at animating its hard

[fathom rose]

you're doing great tho! this stuff is not easy

[fathom rose]

i would start moving the rest of the body. I don't remember exactly but the hips and torso should be alternating going up and down

[agile shoal]

Great progress! Yeah the horse is aparently one of the hardest animals to animate so ur doing a great job

[proper dust]

Big game studios are so lucky to be able to mo-cap horses.

[silver holly]

Fr tho

[astral rover]

Based

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/A1Rtbbm

when i start to encorporate like the "hip" and "chest" im not sure if ilike it

[agile shoal]

Thats a lot of keyframes!

Try to only keyframe the defining poses of the walk, so if following the sheet you made would be about 16 keyframes

Although you could just make 8 keyframes for one side, then post those flipped for the other

[limber plinth]

Also seems like the head shouldn't be moving around-- seems like the entire torso and up moves up

[muted ridge]

I'd say head still needs moving. Especially when you've seen a horse walk, the head always moves

Making a bodypart not move will make the animation look unatural and you'll feel something is wrong

It's like making a walking animation by having the hips not move and another one where they move

As long as the movement is logical, with movement of the hips will always look way more natural

[limber plinth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=INQx-Lzs8mU
Yeah the diagram doesnt do it justice I think

[muted ridge]

Yeah that looks better

[silver holly]

This is a walk cycle.

[silver holly]

Where as this is a trot. The diagram is very accurate to a trot.

The head needs to move up and down as this is how horses just work

[silver holly]

I did double the key frames to try and make it look more smooth

[agile shoal]

Its a bit of a catch 22 when adding more keyframes, sometimes its smoother when using less!

[silver holly]

I'll take out the doubled frames if I get access to my computer again to see how that looks.

I think I will end up trying to move the chest and pelvis it just ends up messing with everything else and idk

[agile shoal]

Youre doing good work though! Dont get discouraged, this shit can be hard haha

[limber plinth]

There's more videos from the same channel I think-- could have sworn there was a gallop in there

[limber plinth]

Yeah for real, horses are apparently one of the hardest animals lol

[agile shoal]

Jumping into the deep end

[limber plinth]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lborw5Op84c

[silver holly]

I keep hearing that! I can definitely see why, there's just a lot of little movements in the body that can get fucked up fr

[silver holly]

Interestingly cut gif but I get the point

[limber plinth]

from the last linked video-- thought the stick figure horse was interesting

[silver holly]

It's a really nice visual where the hooves connect fs

[limber plinth]

"the opposite legs lift and make contact at the same time"

even with the visual I have no idea what that means lmao

[topaz meadow]

Yeah it’s definitely a “jumping into the deep end” moment when it comes to animations lmao

[eternal briar]

a base walking animation should be the highest priority. and i mean one, that loads ingame, and the horse translates physically in world

[halcyon monolith]

According to the animation sheet, paddlefruit did a Horse_Walk?

[eternal briar]

last one i used animated, but failed to move during

[halcyon monolith]

Ohh you mean it didn't work in the game correctly?

[eternal briar]

yeah, he moves, but doesnt, walk off into the sunset

https://tenor.com/view/skate-family-guy-dance-moves-gif-17787568

he do the

[halcyon monolith]

I was messing around with the rig to see how rigging and animation works since ive never done it before and I saw that theres some pretty complex rig here

but I think the "snapping" of the legs will be annoying if you also have this problem

before and after keyframe, see how it snaps? That is not me

and I dont know really how animation works so I don't know if thats something you can or cant fix

Maybe if there was a control point for the "knuckle" of the leg it would be OK
Basically, instead of smoothing all the way to full extension, it instantly snaps to it, which makes it look extremely unnatural

[silver holly]

wish i had anything to say to this but this is more of a @agile shoal question

https://imgur.com/a/p8GnNUg also i removed the duplicated keyframes

gonna start adding the pelvis/chest rocking

https://imgur.com/a/VzQiguF

it does make the head bobbing seem more intense

https://imgur.com/a/cZhvqyI

he looks like hes skipping and going lalala

but its getting close

[agile shoal]

Looking better!

[silver holly]

https://imgur.com/a/nEZPy6C

https://imgur.com/a/4WVgqNC

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AHbwQEzrHeQ

[limber plinth]

Horses seem to just be skipping tbf

A full gallop is just a really excited skip

[silver holly]

true lmao

[astral rover]

Does anyone have latest horse rig and model?

[silver holly]

this is what ive got, apparently its corrupted though - not sure about that. there's also a copy of everything on the github

[fathom rose]

that's the one thing i wanted to know... cause Ash got an animation to work, but with the old skeleton and model, but aparently there was an issue with the new one

did yall manage to solve it?

[silver holly]

yeah nothing came of that - everyone mostly just said the one on the github should work

don't think it ever got fixed

[eternal briar]

becuase unlike me, they wont actually test things. modmaking requires physical playtesting..

[silver holly]

we're all doing our best here for free with the time we've got.
i've also have honestly seen, multiple times, the new model in game working being posted.

[eternal briar]

suprisingly, that didnt mean you,

i test like mad, all the time

[silver holly]

for reference

[silver holly]

um okay hope you're doing okay man

[short cloak]

what's with this remark? i have tested it, and tested it again immediately after you complained about it and did not have the same issue

[eternal briar]

idk if we had the same files 😵‍💫 idk whats the issue atm

[silver holly]

i think if we're gonna all work together and continue asking for help from one another, we're gonna have to sometimes take a breath when we need to and step back when it's required.

