Bobbing Heads in UT2k4 Machinima

[squidge316]

hey everyone.

i'm interested in making a machinima using ut2k4. is there a way to make the player models bob thier heads up and down to simulate speech ala helmet games? surely there must be a mod, patch, ini or something.

thanks.

 

[meowcat]

You would have to write your own script code to do this. For machinima purposes (no replication required) it may be reasonably straightforward to do this by creating some sort of custom "conversation" actor that you place in the level and it would control all of the head bobbing via tick and trigger notifications. I think you could set it up with a couple of arrays that store the target rotation (or like the viewshake, a magnitude and duration) and time along with the target pawn.

Obviously the default UT2k4 player models don't support LipSync code at all (no facial controls) so that route is a dead end.

 

[squidge316]

thanks for the reply.

so the 3d models are capable of nodding movement, and i would have set up unrealscript to do so?

i think i heard somewhere that epic games released a patch, with Impersonator, which allows you to talk into your headset mic and lip sync in real time. is this true?

thanks.

 

[meowcat]

It is true that Epic released the patch to support Impersonator, but the player model mesh and pawn code must have been properly setup to support that feature (which none of the UT2k4 models are). I don't know if it is set up to support real-time lip syncing (the documentation seems to point to No real-time capability) See this link also. The nodding movement would have to be "faked" the way I mentioned above by manually adjusting the rotation of the head.

[EDIT] I'm not sure anyone ever really got the impersonator stuff working in UT2k4 (though I seem to remember an entry into the MSUC for Matinee that *may* have used it). Another method (using impersonator) you might try is to rerig just the heads of the UT2k4 models that you want to have speak to the UDN head rigs (requires some modelling and texture work on your part to add mouths/teeth) and then just shrink the default player model heads (look at how headshots work) and then add a dummy "talking head" that plays the lipsinc animations. I think jailbreak did something similar (though no LipSinc) to add Llama heads to the lame players.