Everything a man could know about animating walkers...

[TheJamsh]

I think he means he can animate them for rendering purposes inside of 3DS max, but not so that they are compatible with BZ2. At least thats my interpretation, i know Jayden does a lot of cutscene rendering inside 3DS

[Zax]

You have to follow these http://www.bzcommand.com/forum/index.php?topic=64.0 instructions explicitly.

[Josiah]

You have to follow these http://www.bzcommand.com/forum/index.php?topic=64.0 instructions explicitly.

I find that there are a lot of unnecessary steps in there, and I've never gotten anims to work in-game that way. Try this and see if it works(this is for max 2010 only):

Pre. You have to have a model, and it has to be saved. And I suggest following N1's advice:

Before ANYTHING else, make sure the model looks good in game at scale as a prop or hovercraft. Trust me, I have gotten burned for not doing this before animating.

1. Make sure all of your objects have their pivots set up correctly. A good way to do this is to select your object, select the hierarchy tab, select 'Affect Pivot Only', 'Center to Object' if you want, and then 'Align to World'. If you're not going to align your pivots to the world, make sure all of your objects pivots are lined up the same way.




2. Make sure all of your objects are linked properly. Also, if you need to, make sure you have whatever constraints you are going to use are properly set up and working.



3. You need to make sure the controllers for all your objects are TCB, so I'll just paste from GH's tut:

10.) In the upper left corner of your viewport,right click & select Views -> tracks ->New.

11.) In left portion of your tracked view port find the name positions & then select the controler named "TCB Positions", click "Make Default", hit ok.

12.) Just below the positions you should find the "Rotate" so right click that & then select the controler named "TCB Rotations", click "Make Default", hit ok.

do this for all your objects...

4. You need to set your time configuration, so I'll just paste from GH's tut again:

14.) In the lower right corner of your bottom menu find the "Time Configuration" button & click it to open the pop window.

15.) The time configuration settings are the following. Frame Rate: NTSC, Time Display: Frames, Playback: check real time & 1x speed.

16.) Also set the length of the animation by editing the end time & click ok.

5. Make sure your frame slider is on frame 0, and select 'Auto Key' in the lower center right. This will turn the frame around the viewport and along the frame slider track red. Now any rotation or position changes will be saved as your animation, UNLESS you keep your frame slider on frame 0.



6. Now, contrary to GH's tut, you do NOT have to animate every object EVERY frame. You can move your frame slider to frame 8, rotate an object, and max will automagically do the math for each individual frame. So in this step, you move your slider around and and rotate and move your objects. BE SURE to do any parent objects first, so as to prevent yourself some added frustration.

7. When you're finished, simply turn off 'Auto Key' and SAVE and EXPORT!!

Note: there are some very annoying things that can happen, such as when you are fixing your pivots; for some reason, on some objects if you rotate the pivot AT ALL, the object will bend around like, like, well, I don't know what. But the only way I know how to fix it is to create a box(or some simple object), set the pivot properly, 'convert to poly', and attach the object that is annoying you. All you have to do then is to delete the box and correct the pivot, and your problems are solved. If somebody knows how to fix this with a button press instead of all that work, please enlighten me.

Another annoying thing is when you export to xsi, and all your objects look perfect in max, but when you open up in 3dexp or bz, one or more of the objects are WAY out of scale, you need to do the same thing for this as you did to fix the pivot. Attach them to an 'edit poly' box, and then delete the box and fix the pivot, and make sure it is parented or child-ed correctly. If you didn't follow N1's advice, you've got to redo it...



Now this doesn't cover everything. Far from it. But it does show an easier way of exporting an anim.

[jaydenbz2]

The vehicle animation works for walking until it walks forward, backward walking is fine for mine.

EDIT: Didn't see your last post Josiah, I'll try your tips, maybe if I can get the damn animation to work i'll be bothered to UV and texture my walker.

[MrTwosheds]

There is only 1 "walk" animation in bz2, it is played either forwards or backwards, its not possible for it to only work in one direction.
You will want to make a walk, a run, a turn (it does the same thing for both directions) and idle x3, these should all be cyclic type anims, ending pretty much where they started.
a sitdown and deaths x3 these should be one way.
And a skel that is unmoving in the default pose.
Viewing an xsi animation in 3dex, will help you see what some of it might actually look like but the best viewer is bz2, only it will show you the true end result.

Any apparent scaling or distortion effects will be caused by the rotation section of the animation, you don't want them to happen. Bz2 will not do scale animations at all.

Cut n pasting animations between xsi's can save you allot of time and effort.