[eternal briar]

its a common issue that my text reads very literal, it is how i am

[silver holly]

for sure, glad it was just a misunderstanding in that case

anyway - still not sure what the answer is here

[eternal briar]

tism trait go brr... its why in vc im lovely at reading others, but struggle massively here

[silver holly]

i got really really close to finishing a gallop animation and unfortunately couldn't figure out how to save it and just had to scrap it 😦 gonna give it a try on the laptop but it sucks not having two screens

i also unfortunately had to scrap that trot

how do i save an animation? google was genuinely no help

[topaz meadow]

I understand you can be blunt and literal at times, but even with that in mind this is a very unhelpful remark.

It's has been a bit disjointed lately admittedly as real life has taken up a lot of people's free time, and we're also working with a very duct-taped together system as there's not necessarily a clean way of adding animals and there's a known bug raised by Albion regarding animations.

Everyone involved has been playtesting the mod as we proceed with changes and adjustments from everyone. Lets try to keep comments productive and to the point rather than throwing shade towards others.

[agile shoal]

Learning should be fun, not gatekept

Also we're not getting paid for this and we have a life outside of modding, so i do not appreciate the snide comments

[limber plinth]

I swear this thread is cursed

I'd like to let adults be adults, and let misunderstandings resolve themselves, but this is the second time someone "misstepped" with a joke like this and things are (again) sliding into something weird.
-# I've deleted some comments I felt were just being reactionary and not helpful to resolve the conversation.

If you socially misstep (joke doesn't land)- don't doubledown or make it more than it is. Start with apologizing atleast.

If someone says something mean or out of pocket- focus on the actual comment and not the person.

And don't dog pile, share your viewpoint and let things move on.

[limber plinth]

-# Also this comment isn't directed at anyone person- and infact is in response to this occurrence and the previous time all wrapped into one.

[limber plinth]

Back to the horsey topic- if the animations don't work in game-- will this mean the work would have to be redone later?

[silver holly]

Good question

[limber plinth]

https://www.wikihow.com/Save-an-Animation-in-Blender

I hope this helps lol

[silver holly]

🥺 Thank you

I hate that wikiHow isn't pushed anymore 😭 😭 I couldve saved my shit but Google is dead now

[silver holly]

Gonna bump this question again because it'd be great to know before getting a bunch of stuff done

[topaz meadow]

Do you mean exporting it for use in game or?

[silver holly]

Oh I think I know how to do that(?)

[topaz meadow]

They work ingame last I'd heard/seen from Albion's testing. I can work on getting them ingame myself but I've been fairly busy since my doggo recently needed spine surgery and she's incontinent at the moment lmao.

[eternal briar]

you generally export it as fbx, or save it as blend, for later

[silver holly]

Blender doesnt wanna open on my laptop 😭

[north ferry]

oh my god someone is making a horse mod

I joined this discord just to see if anyone was

To everyone who is working on this I salute you, you are doing the honse's work.

https://tenor.com/view/tomascore-happy-glad-sunny-gif-12101442983756537605

[north ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/tomascore-horse-horsey-pestilence-zombie-gif-1183733234471583474

I probably can't provide anything of value but as a person with a horse you have my full ideological support

[silver holly]

I started this as just a horse loving girl

[north ferry]

I feel like it is a pretty reasonable addition

we have multiple horse locations in-game that remain empty

[silver holly]

Crazy to think how far things came and how much I've learned o: !

[silver holly]

RIGHT?

[north ferry]

I can understand why you find no dogs because they clearly had some spooky unknown part in the outbreak

but horses literally just vanished alongside the gas in every car

[silver holly]

Lmao

[north ferry]

this game would be x10 worse to die in if you had a pet dog at home

didnt even think about that until just now

[zenith sapphire]

[astral rover]

Getting back to this, retargeting armature's is a valid option, it can easily be done if rigs have same shapes/rotations, I'm not really a professional animator but I could help out, I do think the priority is getting a working common rig atm, tho I'm way more worried about implementation in-game

[dreamy prawn]

i think implementation in-game is promising if you look at the bicycle/skateboard/scooter mods that released recently. i can see the horse acting similar to those when ridden, and snapping to an animal instead of an item when dismounted. though no fence jumping without some fancy scripting...

[fathom rose]

Yeah I'd keep the model and just re-rig it worst case scenario

[silver holly]

This should be top priority before we do anything else I think

I remember someone mentioning grapple hook?

[short cloak]

that is basically how it works yeah

i don't think we need to panic about the model not working, it's only happening to one person for mystery reasons and iirc she has been doing weird stuff setting up her own mod instead of just cloning the repo so it may be something she messed up

[topaz meadow]

And if it’s an issue of translation data not being included in the animation that’s also an exceptionally easy fix as well so doubly no worry there.

At current moment the only, and primary roadblock. Is animating horsie hard

[silver holly]

As soon as I have access to my PC again I'll be back at it!

[brisk iris]

Tried my hand at a trot, what do you think?

[eternal briar]

i knew you couldnt resist helping after i teased it aha nice.

[muted ridge]

That's not bad tbf

Might need some tweaking

I think the middle of the body doesn't move enough up and down

That back green IK

[brisk iris]

Oh yeah good spot, I'll incorporate that one a bit more

[brisk iris]

Gallop!

[topaz meadow]

"I always wear low cut v-necks like--" "yes girl, yes."

But no that looks really good!

I think the head might need some adjustments but maybe it'll look/make more sense ingame.

[brisk iris]

Yeah I think you're right, looking again they kinda stretch their necks out and keep it kinda level without a lot of bobbing up and down

[topaz meadow]

yeah it's very 'level' and compensates for the movement of the rest of the body.

stabilization basically.

