Been busy somewhat half the day, working on dynamic bones and animations for the new BTD 4.0 model. Though it’s still not fully completed, that’s no excuse not to set up dynamic bones and animations for it.
Managed to get the tail animated (using BTD 3.0.1’s dynamic bone settings, which are based on Cola’s. The wings, I managed to do a flap.. since this is all I can work with. Apparently, wings (just like a human arm) have three bones– not two. So I cannot properly fold them up to do a ‘wing extend’ animation. But for him to add a 3rd bone, he would have to re-rig the wings (with weight painting), and I don’t want him to go through that hell again.
I also wanted to have this wing flap animation, as an idle animation. Don’t know how to.
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Getting an ‘Eye Closed’ animation to work, Did it like I did before with BTD 3.0.1. The only thing is there’s no ‘blink’ BlendShape, only vrc.blink_left and vrc.blink_right to work with. But an odd thing happens when leaving Preview.. the eyes stay closed (both at 100 when looking at the Body). But I didn’t think much about it.
Getting help from Wolves (him speed-teaching me how to edit the texture sheet in Blender to do a blush (due to him about ready to go to bed), that sadly I had forgotten most of it since then), I got that set up as I was shown by Kat.
Creating a new Animation Override Controller, I put the two animations in and expected everything to work…
…It isn’t. The fuck. Checked the animations, attempting to assure myself I didn’t do anything wrong. From what I saw, I got them set up correctly. So, what the HELL?! It isn’t me, so.. it’s got to be something with the new model. Problem is, Wolves never messed with animations in Unity. So, I’m kind of fucked here.
Thought it might be the eye close thing could be causing all other animations to cancel themselves out, so I took it out of the Blush one.. IT’S not even firing on command! Neither does adding a random dance!
All I can think is it has to be on Wolves’ end; some kind of flag he didn’t set (or is setting by accident), that are keeping hand gesture-based animations from firing on command. But he has absolutely no idea why they aren’t working.
EDIT: ..I was right, it was on Wolves’ end! But, as expected, never ever intentional. It was the BlendShapes, that he accidentally had some that weren’t “zeroed out”. He also said something about how BlendShapes are stacked, similar to modding a game (like
Skyrim); high priority ones (Visemes) are at the top, while lower priority ones (visual ShapeKeys) are at the bottom.
Makes sense to me. …But, when trying to explain to him how vrc.blink_left and vrc.blink_right are getting stuck at 100 when doing the animation, this doesn’t even feel like a solemn victory…. for the price to get them working, far exceeded any form of happiness (when I feel like an asshole to him for not just accepting the model as-is).
But anyway, here are the (now working) custom animations;
Half of me is happy that they finally work, but the other half feels “this is saying that you don’t care of the hell he went through of dealing with yourself and making this model for you”. That other half, is not true.. I do care.
And then it tells me; “you have a funny way of showing it then. Can’t just be happy and live with the model as-is!! If you had paid for the model, and it didn’t work for your expectations.. THEN you have the right to bitch!! But no, you got it for free.. and this is the way you ‘thank’ him for doing all of this work for you.
You, are a pathetic, piece of shit. Don’t be surprised if he never talks to you again.”
And this is what has made me extremely depressed, because I have nothing to counter it.
EDIT: It’s OK now, Wolves has explained that yes, it is worth money (another way of saying “this is the last time I do a free model”), but he has noticed the effort I have put in to make the Dutchie look like.. well, “me” (as a dragon); having to ask a few people to make attachments for me, and having Erodac to remove the Dutchie’s horns, wings, and ears to make it more like an actual fire-breathing Dragon than a cuddly Dutchie. Not to mention also getting him to have a scale attachment for the Best Boi 1.0/2.0 tail (and eventually an actual tail replacement for the Dutchie model).
Honestly, I wouldn’t really call all of that, “effort”. Just, having very nice, awesome friends who were willing to lend me a hand.
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Anyway, Wolves went on with how he sees I “really want to make models”, and I do. I actually want to learn Blender and STOP depending on others. And because of this, he feels I genuinely appreciate the effort (which I do.. this is one of the best things someone’s ever done for me). Not just making attachments, but props if I ever decide to get back into world building. Plus, I can use my Blender knowledge and reinstall ProBuilder.. to build houses or whatever I need (or even a world), within Unity.
So, it’s all cool now. He also sent me the .blend file, making me the owner of it.
Still wanna learn Blender (such as adding a 3rd bone and re-rigging the wings, so I can fold them properly), but he says it’s “a tad advanced”. Now I’ve added a bone in the
past, but weight painting.. can agree.
Problem is (and I just tested this), even if he was to do that, the dynamic bone script will not allow you to use a non-root bone (a root bone is ‘Bone1’). Trying to set “Bone3” or “Bone6” of a root bone, it will not allow …which is UTTERLY STUPID!!! WHY IS THIS A THING?! WHAT HAPPENED TO “CREATIVE FREEDOM”, VRChat?!
*grumble* I guess I should be happy I can even have a dynamic bone when the same bone is being animated. But this is KILLING a perfect, natural wing flap!!
The only thing a 3rd bone would do for me, is folding the wings more naturally. But it wouldn’t help with this.