176 replies to this topic

[dark]

Next time take a minute to rotate your image please, give me a sore neck.  

lol

 

Well I'm glad to see it working out.

 

We just need to decide on a good look for it, make necessary adjustments to the table and script the (short) animation of the arms catapulting the balls and it should be good to go.

 

I think it could be tricky to position the ball nicely in his hands....I'd like to see his thumb in front of the ball while the rest of his hand is behind, in effect cupping it. 

Edited by dark, 18 August 2014 - 03:43 AM.

[The Loafer]

oops, sorry about that!

 

[gigalula]

here is a different take on layback.  I will try your new version in a sec

 

 

It look perfect with your setting at least for me but the only thing that doesn't fit perfect with this angle are the 4 red flasher but for the rest it's kool and the flippers looks better that way too ...

Thanks guys.... this table is so much more kool in NM

Edited by gigalula, 18 August 2014 - 04:03 AM.

[The Loafer]

ok, last attempt on my part to provide depth and decent view angle.  of course the decision is always the author but being fairly angle independent means most of us can tweak this.  If I could ask but one favor its for the releasing author to maybe provide hints on how to move the primitive lights so that they match the light effect, as at first glance, that is what seems to misaligned by changing these settings.

 

Dark:  I think with this view you could even tilt the head a smidgen forward and it would not look bad and still allow to see the eyes.  I do mean smidgen though lol.  Once again, great job on the head/body.

 

edit:  actually the head angle is just fine as is, no smidgen required!  head might need to be moved down a tad though compared to the body.

 

Smidgen? Tad?  The loaf is really stretching his vocabulary tonight, time for me to hit the sack!

gigagula:  Yeah, the lights need adjusting for sure.  In my last view, you'll note the flippers aren't quite seen from the top.  In a way this new one may seem like a step backwards but IMHO having a little bit of angle provides the illusion of depth, as the other way, the flippers feel to thin.  IMHO anyway.

 

Good night all!

Attached Files

•  frank settings 4.jpg   15.3KB   3 downloads
•  frank4.jpg   247.79KB   6 downloads

Edited by The Loafer, 18 August 2014 - 04:53 AM.

[LoadedWeapon]

Looks good loafer... I can line the lights and rings back up if u want to send me that version.. thx

[The Loafer]

I would love to hear from others what they think of this as a view.

Btw if you pop in the settings I last posted with darks last table, that's the view you get, I changed nothing else.

[dark]

@Loafer:  Is that last adjustment using my most recent upload?  I made minor adjustments to the model, I think it looks good in that screen shot, the only thing I would do for it is move the entire model down just a bit just so that the hands aren't overlapping the diversion ramps.  I'm pretty sure I set the model to be 'locked' so the best way to move it down would be to select each part of him and move him using the positioning values, add 10 increments or so to the Y value should probably do it.

 

If that is the most recent upload then....

 

@LW: You could just input his lay back settings and go from there.

 

[edit] looks like my response was a few minutes too late.

Edited by dark, 18 August 2014 - 01:11 PM.

[LoadedWeapon]

Cool.. im at work.. if you get it how you want it dark you can upload it.. you did all the work on the model.. dont really matter to me who uploads it.

[dark]

Loafer I think your settings are about as good its going to get,  if LW can wait until later today I'll input those settings and move Frank accordingly or he can just go ahead and start moving lights etc and if he wanted he could just leave Frank for now or what ever.  I would like to give Frank a look over in a 'fixed' update of the table before an official release just to make sure he's all good, but I think he's pretty close at the moment.

 

(LW) [edit]: There's no real hurry,  I could move the lights and such later today/evening but I'm less familiar with them then you are and since the table has so many, it maybe difficult for me to identify which ones I want to select.  Since you are most familiar with them, it maybe best that you do it, but I don't mind either way.

Edited by dark, 18 August 2014 - 01:19 PM.

[LoadedWeapon]

Thats no problem Dark.. you get it how you want it then u can send it to me if you want and I can adjust the lights and rings tonight...

[dark]

Thats no problem Dark.. you get it how you want it then u can send it to me if you want and I can adjust the lights and rings tonight...

 

Okay sounds like a plan.

 

We still need the animation for the arms however though.  I PM'ed shoop yesterday but no response yet, maybe we could get UW to help....I'd really like to see the balls fit nicely in his hands.  As it is now the ball sits above his hands.  The animation is only a quick catapult action which is maybe a 30 degree incline in no more than a seconds time.

[gigalula]

ok, last attempt on my part to provide depth and decent view angle.  of course the decision is always the author but being fairly angle independent means most of us can tweak this.  If I could ask but one favor its for the releasing author to maybe provide hints on how to move the primitive lights so that they match the light effect, as at first glance, that is what seems to misaligned by changing these settings.

 

Dark:  I think with this view you could even tilt the head a smidgen forward and it would not look bad and still allow to see the eyes.  I do mean smidgen though lol.  Once again, great job on the head/body.

 

edit:  actually the head angle is just fine as is, no smidgen required!  head might need to be moved down a tad though compared to the body.

 

Smidgen? Tad?  The loaf is really stretching his vocabulary tonight, time for me to hit the sack!

gigagula:  Yeah, the lights need adjusting for sure.  In my last view, you'll note the flippers aren't quite seen from the top.  In a way this new one may seem like a step backwards but IMHO having a little bit of angle provides the illusion of depth, as the other way, the flippers feel to thin.  IMHO anyway.

