Light UGV you might be interested in.

[headdie]

In trashman's I come bearing gifts... thread there is mention of the possibility of introducing UGVs at some undetermined point in the future and I got to thinking about ideas for that.

Current line of thought is this



It is a light recon drone favouring speed over anything else, while fairly resistant to terrestrial small arms anything alien, pyro and/or explosive will generally rip it to shreds. for defence and infantry support it has a turreted cannon, similar in capability and roll to the infantry heavy cannon seen in UFO: Enemy Unknown and can rip through aliens seen early in the game but quickly becomes obsolete as the aliens start deploying armour and possesses slow rate of fire along with restrictive ammo capacity.  As a Recon drone I think it's night vision should be better than a soldiers.  As I currently plan it the drone takes up 2x2 in the dropship so players deploying it should consider the loss of their ability to deploy half their team (in the opening craft), though in situations where there is sparse cover or difficult visibility it might be advantageous.

Although wheeled rather than tracked I see this using tank steering,
1 for simplicity in developing its movement as it would be similar to a soldier's
2 it would allow the drone to turn on the spot which when dealing with light cover means you dont have to leave it to turn around.

I have attached a text file with a description of sorts that I have been mulling over as I have worked on this.

looking for input on improvements and if this is something the project is interested in.

Currently the wheels, turret and turret barrel are separate objects from the main body, though a texture exists the UVmap needs work and the texture is just a simple AO bake so now is a good time to make mesh changes.

In terms of license when one is needed I usually release on a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 License. (wording from deviant art) but as I am donating this to UFO:AI I have no issue with releasing it under another licence if needed

[H-Hour]

Looks pretty cool. Are you able to animate it? UGVs (and units that take 2x2 grid spaces) are still work-in-progress, but having a complete, textured and animated UGV would really help the testing process.

Let me know if you have any questions about the animation process. I'm not great at it myself, but we can help as best as we can.

[H-Hour]

Saw in the other thread you haven't done animation. Here's a bit in our wiki about exporting animation with Blender to our MD2's. Not sure how much help I can be as I have used mostly 3dsm. But Destructavator has done animation with Blender. He might be able to help or suggest some tutorials.

[TrashMan]

Nice to see you finally dropped by headdie. 

Looking good.
I think you can get away with a bit more polies in the wheels btw.

[ShipIt]

There is also this Talk page about the UGV´s in the wiki.

[headdie]

Looks pretty cool. Are you able to animate it? UGVs (and units that take 2x2 grid spaces) are still work-in-progress, but having a complete, textured and animated UGV would really help the testing process.

Let me know if you have any questions about the animation process. I'm not great at it myself, but we can help as best as we can.

Saw in the other thread you haven't done animation. Here's a bit in our wiki about exporting animation with Blender to our MD2's. Not sure how much help I can be as I have used mostly 3dsm. But Destructavator has done animation with Blender. He might be able to help or suggest some tutorials.

Just to confirm for animation you are wanting armature/frame animations?

if so then, http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Doc:2.4/Tutorials/Your_First_Animation/2.Animation which I found through the links at the bottom of the UFOAI wiki article is brilliant for setting it up.

I am hoping to have this think animated soon so fingers crossed.

Nice to see you finally dropped by headdie. 

Looking good.
I think you can get away with a bit more polies in the wheels btw.

Yes it is about time

I have been working on this on and off since the discussion we had, it sits a bit higher than I had originally planned but I did that so it looks better for ground clearance.

On the wheels, I am playing it fairly safe on the polly count for now and while I am not final on the texture i don't mind making mesh adjustments

There is also this Talk page about the UGV´s in the wiki.

Cheers for that, certainly a few things to think about.

[H-Hour]

Yes, if I understand you correctly, we need frame-by-frame animations. There is no interpolation or whatever it is between positions. When you export to MD2, it will export each individual frame. UGVs might require slightly different animations (no crouching or panic), but I suspect most of their fire and movement will use the same animation types as other characters (walking, shooting, etc.). Here's a bit more about the specific animations we need.

[headdie]

Taking a break from the hyperion like kOba suggested so going back to this.

I have removed the barrel from the turret so that it doesn't interfere with look of changeable weapons.

Currently animating the thing and have gotten test animations to work so I am now looking to animate the buggy properly now.

With UGVs not being fully implemented yet how much latitude do I have for animations?  I ask because

stand0, stand1, stand2, stand3         {Needed}
walk0, walk1, walk2, walk3            {Needed}
cstand0, cstand1, cstand2, cstand3      {UAV/UGV's crouching?}
cwalk0, cwalk1, cwalk2, cwalk3         {UAV/UGV's crouching?}
death1, death2, death3            {Needed}
dead1, dead2, dead3               {Needed}
run0                        {?}

{Do we need 8 weapons animations, Personally I think 2, 1 for single shot 1 one for repeat fire}
rifle
biggun - Fixme: What is the difference to "rifle"?
melee
pistol
pistol_d (akimbo)
grenade
item
rpg

stand_menu               {Needed}
stand_still                  {?}
panic0                  {I suppose the operator could panic but would that show on the UGV in mission apart from it just standing there? will panic be included in UAV/UGV implementation?}

In addition to that with this model having exposed wheels I can do left and right turning animations.  Also with having an independent turret I can animate that to rotate like the HWPs in XCOM but if yo include fire animations that could be a lot of animation frames for the different combinations.

[H-Hour]

On animations needed: We need them all, but keep in mind you can use the same frames for different animations. One frame would probably be enough for all stand, crouch, stand_menu, stand_still, panic animations.

You can have just one cwalk set of frames you assign to cwalk0, cwalk1, etc.

I think you're right: we only need one set of weapons firing frames that can be used for all.

Right and left turning animations, and other things (like rotating just the turrent) woudl be nice to include if you can. We may not be able to use them right away, but we will eventually. Check out info about our tags system to see how a turret will be positioned on the UGV and how you can use that to make the turret swivel.

[TrashMan]

Can turret be made like heads? As TAG-files? That might make them easier to animate.

[H-Hour]

Can turret be made like heads? As TAG-files? That might make them easier to animate.

Yes, I think that is the idea.