HL-2 modding tools released!

[dreamcast]

oso kai na fenetai apithano .akoma den bghke kala kala,kai sto fileplanet mporeite na katevasete ta modding tools!

http://www.fileplanet.com/files/130000/138664.shtml

March 26, 2004 - While Half-Life 2 is still quite a ways away from being complete and shipping to stores, Valve is ready to get the mod community thinking about the tools they'll have available for free from Softimage. To get the ball rolling, Valve and Softimage both had representatives show up at the Game Developer's Conference to give mod makers a chance to see the tools the can download now as well as receive their first quick "how-to" session. From what we could tell, these tools, which have been specially created to work with Half-Life 3, will be a nice gift and incentive to modders in the Half-Life community.

 

 

Basically, Softimage|XSI EXP is a downloadable version of Softimage's modeling animation studio that allows mod creators to get in, create their own characters and objects, animate them, and export them to Half-Life 2 when the game is released. Along with the Software Development Kit that will eventually be released to the community, this should allow an immense amount of freedom for interested mod makers.

 

While the demonstration given was only an hour long, and therefore rather short for all of the tools available, it gave a pretty good look at some of the nice features that comes with the package such as readymade skeletal systems for animation and a facial animation system to create different sets of animations for emotion control. One of the nice things about the animations in Half-Life 2 is how they can finally be strung together using a simple sequencer along the lines of video editing tools. Scripters will be able to set points for characters to walk along. During this time, extra points could be inserted. So while the character is walking, a designer could also tell the model to look at a certain point or object, make facial animations for emotional response or mouth movements for talking, make gestures, or really whatever other animations have already been created. The model will then do these animations when the timeline tells them to along their path.

 

Animations can also be stretched out and shortened for different effects. One example given was a gesture using both hands. Slowed down and stretched out, the gesture might look like a shrug. Sped up, the animation will look more like a character is being vehement about something.

 

This program will also provide some easy tools for creating some types of fluid animation that might have been tricky in the past. Simply by creating a longer bone structure and marking it as a tail, the joints where the bones connect in this "tail" will have the right tension and direction to create the fluid bouncing movement that you would expect from an animal or monster with a tail walking or running in an environment. Boundaries for tail movements and angle of joint connection can be adjusted easily as well to create tails the stand and curve along the lines of a scorpion or a tail that hangs more towards the ground and dangles a bit more lifelessly.

 

Of course, Half-Life 2 has made strides not just in body movement animations, but also made huge leaps towards creating incredible faces. This just happened to be another great time to check out these crazily detailed faces that Half-Life 2 will provide as well. Seeing them is almost eerie. If you unfocus your eyes just a tiny bit, you could mistake what you're seeing on screen for a real face. A large part of this is simply because of the textures used on the face models. Instead of the shiny, wet, and very plastic look, or flat, blah, and pasty look that many and most of these next generation engine games are seeing, these textures look more like real skin than I've ever seen in a game.

 

One of the interesting parts of these faces, which I hadn't realized before, is that the eyeballs are not actually textured objects. The eyes are actually rendered using shaders in the engine. Not only does this technique render all of the different parts of the eye, but it also draws in highlights and reflections to give the eyes a very wet and lifelike look. These eyes can also be told to look at certain objects, in various directions, freely around the room, or land straight on the camera so that characters look like they're looking into your eyes. Frankly, it's a little creepy. One of the reasons the system is able to pull off this amount of realism is the fact that the eyelids will also adjust depending on where a model is supposed to be looking. For instance, if a character looks up, the bottom eyelids will follow up a little bit along with the eye. It seems simple, but makes all the difference in creating a realistic face.

 

Valve was serious about putting facial features into the game for the impact they could have on a player. It's harder to care about what happens to a character when you're looking at a wooden and unfeeling face. With tricks like thoughtful eyes mixed in with accurate representations of muscle movements in the face, characters are only going to get more powerful emotionally.

 

As I mentioned before, the demonstration was only an hour long and didn't include all of the features or even touch on the creation of objects, but it was easy to see that Valve is keen on making sure that Half-Life 2 is a mod friendly game. These kinds of tools should really give mod makers a new range for creating some artistic works.

 

If you want to see more about these tools, check out our video about the software from a separate talk elsewhere at GDC.

 

Finally, if you're interested in these tools and taking a look at them for yourself, take a trip over to Fileplanet and do a little downloading.

-- Dan Adams

 

 

kai sto fileplanet!!!:

SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP for Half-Life 2

Filename:

setup_xsi_3.5_mswin32.exe

Author:

SoftImage

Size:

161.9 MB

 

Reader Rating:

Date:

3/24/2004

(3.7/5.0 - 24 votes)

Downloads:

10,286

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Description

The SOFTIMAGE|XSI EXP for Half-Life 2 is a complete version of SOFTIMAGE|XSI that lets you output Half-Life 2 characters, props and worlds. The XSI EXP for Half-Life 2 has all the tools you need to make your very own artwork for the world's coolest game, from polygon modeling and lightning fast subdivision surfaces, to nonlinear animation mixing and interactive simulation and rendering.