If you nail that I think it'll be close to perfect aside from some other small adjustments I can't quite put my finger on.

[worn tree]

this looks GREAT!

[short cloak]

that looks really good!!!

[brisk iris]

More like this right?
I think animating the tail added a bit more feeling to it as well

[topaz meadow]

Oooooh that's so good with the tail yeah

maybe a slight tilt of the nose of the horse down?

It seems like they kind of have a downward posture of the head during galloping

Me, critiquing your absolutely great animation from the sidelines

[brisk iris]

Oh yeah kinda like they're pushing their head down and through the motion

Haha I appreciate it! Always nice to get feedback

[silver holly]

AMAZING WORK!!!

I'd love to see a canter as well!!!

[brisk iris]

I can give that a try next for sure!

[brisk iris]

Yeah I think this makes more sense right? I tried making it more downturned but it gives less emphasis on the push trough movement

[topaz meadow]

phenomenal

[limber plinth]

https://tenor.com/view/rdr2-red-dead-redemption2-charles-smith-arthur-morgan-horses-gif-27617098

we ridin'

[brisk iris]

I actually booted up rdr2 and have been using their animations for reference along with youtube vids 😂

[limber plinth]

I mean, it's a great reference

[brisk iris]

Yeah they did a damn great job on that game, in all aspects

[limber plinth]

comparing it to this gif, 2 things I noticed, your head tilts up at the bottom of the head bob + the base of the tail should stand up throughout, and the end should wave. But honestly, you're like 90% of the way there

[brisk iris]

Yeah you're spot on, gonna try some adjustments

I made the head tilt less, but it looked more stiff, which they realistically probably are, so it would make sense. I'll play with it some more

[limber plinth]

You're doing great

[north ferry]

this might be a little absurd but I literally have a horse irl

do you need reference material?

[brisk iris]

Actually yeah! If you have any good videos of your horse turning that would be very helpful! Like not while trotting or galloping, just turning on the spot

[north ferry]

I can probably get you some when I get home tonight

https://tenor.com/view/im-doing-my-part-serious-stare-gif-11979677

[brisk iris]

That would be sick! No rush though, I probably won't have time to make more animations until sunday

[north ferry]

Out of curiosity, are geldings being considered? Or are all male horses going to be stallions?

No clue if it is even possible to do something like that with animal behavior but I figured i'd ask since I didn't see a mention of it on the Trello

Just to clarify, not asking if neutering a horse will be a potential mechanic lol. Just if the idea of finding gelding and stallion horses has been considered at all

[short cloak]

it's definitely never crossed my mind 😅

[north ferry]

Ah lol fair enough

[brisk iris]

Changed the tail animation and made the head tilt a bit less at the bottom of the head bob, I think it definitely helped

[brisk iris]

Horses really are kinda silly looking animals the more I look at them. Their body is like a big bean with floppy flailing sticks attached to it

[limber plinth]

Lookin' good

[brisk iris]

Do we have a process for the translation data btw? We're probably gonna want to have some formula based on frame count and translation data travel distance right? I'm shit at math, so hopefully someone here knows how we should do it 😄

[short cloak]

i don't think we have anything like that yet

[brisk iris]

Okay no worries, we can brainstorm it, I've left my animations without translation data so far, it'll be easy to adjust later

Should I make a PR on github with the blend file and animations, or what is the preferred way for me to upload them?

[limber plinth]

Yes please, I'm a bit biased but I think the more everything is kept on GitHub the better

[brisk iris]

All good with me, I love github!

Is there a consensus on framerate playback and an approximate frame count for the animations?
I've been using 25fps playback (default from the rig file) and trying to keep the animations between 16-30 frames which is what I've seen most of in vanilla

[brisk iris]

Okay added a PR with the two animations and my blend file.
I'll hopefully have time to make some more this weekend.
Do we want to prioritize them, or should I just go down the list?

[topaz meadow]

Oh my god this is looking great.

[topaz meadow]

Probably all of the walking ones first? That way we can test on getting the human animations done for the origianl intent of riding a horse, then you can do down the list or whatever at your leisure.

[brisk iris]

Makes sense! Should I add some translation data for now, so it will move in game? And then we can refine it when we have the formula we want to use later

[muted ridge]

That looks good yea !

[topaz meadow]

Yeah go ahead, testing translation data to be perfect is a headache in and of itself.

[brisk iris]

Haha yeah I feel ya, the translation data in my skateboard/bike mods are purely vibe based

[astral rover]

You can try a blender addon called global transform, it helps with keeping bones in the same global position independent from any other changes

[astral rover]

Your gallop animation is looking phenomenal dude

[brisk iris]

I'll check it out, thanks for the tip!

[brisk iris]

Thank you! It's been fun working on them, took an edible and zoned in on a bunch of slow-mo horse videos 😄

[astral rover]

CrystalChris, I can help with animating aswell as modelling, what poly count do you think is good? I tried maximizing performance on the saddle last time

[astral rover]

That def helps, I don't really use pure ref for making animations, and you did great at not saturating the animation with keyframes, let the interpolation do the work and edit the curve graph

[topaz meadow]

For the saddles/things related to the horse? I'd try not to go past like..1k or 2k tris. Vanilla uses even less, but if we're assuming the horses will be comparable to vehicles, vehicles are usually around a thousand or two thousand in vanilla iirc.

And we can have some wiggle room for it with it being a mod and the items being limited in quantity.

[astral rover]

455 verts, looking good with the saddle

[topaz meadow]

That's perfect then.

