Talking Heads

[Lexx]

Ah, so that was just about the mouth animations. :>

Anyway, he looks cool already. Not sure about the teeths, but I'll guess in that case, it doesn't hurt much.

 

[.Pixote.]

Anyway, what with anti-aliasing, Timeslip? What will happen if I'll put something like this into the game?



With default way of doing FRMs I'd get an ugly blue-ish shite (R:0, G:0, B:255 is used as background), where anti-aliasing is. What will happen when your 32bit images tweak will be active?

With 8bit the alpha edge has to be hard – pure black and white otherwise you will get a shitty outline, with 32bit you might get good results, it just depends on the way the engine draws the image – I think we need to build a dummy image and test in game. Conti can you render a Cassidy without anti-aliasing, and then render a separate batch with anti-aliasing and merge in PS…

 

[Lexx]

That doesn't even need a rendered talking head. Just such image:

 

[.Pixote.]

"Jesus is that you"...*Walks into the light*

 

[Continuum]

Conti can you render a Cassidy without anti-aliasing, and then render a separate batch with anti-aliasing and merge in PS…

To render Cassidy without anti-aliasing I'll need to delete his beard, and without it he looks crappy. Using geometry, instead of buffer sucks as hell, so hairy heads (which means all ) are going to be problematic.

If Timeslip's tweak isn't solving AA issues I'm going to make him in the old way, since I'll need to load all frames into PS and remove AA anyway, so in the meantime I'll fix the dither - little moar time to waste.

 

[Timeslip]

Anyway, what with anti-aliasing, Timeslip? What will happen if I'll put something like this into the game?



With default way of doing FRMs I'd get an ugly blue-ish shite (R:0, G:0, B:255 is used as background), where anti-aliasing is. What will happen when your 32bit images tweak will be active?

That's an artist question. It depends on how PS behaves, and I'm way back out of my depth there.

In any case, with 32 bit you aren't doing any colour conversion in the first place, so what you see in PS is what you see in game. As long as you're happy with the way any anti-aliasing looks before you save then it should Just Work(tm). (The exception is that I can't blend between what fallout renders and what I draw; if you use a 32 bit head with an 8 bit background, then sfall has to throw away the transparency information in the 32 bit head, and use what's in the 8 bit frm instead.)

 

[Continuum]

So the source of transparency aren't 32bit images, but the FRMs? I thought that they're.

Then I'll need to render everything twice:

- FRM-ish source of transparency with blue-ish shite, different dither on each frame and AWFUL conversion,
- proper images, with background similar to the color of hair.

So people who will want to use it need to create shitty FRMs, which aren't used, I mean they're, but they're not visible on the screen. Patch/hex them, and prepare 32bit images for usage (folders, names, etc.), right?

 

[Timeslip]

So the source of transparency aren't 32bit images, but the FRMs? I thought that they're.

Only if you want an 8 bit background.

So people who will want to use it need to create shitty FRMs, which aren't used, I mean they're, but they're not visible on the screen. Patch/hex them, and prepare 32bit images for usage (folders, names, etc.), right?

ok, to explain what I've done in a bit more detail:

Normal fallout procedure is to render the background, then the head, then the monitor around it and the highlights. I can't draw anything at that point, because fallout is still drawing to an 8 bit render target. I need to wait until the point where sfall copies fallouts render target to the screen, and inject stuff in then. Obviously that's after the rounded monitor and the highlights, so for sfall to know where to draw I replace all the pixels in the original 8 bit head with a colour key I can use later. If you're using a 32 bit background, I can just colour all the pixels inside the rounded box, otherwise I colour any non-transparent pixels in the head, which is why the transparency from the frm ends up being used. Any transparency in the 32 bit image that shows through to what fallout has drawn underneath shows up as the colour key colour, (pink, atm,) so either the background needs to be solid, or if not using one then the head needs to be.

The frm's need to be there; fallout knows nothing about anything sfall does, so if you skip them it'll just think the heads are broken. They need to be the same size as the 32 bit images, and need the same number of frames. They don't need to contain a sensible image, but since they'll show up for anyone not using the sfall option you'll end up requiring sfall if they don't. I'm writing a tool to handle setting up the frms and file paths you need, so hopefully no manual hex editing will be required.

 

[Lexx]

I thought about Mr. Gaybrow again. I personally would take away the cig, rest looks pretty fine to me. But what I would also test is to rotate him a little bit, like some of the Fallout 1 talking heads have been. Maybe a very little bit to the right side?

Ingame test with the single image from above:

 

[Continuum]

I want to create all my THs in exactly the same camera. And the front is the most common set-up for THs.

 

[Lexx]

Why? Some technical limitation in there?

/Edit: or is it because of that customization stuff with additional gear you've mentioned earlier?

 

[Continuum]

No, no, no. All I need is to rotate the camera, next I must only face the head to the camera, which is done by using one bone (when head is rigged) - this doesn't have any impact on expressions/anims/mesh(es)/whatever.

 

[Demonslayer]

I'd remove the cig too.
It takes away the "techie-guy" thing.

 

[killap]

Finally got around to catching up with this thread. Some very nice work happening here. Great job Continuum!

That screenshot of the ingame talking head looks amazing, btw!

 

[nyibelunger]

Finally I had some spare time (i.e. overcome my laziness) and decided to create Lenny´s body. I always imagine him as a doctor wearing lab coat and stuff.

It´s obviously still wip - models are ready (head lost some details, so tweaking is "must do"). Currently I´m working on materials (is a skin color ok?).

and yes those red things on chest will (someday) be bloodied bandages...

 

[smilodom]

Holy crap... don´t know what to say..

But it isn´t not that bad..Iam just really surprised

 

[matthewfarmery]

I quite like him , he does look like a mutant as well, not sure if you would want to make friends with him or put him out of his misery

but yeah, very good so far

 

[Ultravox]

He looks like he got an rock in his face...

@Lexx: Awesome!

 

[matthewfarmery]

well Harold has a tree growing out of his head, so why not a rock? or something happened to him after he became a ghoul to make him look like that,. so maybe some back story could be added, but yeah, Lenny does look good, perhaps not I would have imagined him, but not sure how I would imagine him to be frank, but that pic does do a great job of giving him a story, keep up the good work,

 

[Gordulan]

play FO1 and find out why he has a tree growing out of his head, and he isn't a "real" ghoul, the same reason as he has a tree growing out of his head is the reason wh he was "messed up".


Hint: FEV fumes