[Zax]

There is only 1 "walk" animation in bz2, it is played either forwards or backwards, its not possible for it to only work in one direction.
You will want to make a walk, a run, a turn (it does the same thing for both directions) and idle x3, these should all be cyclic type anims, ending pretty much where they started.
a sitdown and deaths x3 these should be one way.
And a skel that is unmoving in the default pose.
Viewing an xsi animation in 3dex, will help you see what some of it might actually look like but the best viewer is bz2, only it will show you the true end result.

Any apparent scaling or distortion effects will be caused by the rotation section of the animation, you don't want them to happen. Bz2 will not do scale animations at all.

Cut n pasting animations between xsi's can save you allot of time and effort.

Scale animations aren't usually realistic anyway. They are good for organics, but vertex animation usually takes care of that.

[Col Klink]

I'll bet Col. Klink would now about it...

Oh no you di'nt!

The closest I've come to animating movement is with some critters like boids and land animals. The Walkers I've made so far always seem to crash the game when I test them in the map editor. I guess I'm missing something when I make the various animations for all of the various animation for walk, turn, sitdown, etc.

The skel model animation just looks like a simple up, down, left, right motion. The other animations are quite a bit harder to get them to look smooth. Getting the pivot points right seems essential to keeping the move points rotating correctly. Also, when keyframing the model doing each one seperately from the other animations helps when you play back the entire animation group afterwards. I make one model and then copy it several times in the same workspace and line them up side by side. The hard part seems to be naming the parts as per the original Walker model group.

If you can import the original model group in to MAX then you could probably copy and paste the animation keys for use with your Walker model. Try using 3DEX to convert the original XSI models to a model format that MAX can import.

[MrTwosheds]

I would create one xsi model and make sure it works in bz2.
If I were using a modeling program (any) to animate it, I would then create the different animations, export an xsi model for each and then, cut n paste its animation to a copy of the first working model with notepad, this would ensure that all the named parts were the same, it also gives you the opportunity to visually check that the animation is setup properly.
Crashes on load are usually down to silly little errors in naming or hierarchy.

[Zax]

I'll bet Col. Klink would now about it...

Oh no you di'nt!

The closest I've come to animating movement is with some critters like boids and land animals. The Walkers I've made so far always seem to crash the game when I test them in the map editor. I guess I'm missing something when I make the various animations for all of the various animation for walk, turn, sitdown, etc.

The skel model animation just looks like a simple up, down, left, right motion. The other animations are quite a bit harder to get them to look smooth. Getting the pivot points right seems essential to keeping the move points rotating correctly. Also, when keyframing the model doing each one seperately from the other animations helps when you play back the entire animation group afterwards. I make one model and then copy it several times in the same workspace and line them up side by side. The hard part seems to be naming the parts as per the original Walker model group.

If you can import the original model group in to MAX then you could probably copy and paste the animation keys for use with your Walker model. Try using 3DEX to convert the original XSI models to a model format that MAX can import.

3DS is very finicky about exporting animations; I think it would be true hell using a non-proprietary conversion process.

[MrTwosheds]

3DS is very finicky about exporting animations; I think it would be true hell using a non-proprietary conversion process.

But on the other hand xsi animations are just something added to the bottom of a txt file, as long as you get the frame name right and maintain the correct data structure, they are pretty much independent of the model geometry itself and can be cut n pasted and tweaked about as much as you want without causing too many problems.

[Clavin12]

I'm going to need to do vertex animation for my Fae constructor. Any advice?

[MrTwosheds]

Use as few vertex as you can for the model, you will need to identify each one (-1) to add to the envelope data, if your model has 10,000 verts your eye's will fall out.
Try to get the model right first. chances are if you alter it later all the vertex numbers will have changed and you have to redo the envelopes again.
Make the skeleton, with hp_s at every joint place, to many is not a problem too few is.
Don't worry about the weighting, set to 100, tweak at the end of the animation process if really required, it usually isn't.
The Yourconstructor_skel provides the model and envelope data, the other xsi like yourconstructor_walk is simply there to supply its Animation set, So there is no need to make multiple models all the same (or worry about differences), just the animations. They are easy to cutnpaste between xsi.

[Clavin12]

So I take it I will animate the hp_s to my liking, then assign vertices to them?

[MrTwosheds]

Construct a skeleton of hp_s within the model, animate them. then you will need to export to xsi, construct the envelopes in the xsi with notepad2 by getting the vertex numbers from the modeling program (in 3dsmax one at a time... subtract 1 from each number because xsi starts at 0)
Test in bz2
Once you have all the vertex attached to the right bones and can see what it really looks like, you can refine the animation back in your modeling program, but as I said if you alter the model, the vertex numbers may change, so I would export an new xsi and just copy/paste the animations over to the original one where they are mapped right.
Its really easy to fine tune the translation animations in the xsi, the rotations are much harder.

[Clavin12]

Got it. This should be fun.