Collison for Animations

[bhorton22]

Some of the animations that have been produced do not have collision. How do you go about fixing this? For example some of the dance animations will allow the toon to pass thru walls or furniture. Is this fixed my changing the mod that adds the animation (i.e. change the .esp file as the author turned of collision) or is it fixed within the .kf file (i.e. when  the animation is exported).

[Quikieee]

if i understand you correctly:

you initiate the dance-animation. during this animation your character moves around within a small area (maybe 1 by 1 meter or a bit more). the charater ends the animation on the initial location. during the animation the character clips through furniture/walls/other characters in the area, does NOT bump into it, does NOT fall through the ground.

 

if i understood you correctly and you are NOT falling through the floor (a short flickering on animation start is ok) you pretty much can't do anything to fix this.

as far as my knowledge is correct, the characters position stays on the location where the animation started, while the only the visual but not the "physical" location changes.

(you can observe a similar behavior with sexlab animations clipping through walls or through the floor on slopes, and if you are not using the free camera, the camera rotates around a point near the character's feet, not their visible model)

[Redflyingmonkey]

The collision is pretty small most of the time, for example if your leg under the knee clips under the ground during an animation, the collision may pick it up and bend your knee automatically to keep above ground. However, it doesn't work all the time, and only work to some degree, if you start a dancing animation close to a wall and your character goes too far, he'll obviously go through the wall mesh instead of colliding with it. So no, there's nothing to be done about this really. 

[bhorton22]

Then why does the physical location change for a walk forward animation? Cannot the same be done for a dance animation?

 

Edit: Without knowing how it all works (yet), I assume the dance animation is an idle. But even Idles seem to have collision.

[Redflyingmonkey]

It's just the engine man, you can't just expect your char to stop at the wall if the animation really has to go through it or collide with it. The collision can't just modify your animation that much, it can only picks up small details like ankles or wrist, not more. 

[bhorton22]

But, if a character is walking forward and hits a wall, they continue walking and don't go through it. Seems to me that there is something missing from the dance animation (collision) that is available in the walk forward animation.

[Anatriax]

But, if a character is walking forward and hits a wall, they continue walking and don't go through it. Seems to me that there is something missing from the dance animation (collision) that is available in the walk forward animation.

What was mentioned previously is that animations are just visually making it appear that the character is moving. It's exact location is still the same, therefore collision won't be recognized.

Even if the animation appears to move the character by as much as 3 meters, it's exact location as far as the game engine is concerned is exactly the same as it was when the animation was initiated.

During the execution of the animation, the location does not change. Simply the "appearance" that the location has changed. If the ACTUAL location is not changed, then collision won't take effect.

 

[Redflyingmonkey]

Exactly. Which means that if an animation takes place at the same exact space as where you started, there are chances that you could see that collision effect, like, as you said, in the case of idles. For walking/running animations, you're actually processing new data as you move, actualizing the collision effect, which means wherever you run to, the meshes you walk into will be rigid and collide with you. If you however start from a static position, and use an animation that moves your character from that position like a dance, only the area where you started has collision, not where your character goes during the dance. 

[bhorton22]

But, the walk forward IS an animation, and it changes location. Thus, you need only make any animations center move. So, the animations need to have there centers move with the animation? I assume this is done in the animation itself.

[Quikieee]

not a tottally "correct" explaination, but close enough to explain the issue...

 

simplified said, you character (or any for that matter) in terms of gameplay is a box, he occupies space depending how big this box is. if you bumb into an NPC the actual models dont necessarily touch, but the 'physical' bumb still occurs. within the box, the game draws the character model and its animations, eg. idle animation while standing around.

 

so if you press the movement key, you dont move the character or the character model, but the box. AND you are setting flags like "moving forward", "moving backwards" etc

 

if you start more fancy animations, like the dances, the physical box remains still and doesnt move. but the dance-animation is drawn, and this dance-animation might actually leave the physical box. when this happens, clipping (might) occur.

the minor physical bumps (like ankles/knees mentioned above by redflyingmonkey) which might occur are not depending on the physical box, but the skeleton. the skeleton doesn't define the characters physical location within the world, but are more of framework for the 'drawing' of animations.

 

you can observe the difference between the physical box and the character-animation when using archery aswell... arrows hitting and sticking in the air close to an enemy while not actually touching the body. the box is a bit bigger than the model.

 

 

this explaination isn't 100% accurate, but accurate enough to explain the general functionality and difference between (hit)box and character model

[bhorton22]

OK, then let's try this - what if you made the dance the walk forward animation for an NPC? Would that not then cause the 'clipping' to stop. I guess what I am trying to do is move the bounding box with the NPC when they dance. I was thinking of somehow swopping out the normal walk forward animation with say a dance animation and see what happens.