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Just came across the ‘Rag Doll Kung Fu’ site again today and I remembered a couple of ye were asking me about it before! This is well worth a look if you’ve not heard of it before. It’s basically the side project of a guy called Mark Healey who works with Lionhead. Tadhg Kelly might even know him!
Rag Doll Kung Fu:
http://www.lionhead.com/personal/mhealey/screenshots.html -
I read an interview a while back that Molyneux intended on using the same technology in the Movies…. I wonder if that’s still going to happen
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Interesting.
Also thought provoking was the preconception of what I was going to see on that site, which has set me thinking.
I *expected* to see martial arts game, in which the characters bodies reacted to Havok-type physics, and the falls, tumbles and acrobatics took on a realistic-quality, rather than the Capcom ‘Arcade’ style we’ve become so used to…
I *expected* to see bone-crunchingly realistic movies of Tibula buckling, vertebrae dislocating and collar-bones snapping.
Sounds a bit gruesome, perhaps, but isn’t it beat-em-ups got ‘Ragdolled’?
L.
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The problem not down to flowing from predefined animations into physic influence? Its only really recently physics engines are capable of doing this and some still to relatively low success. It’ll be interesting when the Aegia(spelling?) card arrives. By the way I’m not expert on physics so I could be completely wrong. I know my terminology is completely feck’d.
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I see. I guess that would make sense. Although, I can’t understand how it becomes such a technical problem.
Surely, the model could go from a motion-captured stance / action (e.g. attempting to land a blow), to a ragdoll model, inheriting the dynamics of the former for a period of time?
e.g. the AI attempts to land a blow, the player avatar avoids it and counter-punches to the AI head. The AI models head then goes to ragdoll mode, and snaps back, pulling the remainder of the torso with it using IK. If the AI had momentum when the blow was struck, an algorithm takes this into account. An model running forward is going to react to a kick differently to a static model. If we can calculate combined collision trajectories for cars, surely it’s not too much to extrapolate limbs?
Mind you, I’m not much of an organic animator, and not a physicist!
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Surely, the model could go from a motion-captured stance / action (e.g. attempting to land a blow), to a ragdoll model, inheriting the dynamics of the former for a period of time?
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Mixing the ragdoll and animations is a much harder task then it might initially seem. Each animation relies on a set of keyframes, and if you are not in one of the ‘start’ keyframe states, any move an AI will make will either have to be computed dynamically (basically eliminating the animation to begin with), or will have to take shortcuts causing a very poor looking string of frames. For example, how would you generate a ‘get up’ animation if you dont know the position of the (ragdoll) model after it has fallen down? (games to date dont generally have people getting back up after they go rag-dolley). -
Hmmn. I see your point Sky.
Oh well, back to the drawing board!
L.
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