 

Good night all!

Ok Tried it and yes it look better on the flipper part

[LoadedWeapon]

One more thing.. I only tried the first one u uploaded last night but it had a weird sound like it was having trouble kicking a ball out or a bumper was being hit.. no idea what that was but I went to bed and forgot to post about it..

[The Loafer]

Speaking of sound, it might be a cool idea (not sure if it's possible) to have a low volume mech motor sound attached to the head movement... Again if it's possible, some mind of "wwrrrrrrr" sound effect. Not too loud though might drive everyone nuts after a while lol

[Shoopity]

Sorry everyone, weekends are usually the worst time to reach me or get any work out of me.  I'm downloading Dark's most recent mediafire upload.  Dark, can you send the straight up regular models my way (on with the body and head completely level with the origin)?

 

Let me make sure I'm understanding this correctly:

If you put the frank model in its straight up, regular position, you don't like the angle of the view (e.g. you can't see his eyes) in the FS table (even though that's how it would look in real life if you were actually that top-down looking at the table).  But, if you start tilting the model so it looks more pleasing, then it starts throwing the rotation off?

 

****Edit****

Woopsie, sorry about that sound, I had it making a sound any time a certain solenoid activated so I could figure out how the head was operating.  So if you hear that sound any time the head starts or stops, just comment it out:

Sub HeadTurner(Enabled)				'Head gets switched
	HeadDebounce.Enabled = True		'Run the debounce routine
'	PlaySound "Jet1"
End Sub

It was line 506 on the table I just downloaded from Dark.  Comment out that PlaySound "Jet1" line

Edited by Shoopity, 18 August 2014 - 02:51 PM.

[LoadedWeapon]

Lol thx shoopity I knew it was something changed lol .

[Shoopity]

OK, quick fix for the head rotation routine.  This is probably how it should've been done in the first place, but I don't have my head 100% wrapped around the difference between Rot and ObjRot (One rotates the object around the world's axis and one rotates around the object's axis; but one rotates the object's axis orientation too).

 

To start off, in the table, Instead of changing the Rotation and Transposition of the RotX, change the ObjRotX.  This will look like it's having the same effect, but this actually rotates the object's axis orientation as well so that the Y axis is always sticking straight up out the top of his head.

 

Next, go through the code and replace every ObjRotZ with ObjRotY.  You could do a Replace (Ctrl+H), it should replace ~32 occurrences as the head animation code is the only place that use these variables.  These should all be in the HeadTurnerOn_Timer and HeadTurnerOff_Timer routines, somewhere around lines 527~569.

 

Now I'm going to work on the arms a bit.  I don't know how much "animation" to do.  As Dark mentioned, they only move ~30 degrees and they're as fast as a flipper (with less range of motion).  I'm thinking, instead of incrementing the rotation of the arms, just setting the rotation for a second then moving it back.  If you guys really want an animation, I could work on it, but I really don't think you would see it anyway.  Take for example the lamp on the most recent TOTAN; when you hit it full on, the very next frame of animation is many degrees away from the initial position, but as it slows down, you can see just how smooth it is.  Because Frank's arms are moving so fast for such a small distance, I don't think you can really see it.

[Shoopity]

Dark, if you set Frank where he's supposed to be (somewhere in the neighborhood of X=429, Y=343 for the jacket, for example) and you set he Z properly (for his jacket and body, they're both 0; his arms should be about 65 and his head... 165?  Did you not export each body part to have the same origin?), he's actually pretty spot on where he's suppose to be I think.  Some slight adjust because he hands are currently clipping the ramp slightly; his scale might be off slightly (I would think they scale should be the same for X, Y, and Z).  I think everything might need a slight rotation (that's difficult currently since it doesn't seem like each body part has the same origin).

[dark]

@Shoop:

In reference to the tilt angle yes the top view as shown in screen shots earlier with normal layback is too top view, as seen in this player POV video the view of frank is more front view:

https://www.youtube....h?v=JS-1vAnGysE

 

If we tilt it back with normal FS lay back settings yes the rotation looks strange or unnatural, reminds me of the Mel Gibson head animations from south park lol.

 

As we currently have it, with a combination of lay back settings and the model slightly tilted back it looks good.  The model is tilted back from 90 degrees to 105 degrees, not a huge amount but enough to make it look nice.

 

I'm not entirely sure how pivot points work in VP but as far as I know, object axis/pivot point is determined by the world axis center in the 3D environment.  When ever I export a model from 3DSmax it will ignore the objects pivot point and use the world axis center as its pivot point instead, so what I do is line up the objects pivot point (perfectly) with the world axis pivot point to make them one and the same.

 

@loafer: You'd know better than me since you've played the real table, but from the videos I've seen you can't really hear any mechanical sounds of the head moving over the other game sounds.

[Shoopity]

OK, to animate his arms, replace the SolArmAnim(Enabled) with the following:

Sub solArmAnim(Enabled)
'debug.print "ArmTimer" & Now()
' If Enabled Then
'   	PlaySound "popper"
'     ArmAnim=1
'     ArmTimer.Enabled = 1
' End If
	If Enabled Then
		Frank_RightArm.ObjRotX = 60
		Frank_LeftArm.ObjRotX = 60
	Else
		Frank_RightArm.ObjRotX = 90
		Frank_LeftArm.ObjRotX = 90
	End If
End Sub

Of course if you want to completely remove the commented lines, you're more than welcome.