[brisk iris]

Haha cheers, I've learned the hard way that more keyframes usually means more headache

[topaz meadow]

Again though, I'm not sure it's fully 100% confirmed we can get saddles or items on horses yet.

[astral rover]

do you know if zomboid struggles with float vectors?

[topaz meadow]

But in theory I think they are possible.

[astral rover]

oh? what is confirmed then? does the horse use zomboid anim weights?

[brisk iris]

Worst case if you can't attach it to the horse itself, I think it could be equipped as a clothing item on the player, attached to prop1 or 2, and then in the bob horse riding animations we animate those props to move along with the horse.
Not the cleanest, but it should work

[astral rover]

Full-stack dev and zomboid dev?

Project zomboid jank, I like it

[topaz meadow]

In theory yeah it could work! Just getting it to properly sync will be a bit of a goofy nightmare with it not being weighted to the horse but the player.

[astral rover]

Honestly zomboid is so full on jank on latest version that the indie stone is just digging their grave at this point

[short cloak]

that'd probably be fine honestly

i'm not sure about the blender side of things but remember that during riding the player is 100% controlling the horse's animation anyway

[astral rover]

????

[brisk iris]

Oh that's perfect then

[brisk iris]

How are the horse animations triggered actually? Does it play whatever animset equivalent that it has that plays for the player?

[short cloak]

yeah, the player's animation node defines a matching one for the horse to play

[brisk iris]

Nice nice

[short cloak]

so the horse's animation state machine is basically entirely inactive during riding so we don't have to worry about any weird interactions

whatever the player's riding animation tells it to do, it will do

[silver holly]

Rdr2 is a horse game. They did such a good job with them, like mocapping live horses and referencing equestrians

[astral rover]

So the horse's weights are being handled by player?

also, where can I send the saddle model to add it to the pinboard?

[astral rover]

We can't compare pz to that game, everyone agrees nothing has been made on that level again

[astral rover]

just the online was a bit iffy but enjoyable

[short cloak]

i haven't tested how translation data interacts, the player's translation data moves the horse but i haven't tested what happens if the horse's animation has translation data - worst case we'll just need duplicate animations with it removed

[brisk iris]

Truly! I'm not a big horse guy, but obviously they're amazing creatures that have literally carried humanity for thousands of years, so seeing them done so well is really cool

[silver holly]

Sorry to distract, I'm just getting caught up.
@brisk iris thank you so much for your contributions!!!! You've been a tremendous help!!!

[astral rover]

sumbunny sorry for asking but what are you in charge of?

[silver holly]

I'm the person that started all of this

[astral rover]

well, apart from that 🥶

[silver holly]

I also bought a bunch of sound assets, I also did all of the horse textures with help from @limber plinth

[astral rover]

ooh, can you try texturin my saddle? annd other things the project may need?

[brisk iris]

Oh okay, I left the translation data out of the horse ones I exported, but I can export some with it in, so we can test with both

[silver holly]

I can handle this. Thanks!

[brisk iris]

Happy to help! It's probably one of the most requested mods I keep seeing, so this combined effort will make a lot of people very happy 😄

[silver holly]

I've said it time and time again - I cant even imagine being able to do this without so many helping hands. It's been really amazing to see everyone working together to get something accomplished.

So thank you everyone who's been helping out, it's just too many to individually @ now but really you're all appreciated so much

[astral rover]

and get the project a lot of subscriptions

[astral rover]

oh, btw can you add me and alex to the pinboard?

[topaz meadow]

Genuine full on 'modding community' project I really love to see it tbh.

[silver holly]

I wish I could 🥺 Sorry I would've added you and your saddle already but I don't have control over that.
@muted ridge I believe has both the GitHub and Trello access(?)

[muted ridge]

I left the trello

[silver holly]

Right? Everytime I look in here it's truly a breath of fresh air

[muted ridge]

I do have Git access still tho I believe. Anyway you can do pull requests to it and albion can accept them

[short cloak]

the github repository is under my name, i think doggy gave me admin of the trello so just give me a moment to work out how i do that

[silver holly]

Thank you!!!

[muted ridge]

I gave every members admin of the trello

[silver holly]

Hopefully that works out

[astral rover]

hmm, so do I post it on github or trello (says view only)

[short cloak]

i dmed you both an invite link that i think will make you members

[silver holly]

What was the point of having both Trello and GitHub anyhow? Is there anyway we could use just one to limit confusion?

[muted ridge]

Assets should be put in the github

[muted ridge]

The trello is not for sharing files

So back then you shared textures there but the truth is you really shouldn't do that

[topaz meadow]

Trello was for organizing the workflow, what needed done, etc.

[muted ridge]

You should add the textures to the repo

[topaz meadow]

The github was more for the filesharing side of things.

[silver holly]

Oh oops

[topaz meadow]

lmao technically it's fine

but it's easier to have everything kept in the github so people could pull/push

[muted ridge]

There's plenty of youtube tutorials on how to use git if needed

[silver holly]

When I get access to my PC again, I can upload the textures on gh lol

Tell me if I'm doing things wrong! I'm not gonna be offended

[muted ridge]

There's even Github Desktop which makes managing the repo way easier than with command lines

[short cloak]

CLI is easier imo but i know that's not everyone's cup of tea 😅

[silver holly]

CLI?

[muted ridge]

What's that ?

[short cloak]

command line interface

[topaz meadow]

I think even for the case of like; uploading the textures you can just manually directly upload the files to the repo without the need for any pushing or pulling.

Especially if it's just pngs.

