Idle Animations and States in CCS

[Matt]

It's been awhile since I've had some time to look at and update the Conversive Character Studio program, so I started looking through old posts about it and what people were asking for that wasn't there, seems like the biggest request is adding Idle states.

I wanted to make a new thread devoted to Idle animations in CCS and how best to implement it.

In the Microsoft Agent Character Editor, I see three built in Idle states: IdlingLevel1, IdlingLevel2, and IdlingLevel3. It looks like you assign one (or more?) animations to these states, and then I guess there is some built in time of no activity in the agent for each of these states to be triggered. Is this correct? Does anyone know how it works when you select more than one animation for a state?

[Matt]

Also, what would be the optimal features/functionality for Idling? Should you be able to specify an idle timeout? Should you be able to have it choose randomly from a list of animations to play when idle? What about custom defined idle levels? Or should there just be a built in number (like the three msagent has)?

I appreciate any feedback people have.

-Matt

[Matt]

I started playing around with what I think would work for Idling, here is what I have so far:

[Matt]

I've just uploaded a new version of the Conversive Character Studio, it is now version 1.0.1.0 with the highly-anticipated feature: Idle Levels.

How Idle Levels work currently:
You now have a list of Idle Levels attached to your character which are activated in sequence while the character is idle (not animating or speaking). Each idle level has min and max values for start delay, duration, and interval. I think this gives the creator a nice amount of control over how the character behaves when he/she isn't active.

Download the latest version and let me know what you think!

-Matt

[Matt]

I found a fixed a minor bug with the idle levels in the Conversive Character Studio.
Here is an updated screenshot of the new reworked idle level window:



Download the latest CCS here:
http://www.verbots.com/forums/dload.php ... ile_id=118