Posted: Sun Jul 27, 2014 8:24 pm Post subject:
HVA animation causes VXL to stretch/shrink
Subject description: missing matrix at frame input in VSE
I figure this is outright impossible, but I will throw it out there for public consumption.
There are some serious flaws with HVA animations in TS. They jitter and cause stretching/shrinking of the voxels at certain frames that makes it impossible to use them while maintaining some degree of artistic quality. I know that TS:AE has run into this and a certain other mod has as well.
Red Alert 2 apparently has none of these problems, and it inherently draws static voxels better as well. Red Alert 2 doesn't rescale the voxels in any way, they are just made bigger to fit in the game. I don't have red alert 2 to test TS voxels in it, but from what I have heard from other modders who work on it, every thing seems to be flawless in that engine.
Now I'm not saying you should copy the voxel renderer over to TS...but you totally should. Which is probably impossible cause I have no idea what has to be done with this sort of stuff.
Tl;dr TS voxel engine is shit. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
can you show an example (best as animated gif), because i don't know what you're talking about. The vanilla TS MMKII as well as the new TI one work both very well. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
I won't be able to for some time. Just take any voxel and add just add a new 10x10 section and give it two or more frames of animation. It acts as if it tries to smash the voxels on every odd frame number. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
Isn't that the usual behaviour, since it tries to recalculate the bounding box and in turn centers the unit on a new slightly different position?
IIRC in the past voxeler fixed this by giving the sections better/different dimensions (So the biggest main section is from the bounding box big enough, to include all other sections). Something like that, but i'm not that familiar with voxeling. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Here is a .gif showing a 3 frame animation on the APC. A box moves through the middle of the APC. The box has the same bounds as the APC, and the APC is not animated at all. The stretching and pulling occurs at every facing. It doesn't matter if the box is even a 1x1x1 voxel, this occurs every single time. This is why we cannot have animated wheels, treads, lights, etc. because of this pulling. The mammoth mark II does it (however the MMKII chassis is animated as well,) this does it, they all do it. If there is some kind of voodoo magic that I don't know please don't keep it a secret from the community.
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I would have bet it has something to do with the changing bounding box size. Since the box has the same bounds as the APC, the bounding box that is a combination of APC+box changes during the animation, and thus the game tries to re-center the unit slightly different on each frame. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 12:22 pm Post subject:
While Regulus claims a yes, I vouch for a no, because I see the gif's issue with almost all the helicopters within YR. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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I don't understand how people can have animated tracks and lights and yadda yadda in RA2 if this bug is in there. It is so incredibly jarring in TS it renders .hva animations almost unusable. I'll have to take your word for it for Red Alert 2 cause I don't mod it/have it installed atm to look, but I could have sworn it wasn't nearly as bad as this.
Like I said, this bug persists no matter how big the other sections are. I can make a 1x1x1 section in the apc and shift it front to back by one voxel in the APC and this bug would still happen. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
What happens if you change the order of the sections?
Maybe the game is now using the animated box as the "base" voxel on which it does all further centering-calculation. So by changing the order of the sections, you might be able to make the chassis the main section.
As GD said, helis are a good example of this even in YR. The diagonal and orthogonal positions of the rotors change significantly the size of bounding box and you'll always see the chassis wobble.
IIRC MigEater once had such a "wobble" issue on a heli, which he then fixed by changing the bounds of the sections (or was it the order?). _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Fri Aug 01, 2014 1:49 pm Post subject:
Regulus wrote:
I could have sworn it wasn't nearly as bad as this.
The fact that this only affects a single coloumn disappearing helps. The bigger the voxel, the less annoying this bug is and considering that RA2's scale is bigger by default, you can see where this is going...
On a second thought, prolly LKO is right. Maybe you should go and check how's an animated-treaded unit is set up. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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I did an order test too. It changes how it is drawn on the vehicle (if it is rendered on top of or below) but the problem persists. I believe that the tank treads are animated simply by swapping two of the same voxels with the different texture over the treads to simulate movement (Frame 1= section 1 Frame 2= section 2) and you simply hide the unused section with a negative Y value. I can test this today but Idk how it will react with carryalls.
This works fine for simple animations but cannot be used for complex ones like mechs and other examples which I cannot think of at this time. Honestly in TS they are so tiny it's hard to make out any detail, much less moving treads. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. Last edited by Regulus on Fri Aug 01, 2014 2:17 pm; edited 1 time in total QUICK_EDIT
But what I was referring to was how will the engine draw the hidden Y valued section when picked up by a carryall and moved, since it changes the height. Idk if it behaves like a regular 3d engine. In my mind, it will display the hidden section while in the air. I suppose you could plunge it down so far that even when picked up it won't be able to draw it over the terrain, but we are talking huge negative values. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
Yep nope. Making two sections that are alternated in place does not work. Number 1, only one section can cast a shadow, but the biggest set back is that no matter where it is on the -y axis the game will draw it, often with some pretty funky errors. So my position stands that there is a fundamental difference between the RA2 and TS voxel engine. It is small and insignificant, but it does prevent us from making pretty eye candy. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
RA2 has the special ShadowCache functions which lets it by default use frame one of the hva to render the shadow and then keep this even for the following frames.