[muted ridge]

Like from cmd panel ?

[short cloak]

yeah

[muted ridge]

I mean, I don't find it easier LMAO

[topaz meadow]

I like my silly Visual Studio interface because I lick lead paint when it comes to certain things.

[short cloak]

there's only a couple commands you actually need to know and it's very quick

[muted ridge]

I've been using github desktop for modding in general and I've been using git for the past 4 or 5 months at my work from a cmd panel and jesus this is fucking hell

[short cloak]

but it's understandable that people less comfortable with clis in general will have a worse time with it

[muted ridge]

Yea but anytime you need to handle merge conflicts and shit it's PURE HELL

[short cloak]

handling merge conflicts is always pure hell

[muted ridge]

Like most of the basic stuff I could easily translate from github desktop to cmd panel but for merges it's just impossible

[topaz meadow]

I one time was so frustrated I almost just deleted my repo and made a new one I'm not even gonna lie.

[short cloak]

i primarily use the integration in my ide anyway, i only use the CLI when i can't do that/it's too annoying to do that

[muted ridge]

Github Desktop has a neat interface to handle merges

[astral rover]

i'm fine with github, issue is that with all the forks, getting the best version out of many is going to need a lot of administration

[muted ridge]

There's not really going to be forks of the project

Currently there's no point that

We work together

[astral rover]

How am I meant to add files to the project then?

[short cloak]

we've all done this i bet

[muted ridge]

Join as a contributor, or fork then pull requests

[short cloak]

my game engine repo is so fucked i'm planning to just delete it and start a new one when i make it public so nobody will ever know

[muted ridge]

Pull requests to merge the fork to the main

[muted ridge]

Lmao me with all my commits just saying "update" or "current"

[astral rover]

haha

[astral rover]

same

[brisk iris]

I relate to this so hard lol, I've been working on a web app for like a year and the repo is so insanely bloated with crap that I can't wait to just start a new one and paste over the relevant stuff

[short cloak]

i have so many commits that are just 'rewrote everything'

[muted ridge]

lol

[silver holly]

Well shoot now that someone else covered animations I get to work on textures again! O:
On my to do list so far is to finish the dead horses and make a skinned horse.

Does anyone have coat suggestions? I'm kind of running out of ideas tbh

We can also start making "clothing items" maybe? Stirrups, reigns, halter, hoof feathers, manes?

[astral rover]

if by that you mean the 3d ground models, sure, tho I think making the skinned/ decaying version of the horse causes less drag than starting new models

[halcyon monolith]

lol yess or the classic "chore: Please work 🙏"

[silver holly]

Wouldn't less drag be good? I might be misunderstanding

Also if we did a dead + skinned dead model (these would be two separate textures) would this be a new ground model? Or should I still make ones for the model we have now?

[astral rover]

I mean that there would be less versions off the same thing floating around people's pc's, for example I dont really think im going to animate certain things because I know that Alex is already making them, But if we can agree on what we are actively making that wouldn't be an issue

[astral rover]

Zomboid uses new models for them, so I think we should do it (new ground models) for both of those states

also, is this the style you're looking for?

[halcyon monolith]

There was a spreadsheet for who's working on whta animations but it wasn't updated to the latest latest

[astral rover]

that's exactly the issue at hand

[brisk iris]

I wrote a comment on the trello animation card which ones I'll be working on. But I'm happy to use any system

[muted ridge]

There's a trello card with all the needed animations

That I took from that excel

[short cloak]

it looks like you can assign people to each checkbox

[muted ridge]

Yea

[muted ridge]

Something vanilla style, kind of hard here to see

[short cloak]

nevermind that's a paid feature

[brisk iris]

I tried but it looks to be a paid feature

[muted ridge]

We can make cards for each animations if needed and assign people there perhaps

Or just update that spreadsheet I guess

Or in the repo ?

Idk

[short cloak]

they have a convert to card button if we want to just make an animations tab and fill it with cards

i think that's very ugly but that's probably why they make you pay for the better way

[muted ridge]

Yea

[brisk iris]

I think if we just write comments on the card should be good enough

[muted ridge]

of the animations ?

[brisk iris]

You can assign members to the card, so if we use that then we know everyone that is working on animations, and then those people know who to coordinate with. I think we're a small enough group that it should work

[muted ridge]

Yea

[brisk iris]

Yeah of the main animation card, so for example for the horse animations I wrote a comment on https://trello.com/c/NeJLuYnO/3-horse-animations

Trello

Horse Animations

Animation files and NLA strips should be named after the animation (so the Horse_Dead animation should be named “Horse_Dead.FBX” and the NLA strip should be named “Horse_Dead”)

‌

References:

• [https://sketchfab.com/Centroid/collections/horse-f45146aef95f4b78b11d4ca14fd6d463](https://sketchfab.com/Centroid/collections/horse-f45146...

Comments

1

Labels

High priority

[muted ridge]

Aaaah

[short cloak]

ah, i already moved them all into cards 😅

[brisk iris]

Oh haha, it's all the same to me, I'm fine with either!

[astral rover]

somebody already coined my username on trello

[brisk iris]

Should I add to the animation details that we should try to keep them between 8-30 frames in duration, with 25 fps playback, so that we don't run into issues when we want to blend/transition animations from different people.

[silver holly]

Omg you already textured it? It looks great!

[silver holly]

Let's put that on the to do list! If someone's able to do the models, I can do the textures!

[astral rover]

Ill make the horse decay and dead model, though Im still only able to edit github pulls

how have you guys been animating with these leg deformations??

[topaz meadow]

Very good idea.

