Creating new animations for Kerbals (eva)?

[Deathstick]

Hello all,

I was wondering if anyone knew off the top of their heads if it's actually possible to add to animations to the Kerbal models and get them working in-game. I know how to animate/rig in 3D Studio Max and how generally the exporting/importing process goes for game engines (Unity/UE4), but was wondering if KSP itself has support for adding in new animations to the Kerbal EVA. I figured custom animations are possible for parts themselves judging from the mods I've seen, but I have yet to see a mod that does anything animation wise to the Kerbals. I've tried googling but haven't had any luck finding someone whose done anything related to EVA animations.

Basically I'm thinking of more of an extension/interactive nature to Kerbals on EVA, starting simple with something like right clicking on the Kerbal EVA which opens the buttons as normal, but with the ability to add a button that would basically trigger a new animation for the kerbal (and probably either restrict movement for the duration of the animation, or have it be canceled out when a movement key is pressed)

It would be nice to set something like this up and open some doors for EVA interactions besides flag experiments, like having little science experiment animations or fun emotes for all of you out there that like to do videos and photos. Jeb break dancing on the Mun for the win?

Thanks

[lo-fi]

There used to be a mod that allowed movement of the rig in realtime, though I can't for the life of me remember what it's called. I suppose you could recreate the kerbal rig, animate, and somehow copy the movements into a script to be played through that plugin.

Best I can come up with I'm afraid!

[sumghai]

My understanding is that Kerbal animations / poses are hard-coded into the game's asset files.

However:

- stupid_chris and I extracted the Kerbal transform tree, showing all the meshes, joints and bones that make up a Kerbal

- DSSP had a proof-of-concept for a plugin that directly manipulated each joint/bone in a Kerbal, as well as recording/playback of the resulting animation. However, DSSP never finished his work, nor released any WIPs.

In conclusion: It's definitely possible, but not for the faint-hearted.

[MrHappyFace]

I did something similar involving kerbal joints, but I only have the ability to make poses, not moving animations, . It's just a tool that goes through all the kerbal bones, and allows you to manipulate them through a basic gui.

This pose was made by rotating the base bone-hierarchy transform by 90 degrees, and bending the neck/upper jaw bones.

It also turns out that it's really easy to add editor gizmos to kerbal joints, so that kerbal animations could be made in the VAB/SPH. You'd manipulate the bones with the rotation and translation gizmos, then save consecutive poses as keyframes in an animationclip, which could be saved (in some kind of text based format, or ConfigNodes), and reused as parts of the KerbalFSM system.

Also...

the poses in my avatar picture were also made with this. I also have a tool that can selectively disable renderer components and colliders, which is how I removed the jetpacks/helmets

heres a higher res version of my avatar image

Edited May 13, 2015 by MrHappyFace