Everything a man could know about animating walkers...

[TheJamsh]

Care to share the information

I really have no idea where to start, and if you've seen my other thread i've built a monstor craft to animate in the first place... I'll be doing such anims in 3DS Max.

[Josiah]

I've never done that exactly, but I think it would be easier to 'break' the mesh into pieces, instead of trying to vertex animate the entire thing. Try using some of the constraints in the animation menu, and save the position and rotation of each object in each frame during your animation. I'm not sure if the exporter will pick that up, so you may have to 'convert to edit poly/mesh' and manually copy all the positions and rotations in yourself... at least you won't have to generate the numbers yourself, save you some brainpower for dlls...

[Zax]

I've never done that exactly, but I think it would be easier to 'break' the mesh into pieces, instead of trying to vertex animate the entire thing. Try using some of the constraints in the animation menu, and save the position and rotation of each object in each frame during your animation. I'm not sure if the exporter will pick that up, so you may have to 'convert to edit poly/mesh' and manually copy all the positions and rotations in yourself... at least you won't have to generate the numbers yourself, save you some brainpower for dlls...

No, no, just autokey.

First, animate the 2 you want to be the "anchors." Use the Attila for an example of that. The rest of the legs are just part of the animation and don't really interact with terrain. I would suggest two invisible legs in the center to keep balance, or just use opposite ends.

[Josiah]

I've never done that exactly, but I think it would be easier to 'break' the mesh into pieces, instead of trying to vertex animate the entire thing. Try using some of the constraints in the animation menu, and save the position and rotation of each object in each frame during your animation. I'm not sure if the exporter will pick that up, so you may have to 'convert to edit poly/mesh' and manually copy all the positions and rotations in yourself... at least you won't have to generate the numbers yourself, save you some brainpower for dlls...

No, no, just autokey.

...

well, I wasn't sure if max would pick it up, so YAY, you get to use autokey....

[Nielk1]

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.

[TheJamsh]

I've never done that exactly, but I think it would be easier to 'break' the mesh into pieces, instead of trying to vertex animate the entire thing.

I can't vertex animate it anyway, there is at the moment no exporter for Max 2010 capable of getting Vertex aniations out. My plan was to transform animate it anyway.

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.

Ah, so scaling walkers isn't a good idea. I'll have to do that then, and make sure geometryScale can remain at 1. Vehicles in S-mod have a slight size increase over stock anyhow, thats the first step I guess. As I understand it, you create two dummy 'foot' objects for a walker with more than two legs, and animate those. The rest of the legs just have their own animations within the 'walk' animations of the foot objects, but arn't attached or anything?

Surely Avatar has a step-by-step guide with screenshots for this sort of thing ?

[MrTwosheds]

I have not animated any walkers in 3dsMax, but I have animated walker xsi's in notepad, the best way is probably a mixture of the two techniques, you have to be a bit deranged or very motivated to do it all in notepad, but at some point it will probably be the best way finish of the xsi animation rather than endless tweaks and exports from max.
Correct pivot point position is critical for all parts. You will need animation for all leg parts and the mainbody, do not animate the neck, head or anything between the mainbody and hp_eyepoint.
The walker needs hp_lfoot and hp_rfoot as its real feet (hp_ tag not actually required) these do the actual walking.
And you will probably have to experiment a bit on the mainbody pivot point to get the walkers various movements looking ok in relation to it.
An xsi animation is made up from a number of different xsi, the skel one is the important one, this one provides all the geometry for the msh created by bz2, the others only supply their animation components, their geometry is ignored.
So the first animation you should make is the skel one, where the model does not move at all, but it holds all the bits in their default positions, from this you would then develop your walk, run, idle, crouch and deaths, (Walkers don't do jump animations)

I still have no idea how to correctly set up max to animate for xsi export, if anyone could explain this clearly it would be really helpful.

[Zax]

Check BZ Complex for the proper order
BZ Command

http://www.bzcommand.com/forum/index.php?topic=71.0

[TheJamsh]

I still have no idea how to correctly set up max to animate for xsi export, if anyone could explain this clearly it would be really helpful.

I can help you with that. I may make a thread on animating in Max shortly.. with screens etc.

[Red Devil]

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

[TheJamsh]

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

Oh no you di'nt!

[Dianoga]

I've done a couple of walkers but I think I need a refresher course. The third walker I went and made I just couldn't get it to work right.

[Nielk1]

It is best to avoid scaling in *anything* if you can. And if you do apply scaling try to stay between 0.1 and 1.9

[jaydenbz2]

i can animate walkers fairly well, just none of mine animate ingame.

[MrTwosheds]

Meaning the xsi have no animations? or they have them but they don't work?