Standardize ,standardize, standardize.

[astral rover]

already made loops can be standardized by time slide

[topaz meadow]

Though if I'm being honest, I do not feel confident in my skills to do horse animations, especially not to your caliber.

[astral rover]

Its not that hard tbf, it requieres pacience, understanding key poses and more pacience

[brisk iris]

Horsey legs are weird as fuck, bending all over the place. I don't even try to make sense of it, I just tryo to copy what I see and let the rig take the wheel

[astral rover]

The rig is very good, leg deformation could be a lot better, especially on the hind legs

you can fix it with control bones or just manually weight painting it

[brisk iris]

https://tenor.com/view/i-know-some-of-these-words-mhmm-clueless-words-i-know-gif-5609882

[astral rover]

Its like an extra bone that is being controlled by drivers based on the location of the foot bone, so if the foot bone rotates, the driver does as well, correcting the deformation in the leg

[brisk iris]

Ah okay I see

[astral rover]

probably better off finding a youtube vid, I couldn't think about some things without them

[limber plinth]

The thing about horses is that the hoof to the first joint is just like your finger nail to the first joint

What we think is their knees is actually their ankle

[astral rover]

right now we just have 1 bone on it

[astral rover]

i guess?

[limber plinth]

I just meant to understand what's going on

[astral rover]

well yeah, you're not wrong

[limber plinth]

They are weird, but there's a method to the madness atleast

[silver holly]

Um idk lmao

[silver holly]

Bless you 😭 ❤️

[astral rover]

I think ill make 2 different variations, pz styled and realistic, though im basing the retopology off of a found acreative commons model thats anatomically correct

[astral rover]

oh no silly, you'll be the one in charge of texturing it 🙂 but thank you very much

[silver holly]

Oh I know but I can't make a model so thank you 🙂

[silver holly]

@astral rover Also, I'm not sure if you saw this in all the spam but I'd love to touch base with you in DMs real quick? If that's okay that is!

[astral rover]

??? Why wouldn't it be?

[topaz meadow]

Some people don't like unannounced Dm's!

[astral rover]

(I'll rephrase this for clarity) Current progress on the horse decaystate 2, at 2k vertices.

[dreamy prawn]

can you link which CC model you found pls?

[astral rover]

here you go: https://skfb.ly/6nYOS

[north ferry]

https://tenor.com/view/tomascore-horsey-rain-horse-sad-horse-acid-rain-gif-8523511869640546471

[brisk iris]

I'm thinking if maybe we don't need as many transition animations as are on the trello.
For example GallopToTrot, TrotToWalk, WalkToGallop etc. I think these transitions could just be handled by the engine, I'm not sure if we actually need transition animations for these. It might end up looking worse actually because if we force a transition animation between trot and gallop for example, then if we don't want the legs to reset position before playing the animation we'll have to let the engine blend the transitions anyways.

The IdleToX and XToIdle makes sense though, for example going from idle to gallop and vice versa should be animated for sure.
What do y'all think?

[eternal briar]

yeah, quite correct, the default xml can blend the animations far better

[short cloak]

sounds good

[brisk iris]

Perfect, I'll start with an idle animation and then idle from/to transitions

[eternal briar]

that issue would be worst, during constant small Roaming, on animals, rather than players, as 3 animstates is 6 blends, of 1 in, 1 out, per the 3 🙂

[brisk iris]

If we end up wanting more animations later we can always revisit

Yeah it would end up a bit messy I think

[eternal briar]

thanks for helping, its been a pain to try and figure out the movement bit, every time

[brisk iris]

No problem! It's gonna be so worth it, people are gonna freak out when we drop this

The idle turn animations are what I'm dreading the most. Getting good footage from all angles of those legs is gonna be hard

[eternal briar]

blends can help massively to compensate 🙂 as can max rotate values

since the horsey, and others, are all based on ISOplayer skeleton designs,
they share many human bones, which can be controlled by the ISO XML params

in order to even make animals possible, they likely had to unlock quite alot of control to the mod makers, codewise, Which is lovely.
its making even Human NPC's perfectly possible, for instance, and far easier than what slayer has to do, with XML overrides for instance alone

[short cloak]

i didn't think we used the human skeleton at all

[eternal briar]

its compensated for with the unlocked bone control 😄

we can use any number of bones, and any skele now

ANY.

at some point, assigning ID values in blender to the bones, Similar to BIP01_Example will help code and bodylocation stuff for clothing etc later?

[silver holly]

Ill try and dig up some references.

Turning is actually pretty big in rodeo and dressage so there's bound to be good footage

https://youtu.be/VQYOUsw43H4?si=Z2AEoHg7T6l1e4YX

Ohh yes yes

[brisk iris]

Oh that's perfect actually! it's even in slowmo. Would that be a normal turn speed, or should I slow it down slightly?

[silver holly]

I think we would need maybe two turns - turn from stand/walk/trot which is much slower then a turn from lope/gallop

Since fast/wider turns look way different

Or we don't have to complicate it that much

i could also be misunderstanding your question entirely lol sorry

https://horseandrider.com/western-horse-training-tips/simplify-the-turn/

[brisk iris]

I think we definitely should have turns while moving, it will make it feel a lot more polished, but maybe we put them low on the priority list

[brisk iris]

this is perfect

[silver holly]

I can't thank you enough for all of your help on this project I was really struggling for a while with animations.

I'm tremendously excited about our progress

One thing I do wanna put out here is there's no rush on anything - Like yeah having the horse in game faster would be cool, but real life always comes first and I'd love for us to take our time on this!

