Animations in UIs

[SilentJacket]

I was wondering, is it possible to have animations in a custom CE UI?
Could you do it using Opensauce?

What I need to do specifically:

-MC and Arby breathing animations
-covenant carriers glassing while moving
-flying banshees

If not, is there anyway to fake it?

[Zeph]

what part of any of that actually has to do with the ui again?

[EagerYoungSpaceCadet]

I think he means the main menu. IIRC you can't have anything in the background but a static BSP (the camera can move though), I guess he wants to add other things to it?

[SilentJacket]

A friend of mine is making an H3 UI, and I am wondering if it is possible to do animations in them, or fake it if it is impossible.

[Ki11a_FTW]

I was actually wondering the same thing but haven't got to it yet. The glassing thing could probably be done with animated textures though.

[Ki11a_FTW]

The Halo uses animated textures.

[Con]

I'm pretty sure it's not possible conventionally, and I don't know any alternatives.

[Kirby_422]

Hmm, this shows how much I've checked modacity this week lol, I posted this over on halomaps earlier this week (Actually, on the day this thread was made lol).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mHxhNg69ZTI

It's all about thinking about the requirement halo has for displaying animations, that both UI maps do not follow. Then, the script command used to avoid that requirement. (I'd like people to at least take a few guesses before I outright state what I did lol)

[Con]

Oh, actually now I seem to remember someone saying device_machines could be animated or something via scripts. Would that only work to move objects around? Would you be able to do complex animations (like the breathing animations OP asked about) on bipeds turned into devices somehow?

[Kirby_422]

I was just using a device as an example (because I apparently don't have any standard animated scenery laying about.. not even a freaking h2 teleporter where it just sits there spinning.. srs? I don't even have a h2tele laying about?.. I am disappointed in myself)

It should be fine for everything, although I don't think it likes units. I was gonna use elites originally, and it exceptioned. I'll do more tests on units I guess.

Also, nobodies guessing at what I did yet, rawr. It's a PVS camera I'm using. The reason animations don't play in UI's is because there is no player; that's the requirement for playing animations. If you flycam into another cluster in SP, the things wont move. if you have a sync room in MP in another cluster, it wont activate, etc. So, the same answer to both of those things is the answer to UIs; the pvs camera commands.

[Con]

It's not really helping OP if you're making us guess how you made these animate.

[Kirby_422]

... read the post directly above yours. I expressed my displeasure that nobody even cared to think with the clues I gave them, and then told the solution, and explained the reasoning.. How is that not helping them?

[Kornman00]

If someone uploads a simple UI map with an object that's suppose to be animating, I can try a patch via OS which ignores whether or not the player can see the object.

[Kornman00]

So I take it then that no one really cares about this?

[Zeph]

So I take it then that no one really cares about this?
Just take any bsp, switch the type from multiplayer/singleplayer to UI and drop a warthog into the scene.
If a warthog's wheels/turret don't run into an exception, then drop an ai in.

[Kornman00]

I don't care enough to build the test case myself, it was only an offer for the community. If someone wants to possibly see a hack to make animations in the mainmenu work in OS 3.1, someone will need to create the test environment and upload it. Else, I have more important things to do.

[Siliconmaster]

E5Q7CcINC8M

Too busy :(

[BobtheGreatII]

So I threw a hog in to my tutorial map, with everything deleted but game points and a camera and a single warthog. It seemed to start alright, flashed the UI for a second and crashed. In that split second I saw the hog sitting there. So I dunno if that means anything. I'm still goofing with it.

[BobtheGreatII]

D-Double post. So I did a double check to make sure that I could compile a UI without anything, and sure enough I could. So when I threw the hog in, it gathered exception. So I tried an elite too, and it crashed. So anyway, here's the map with only the hog in it and include is my dump file.

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7FWWPtWWL3XdWExYjM2YTI4QTA

[Kornman00]

When building a cache file for a mainmenu scenario, tool deletes the elements for the falling damage and material definitions blocks in the game globals. It also removes the unit reference in the player information block. So the test case can't be done with a vehicle right now, it would have to be done with something that doesn't require information from the falling damage block (so anything not a vehicle, and probably anything not a biped). A device shouldn't cause it to exception.

[BobtheGreatII]

Okay, so I put together another UI that has a device machine of the hazard light from the PoA. And the H2 teleporter that spins and is scenery. The scenery animates but the device machine does not.

[Kornman00]

Yeah, the device machine would only animate between position/power changes. If the scenery animates, what's everyone's problem with animations in the mainmenu?

[Ki11a_FTW]

I dont think it does animate.. a long time ago i tried making a UI with banshees and what not flying around with scenery objects but the scenery wouldent animate. You sure it's not the shader you're thinking about bob?

[BobtheGreatII]

Nope you're totally right. It wasn't animating. I just figured cause it looked like it was spinning. I put something else in there that does spin and it won't move.

[Kornman00]

Well can you upload the map so I can test this patch?

[BobtheGreatII]

Here:

https://docs.google.com/open?id=0B7FWWPtWWL3XVTU4cjR3VkNIdFE

The white thing in the middle should spin. Also my music is jacked, but whatever.

[Kornman00]

So I got those two objects to start spinning.

Basically, I just removed the checks in the game's objects update function where it determines if an object is within a player's PVS, which allows the object to become active.

There are other things which use the player PVS (actors, effects, etc). However, I I'll just stick to letting objects become active and update instead of all the other junk for now.

Hopefully I can include a new project_yellow flag for this in 3.1. Basically a "game updates ignore player pvs hack (mainmenu only)" flag. So it'd have to be set for this to work, and it would have to be a mainmenu scenario.

[Ki11a_FTW]

I would be very happy if this is included with the final build of OS 3.1.

[BobtheGreatII]

Very sweet!

[Siliconmaster]

So to be clear the current fix allows scenery or devices to animate, but not vehicles and AI?

[Kornman00]

It allows any game object to perform whatever behavior it can do when it's 'active' (eg, animate). There are no plans to support effects or AI which need to be in a player's PVS before they're marked active.

[Siliconmaster]

Ah, I see. Cool.

[JackRabbit72380]

So was this included in OS 3.1 and if so how can I use it to make a new mainmenu.map? or I should ask how do I set the flag.

[Kornman00]

I'm pretty sure you should be using the object_pvs_* script functions (which are stock). However, there's a project_yellow flag called "game updates ignore player pvs" which only works in mainmenu scenarios, and disables the object code which activate/deactivates objects in/out of the player's pvs