Need help with facial animations.

[nthmolecule999]

Hi,

The other day I contacted Lucas for some of his unfinished work which were teased in his post. I find out he has a bunch of unfinished animations without facial animations and some of which were not even teased. He was generous enough to share them with me (although it don't have an animation I was interested in) on a condition that I will do the facial animations and make them work in-game.

 

The problem is I'm not an animator and I will probably do a "shitty" work with it. Is there a skillful animator interested in working on these?

 

Note from Lucas-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cvhBnkoRvYYqaJJ_qmgB_cRSj5ORqtj-/view?usp=sharing

 

Set1-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1dLjIb0G6KQIG9SbrcN9z0le731-j3Ix3/view?usp=sharing

Set2-https://drive.google.com/file/d/10PDl1t39Pin7CqAFSaZAtwyJKgzKcqEI/view?usp=sharing

Set3-https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JEVOB8Lmff9M1EOsJ-Ikam_oZZnKXYhB/view?usp=sharing

[Brisbane Australia]

That was nice of him, but I'm surprised you would take them on if you're not an animator.... I had a go but my own Blender configuration is having issues with exporting to TS3 and I don't know why?

 

If you have Blender have a play around with it anyway, you can only get better.

 

[nthmolecule999]

I requested him to complete that one animation but he said he is definitely not going to do it ad asked me if I can animate them myself he will provide his work WIP animations with me. I thought it would be easy do facial animations so I agreed to it.

I gave it a try in blender I found out I really suck at animating. Animations were slow and sometimes I ended up deleting or misplacing keyframes. After my utter failure I thought it's best to let the experienced step in.

I also learned I can copy keyframes from other animations so that's something that can make up for my lack of skills.

[TheLadysGhost]

1 hour ago, nthmolecule999 said:

I thought it would be easy

Nothing easy about animating. It's why I make almost anything except animations! BUT... if you work at it (I did not), you may get it, and become a great animator. Yes, some possess a certain "gift" or "an eye" for it, but what I have seen is it takes a bit of hard work to make good animations. I personally do not have the drive, but always encourage others, as perhaps YOU do have what it takes! ?

[nthmolecule999]

On 5/22/2022 at 3:10 AM, TheLadysGhost said:

YOU do have what it takes! 

I have been working with blender for past few days copy pasting and animating facial expressions from different animations. I was a bit confident until I tried finishing the incomplete animation which I was anticipating the most. Now after looking at my crappy animation, I wish he had completed that one first.

[Brisbane Australia]

On 5/26/2022 at 2:47 AM, nthmolecule999 said:

I have been working with blender for past few days copy pasting and animating facial expressions from different animations. I was a bit confident until I tried finishing the incomplete animation which I was anticipating the most. Now after looking at my crappy animation, I wish he had completed that one first.

 

When I first attempted to do an animation I couldn't even get the Sims hips to match up right, they were both facing completely the wrong way.

But you're now entering a very small group of people because not many make animations due to it's slow speed and complexity.

 

But since you've looking at it you can have a manual play with the bones if you wanted to:

 

Set Blender to Pose Mode (if you see the words Edit Mode or Object Mode on the screen that's where you change it to Pose Mode)

 

Move Blenders time section marker thing to where you want

 

In the 3D window (with the bodies) select a bone by right (or left) clicking it so it highlights, then either:

 

press "G" key and move the mouse to Grab and move that bone

Or

press "R" key and move mouse to Rotate that bone around it's position

 

Then Left click to temporarily release the bone at that position

 

then press "i" key and select LocRot to lock in your changes.

 

Note some setups you don't have to select LocRot because "i" will LocRot automatically.

Note some bones don't do anything so if you click on one that does nothing try another.

Note pressing R twice "RR" rotates the bone in a different way

 

In these particular animations I couldn't get them to export from Blender to TheSims3.  Usually I go File>Export>Sims 3 Animation but on these it wasn't exporting and I don't know why.

 

 

 

 

 

[Clydie]

On 5/25/2022 at 6:47 PM, nthmolecule999 said:

animating facial expressions

I would give it a try too, but the download from the google drive not works for me.

Do you mind to upload Lucas's files here ?

[Clydie]

Thank you !

Was not aware that the files were that large....

May to remove them again to save space here at LL.

 

Will come back the next days if I found something out what to do with this animations.

 

- Update -

Oh man, had a brief look. Did not expect 29 animations (maybe two or three of them are doublet) ?

This will be a job to finish them by adding face expressions,  sound and the OKW file, but will try to do as I can spend the time for it.

It should be doable.... Nice it was from Lucas to give them away !