When we first started I gave this a general timeline of like a year especially since B42 is so unfinished so hopefully it will be by the time we feel 100%

[silver holly]

I think I want a zombie horse

[muted ridge]

Oh god lol

Let's get a horse first xD

[silver holly]

I mean you're right but 🥺 zombie horse

Might try to texture it 🤔

[muted ridge]

Yea you can just make a texture

[silver holly]

But 👀 IN THE FUTURE, once we have a working horse!! We will need wings and a horn clothing items

[brisk iris]

Simple idle breathing. Should I emphasize it a bit more? Since you're seeing it from a bit further away usually maybe I should dramatize it?

[silver holly]

It's very subtle but I love it!

[brisk iris]

I'll make 3 different ones, light, medium and heavy breathing with different intensities

So we can try a few different and see what looks best ingame

[silver holly]

I am gonna be a broken record but thank you for all the time you're investing into this!

[muted ridge]

No from experience putting too much motion in a idle position actually makes it worse

I think that's good

[brisk iris]

That's a good point, you want the idle to be broken easily

[brisk iris]

I was gonna maybe make a few that adds a random stomp, ear turn, etc.
But we would then have to set up something that makes it alternate idle animations, and not sure if it's worth doing right now

[silver holly]

Would've been really good though o: yeah I'm not sure about that

[brisk iris]

It's not a crazy difficult thing to do, but I figure the focus right now is on getting the basics done so we can start testing it

[short cloak]

well anything that needs code gives me something to do 😅

i don't think random idle animations will be much work to implement, it seemed like vanilla animals might do that?

(you may be able to tell i'm more familiar with the animal code than i am actually playing with them 😅)

[brisk iris]

If you want to start tinkering with a system that could randomize an idle animation, then definitely go for it! Will add some nice flavor to it.
You could do something like having the idle breathe go for at least 4-6 cycles before it can trigger one of several alternative idle animations which has a little extra animation to it, like whipping the tail, twitching ear etc.

Oh if you know how the vanilla animals cycle between them then that's even easier

[silver holly]

Would love to have a neigh idle as well! We have a ton of sound bites

@eternal briar had made a pretty good one maybe they can repost?

[eternal briar]

free to use it

[astral rover]

Alex where are you posting your anims first, trello or github?

[brisk iris]

I'm only uploading to github atm, but I've only uploaded the trot and gallop so far. (which I am going to replace in a new PR actually because I realized the heads were a bit crooked when viewed from the front)

I'm doing an idle ground scratch in-between some real life stuff, and I made a quick ear turn, so that gives us a base idle loop and two flair idle animations incase albion wants to play around with some idle anim cycling.
I'll upload those 3 with the fixed trot and gallop tonight

[astral rover]

Aleks, I was checking the horse rig... Bone rotations are off center, also since you're animating motion paths might be very useful

Horse to idle + idle anim

[brisk iris]

What does bone rotations being off-center mean? Are you talking about the head looking slightly to the side?

[astral rover]

When you rotate a bone it can either rotate in global or local space, when you rotate it in local its slightly off, probably why your anim ended up a bit crooked, also, mouth bones don't deform well

[brisk iris]

Ah I see. I think the crookedness was just me not paying attention when moving the head tbh

[brisk iris]

Idle ground scratch

[silver holly]

Looks terrific! Might look marginally better if the hoof connects with the ground and looks like it's sort of dragging on the ground for a frame

I really love that you always animate the tail c:

[brisk iris]

It's a bit hard to get that dragging feeling because then the hoof has to be kind of perpendicular to the ground, and from the videos I watched they do more of a kind of flicking motion with the tip of their hoof.
I added a few more keyframes when between hitting the ground and going up to get a bit more impact and resistance feeling, like flicking dirt

[brisk iris]

Haha cheers! I feel it adds so much life to it for such a small investment

[silver holly]

Absolutely brilliant work!! And as always THANK YOU!!!

[brisk iris]

It's gonna be so much fun seeing it all come together in game

[brisk iris]

Okay I made a new commit to my same PR with the 3 idle animations and fixed head positions of the gallop and trot

Tomorrow I should hopefully have time to do the idle to/from movement

[astral rover]

Published skeleton version of the horse on trello, just needs uv unpacking and texturing, I'm currently doing the 90* turn on the horse

[silver holly]

Wonderful!!!! Thank you so much c:

[brisk iris]

Oh sick you're doing the idle turn animations? You doing the 45 and 180 as well?

[topaz meadow]

Try to publish as much as you can on the Github, not that it matters too much again as I mentioned the other day, but we want to make sure the Git always stays up with parity 1:1.

Phenomenal work though Alex I envy your skills.

[agile shoal]

Ahhh looking great guys!

[brisk iris]

Idle to gallop. Had a bit of a hard time finding a full standing still to gallop video, but from the looks of it they do a quick little jump and then just go for it.
But if anyone has a good video I can reference I can tweak it

[muted ridge]

@short cloak could you invite me again in the git please ? Also perhaps invite alex too

I had forgotten to accept the invite

[brisk iris]

I don't necessarily need one unless you want me to merge my own PRs if they have no conflicts

[muted ridge]

Your job to handle conflicts at the end of the day

But since your contributing a lot with animations I think you deserve it

[brisk iris]

Yeah there shouldn't be any conflicts except for my blend file, since all the other files are new, but it shouldn't mess with anything else when merged as far as I can see

[silver holly]

Amazing!!!!

[brisk iris]

Gallop to idle

[muted ridge]

Lol that's amazing work man

Have we managed to get your animations in-game ?

