Bone Assignments List: What each bone does?

[Lunar Eclipse]

I was wondering if any fellow creators made a list of the bones (like breathe_trans) with written explanations of what they do and control and/or the possible effects you can get with assigning parts to certain bones?

Some bones are very standard or obvious. But some like the above mentioned "breathe_trans" I'm not sure what do.. or what you can do with them.

Now I could easily go into my game and test every bone... but that would take hours and hours.... and if my assignments are not right, I may never really get the most out of what can really be achieved.

A list would be very keen!

Thanks in advanced! :anime:

[tiggerypum]

Lunar Eclipse

Maxis meshes have breathe_trans but it's not used (in that it's not assigned to any vertices in body meshes). Now Marvine used it (and animated it a certain way) with her little sample - if one wanted to make things that are all compatible, you'd use the same assignments she did on your body and make your own animations after that point.

There are other bones that come along for the ride but are almost never used (and seem to have no unique animation) - like some 'skirt' or 'shorts' ones. The ones that are used are the ones that unimesh identifies as a body part.

I guess most of us are coming at it from body-meshing experience, so we know which bones are used. Also I assume Dr Pixel's base bodies come in with the basic assignments already there, which would answer the 'which joints are used' question?

On the head there is the basic head/neck - and then there are the 'hair' ones that give the hair that little animated sway to it. The face must have its own thing, but we can't seem to access that yet.

[WesHowe]

I don't remember seeing such a list. Really, not a lot has been done in the last year with animations, and to my knowledge never (outside of Maxis) using "breathe_trans". Since most of the joints that are not obvious are unassigned anyway, they are basically unused.

I know a shortcut to see what bones Maxis used and what they do, at least I know how to do it with MilkShape.

* First, import a GMDC from the game using the UniMesh plugin, or just use one of Dr. Pixel's whole sim models.
* Click on the 'ANIM' button (lower right corner).
* In the model panel, click on the 'rotate' button.
* In the joints panel, one at a time double-click on a joint name, then click in one of the view windows (other than 3D) and drag the mouse to see what parts of the mesh move. If nothing moves, then the joint has nothing assigned to it.
* All joints with "trans" in the name would be animated instead by using 'move' instead of 'rotate'.

The joint "breathe_trans" is used in some animations as part of the breathing action, but almost none of the game meshes have any portion assigned to it. It was apparently designed to allow the chest to rise and fall while breathing. This is mainly done in the game by moving the shoulders. Conspiracy theorists insist that the game designers removed the assignments from breathe_trans so animated boobies would not be seen.

There are, besides the joints you see in MilkShape, a whole lot more animatable targets in the CRES that use special game coding. Many have the letters "ik" in them, and the game code animates multiple joints at one time (like moving the whole arm and hand) using them. Since there is no support in MilkShape for IK animation, these are currently not too mod user-friendly.

<* Wes *>

[Lunar Eclipse]

Thank you both so much!
That was very helpful information.
And the MS3D trick is very appreciated.

I was so curious about those bones like 'skirt' and 'shorts'. ^^
Now I at least know that they pretty much do nothing at this point. So there isn't any spectacular thing I'm missing out on. ^^

I think that answers my main question. So someone can come and do the lock on this. ^^

[Dr Pixel]

Some of the "in between" joints like "bicep" are also used, I think, as part of certain animations, such as when a Sim transforms from fit/normal/fat and their bodies do that "vibrating" animation. But those seem to be done by morphs, or something else that we can't get our hands on yet, since nothing is really assigned to those joints. It's also possible that Maxis included those joints intending to assign and use them for something, but decided not to somewhere along the line. There were some joints in Sims1 body meshes that were never used for anything at all.

Basically, at least for what we are able to do at this point, you want to use the main joints - the ones that rotate in the same places that your own body can rotate.

These would be:

The three spine joints
Neck
Head
Upperarm
Forearm
Wrist
all the hand and finger joints
Pelvis
Thigh
Calf
Foot
and Toe


Not that you can't use the rest for special effects, like Marvine did - but something like that requires a specialy assigned mesh to go with it, it won't work on standard meshes.