Voxeler using animated tracks are AFAIK not moving the sections, but they scale them down to 0 size via the header for each frame. Thus scaled down to 0 they become invisible.
As a solution for the missing ShadowCache functionality, you could create a dummy section as the main section, which has a flat area of Voxel. This could be slightly smaller than the main animated sections, so it is always inside them and not visible. Then you have this not animated dummy section as shadow caster.
Huh, interesting. I thought that scale was global and it affected all frames and could not be frame dependent. I'll have to take a looksey again.
EDIT: Unless I am doing something terribly wrong, this isn't possible. A change in bounds affects all frames and not a singular one.
Apparently, it is only hva rotation that causes the initial bug that I observed. I took the apc apart and simply swapped tires each frame, so the tires on the right and tires on the left swapped places to give the illusion of movement and there were no draw errors. This is a very strange behavior since rotated they visually take up the same space, but the engine apparently thinks that the bounding box is different and it draws it incorrectly. Very very strange. Of course there is a normals issue but that can be resolved by hiding the tires in the APC body and bringing them back out per frame.
Long time ago I made a Kirov with rotating propellers for RA2. Not a huge leap in creativity but the obvious solution was to just rotate them in the hva editor and bam, it worked. I then thought, "hey I can make the tires and stuff rotate in Tiberian Sun!" I rotated the tires and what not and bam, errors for days. How dare I think that the obvious solution was the correct one. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
Not the bounds, the matrix in the voxel header. (see attached pic)
Set all these diagonal 1's to 0 and this section should be for this frame 1 in size 0, thus invisible.
??? I have never ever seen this before. I know that the transformation matrix is there, but I haven't got a Transformation Matrix at Frame X on mine. What version of the vxl editor is this? MY MIND IS BLOWN. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
Not sure, it's my VSE and surely not the latest, considering how often i create voxel
Though the HVA editor has iirc a similar matrix input window. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 7:55 am Post subject:
Pretty certain any version after 2006 would work as that. At least, I seen that window in 1.37 already. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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Very strange indeed. I have 1.38, and I just downloaded a fresh one from the SVN and it doesn't have this feature. Perhaps my window is somehow squished? I have no idea why I can't see this one line. The transformation matrix is there, but not the per frame setting. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
You misunderstand me. I have the Transformation Matrix in the voxel header tab. I have always had the transformation matrix in the voxel header tab, and I have always known that the transformation matrix is in the voxel header tab. I know what it is. I do not have the Voxel Transformation at Frame X line. I'm not retarded. It literally isn't there.
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as an alternative, open HVA builder.
Then for each frame you can show with [Tools]->[View Transform] the transformation matrix for the current selected frame. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Also Known As: banshee_revora (Steam) Joined: 15 Aug 2002 Location: Brazil
Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 10:03 pm Post subject:
I do not have a clue either. There is nothing in the current VXLSE III code that could make it disappear and change the 'transformation matrix at frame' label text.
So, download the latest SVN version and check it again. QUICK_EDIT
I have that's what is so weird. All versions do this for me :\ I mean I've never even seen the line before lko posted that picture. The HVA builder provides this functionality so it isn't a big deal. In the interest of keeping this post clean perhaps we should move the whole hva animation related post chain it to its own topic or just toss it as what I assumed was some sort of bug was just a misunderstanding of how the engine behaves with HVA animations on my part. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
What OS do you have? Do you tried VSE on another PC?
Try disabling windows themes and maybe even switch to classic windows view. I doubt it, but maybe it's really hidden behind other interface elements.
What Version number does your VSE show in the title bar? Maybe it isn't the newest, even after updates from svn. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
I didn't have it in 1.36 but the latest SVN vxlse does have it.
BTW, Banshee... You have unnecessarily blanketed the 0-15 color index range in unittem.pal for voxels, those colors pose no issues what so ever. QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 05 Sep 2013 Location: LocationNotFoundException at RealLife.Location.find() at line: -1
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 11:41 am Post subject:
Isn't it a bit unnecesary to have it in VSE, when it is in HVA builder?
(as one can see what the change to the transformation matrix does to the voxel, it just seems simpler to me) QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 22 Nov 2010 Location: Iszkaszentgyorgy, Hungary
Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 12:11 pm Post subject:
Bansh has a long-time plan to only maintain VXLSE and deprecate HVA Builder / VXL Viewer. _________________ "If you didn't get angry and mad and frustrated, that means you don't care about the end result, and are doing something wrong." - Greg Kroah-Hartman
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Past C&C projects: Attacque Supérior (2010-2019); Valiant Shades (2019-2021)
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Maintainance: Extra Expanded Enhanced Encounters! | BGEESpawn
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It would be awesome if all are in one tool. Then VSE only has to render the voxel in the preview exactly like the game engine. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Ah. I never thought to check 1.4 cause it is in beta. Don't have a particular reason as to why, but just never did. _________________ You come for the modding but you stay for the Crap Forum. QUICK_EDIT
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HVA animation causes VXL to stretch/shrink