[brisk iris]

I'm not sure if anyone has tried yet

[short cloak]

i've just tried putting them in, unfortunately the horses have decided not to do their 'walk infinitely on the spot' thing anymore so i can only see them do it for about a second, it looks good though, no issues spotted

[muted ridge]

Can you share a video perhaps ?

[short cloak]

let me download the fixed textures first

[muted ridge]

blobs

[muted ridge]

Horse is not moving

If the translation data is setup right, you see the horse moving in the scene

[short cloak]

the animations do not have any translation data yet

[muted ridge]

Ah

[astral rover]

Nope, just 90*

[thin crescent]

Everytime I peak in here I am blown away. The devs are going to have their work cut out for them when they add horses themselves. Those are some RDR2 teir anims

[brisk iris]

Okay all good! Let me know when you're done with the 90 and I can do the 45 and 180 and make sure they fit with your 90

[brisk iris]

Are we adding combat controls btw? Or the bite/kick animations are just for when it does not have a rider?

[muted ridge]

Probably only for the horse to defend itself

But currently we didn't discuss that ?

So that's not really a priority I'd say

[brisk iris]

Makes sense! I'm gonna make the trot from/to idle, and I have to check the walk animation that is already made and see if maybe we can get away with not making walk from/to idle and just let the engine blend it

[astral rover]

One thing that is missing atm is a working horse pathfinder no? like a b42 animal, graze, eat and find a way to move that info for when the player rides it

[short cloak]

it does that fine afaik, we just don't have translation data 😭

[brisk iris]

Should I make a few exports with translation data? I can add it quickly if you want to test with it

[astral rover]

This is what I got atm

Horse Meat in tomahawk, could be a placeholder

[silver holly]

Positively wonderful!

[silver holly]

AAAAAA ITS BECOMING REAL

[brisk iris]

Awesome, that looks great!

[silver holly]

Holy shit

This is fucking amazing

@brisk iris @astral rover If you guys would like to (and you should because your time and work is definitely worth it) drop a link to donate to! People have been wanting to support

[brisk iris]

Oh that's nice! But it's okay, I would feel a bit weird taking donations for a group project 😄

[astral rover]

Would you be interested in making a steam thumbnail for the mod? I can make the sketch in 3d, you can elaborate on it and paint it... That would be pretty awesome

[silver holly]

I can definitely try my best! Would love to work together on something! 😄

[agile shoal]

Im really happy people are using the rig!

If anyone would like adjustments to it or needs help please let me know

Ive felt bad that i havent worked on it this month so im glad its finally bringing the momentum back

[silver holly]

That's okay I hope real life is going well!! Thank you for giving us a jumping off point c: couldn't have gotten this far without ya

[muted ridge]

Yea definitely

[eternal briar]

tbh all exports need translation data.. by default aha

[astral rover]

paddle, can you make some changes to the rig? especially mouth, ear, lower leg and ctrl_Spine1 please?

[agile shoal]

Sure, what are the issues with it?

[astral rover]

Bone rotation in edit mode, bone hierarchy in ctrl spine 1 (no way to move only back with no parents), legs dont deform properly, knee joint is farther away from 3 loop of knee, mouth bones deform between each other, ears deform the head, tail deforms too far (1st bone), I would solve it with a helper bone between where you want your deforms to be separated

[agile shoal]

Ill look into it when i have time

[short cloak]

integrated the idle variations, there was a vanilla system for it after all

[muted ridge]

Curious how you did it, bcs the way I know for zombies isn't that permissible

[short cloak]

it's animal specific

you just make animations named idle1 idle2 up to idleTypeNbr in the animal definition

[muted ridge]

Nice

[short cloak]

and then every tick(?) they have 1 in idleEmoteChance chance to do a random one

[limber plinth]

That's pretty straight forward compared to zombies 😅

[muted ridge]

Yea

[silver holly]

Thank you so much!!!

[brisk iris]

Well shit, was gonna do some more animations today, but the power went out in the whole country

Anyone else here from Portugal/Spain? Shit was wild

[silver holly]

Oh fuck - Take care of yourself first!

[brisk iris]

It seems to be all good now, at least here in Portugal, I think it's still down in some places in Spain.
Full on blackout for 12 hours, no power anywhere, no cell service/mobile network, or banking systems up. Shit time to only have an electrical stove/oven and no cash lol

[short cloak]

oh man, glad it's over at least

[silver holly]

I'd be genuinely terrified - also glad all is well!

[muted ridge]

Saw that on a Vintage Story mod discuss 😂

They making a horse mod too for a different game !

[topaz meadow]

oh i love vintage story.

I considered getting into their modding scene

[brisk iris]

Definitely didn't help that people started spreading rumors that it was a russian cyberattack lol
I was lucky that I found a guy who had a working radio and could translate the news for me.
And that I have a wife and cats I could spend the day with

[muted ridge]

I might not, bcs I want to play the game 😭

But I'm curious about it

[brisk iris]

Never heard of it, but I looked it up and it does actually look very interesting 😮

[muted ridge]

It's a really cool game

I learnt about it like a year or two ago and when you like survival stuff it's amazing

It's basically Minecraft but actually hard lol

And yet you still got a lot of customization

[brisk iris]

Damn I'm gonna have to check it out soon, sounds very much like a game I'd enjoy

[muted ridge]

Yea I love it

[muted ridge]

zamn I just loaded the world to test stuff lmao

[short cloak]

when'd you last pull? those are the old animations and old textures

[muted ridge]

Yea that's an old one

Back when I wanted to test if the animations were introduced