animations in 3dsmax

posted on July 4th, 2011, 3:11 am

How do I set up animations in max for A2

posted on July 7th, 2011, 7:42 am

Hey Blade why the silence? I know you know this stuff

posted on July 7th, 2011, 2:20 pm

Might be best to PM him - he doesn't get to see every single message on Fleet Ops . I sent him a message on IM, so he'll probably get back to you soon

posted on July 8th, 2011, 7:24 pm

From what I understand, and I've one a bit of animating in max (just getting back into it now in fact) you just need to create the animation the same way you always would in max. I tried to use the automatic key frame tool but found it to be too imprecise so now set my own key frames instead.

There are some limits though, don't scale something in the animation and only animate individual meshes in your model (i.e. not individual vertices in the meshes). Basically your stuck to moving or rotating objects about.

Hope this helps!

posted on July 8th, 2011, 7:27 pm

Blade made a tutorial which was just yesterday put on the guide - if you have more to add, feel free to let me know

posted on July 8th, 2011, 9:39 pm

That tutorial's pretty good. It might be worth mentioning the restrictions, i.e. no scaling parts and only being able to animate whole mesh parts not individual vertices (Max will let you do both of these but things then get messed up when exporting)

I should probably mention though my knowledge of modding A2 is now 2 years out of date and I've just only today started to get back into it so things might have changed...

posted on July 8th, 2011, 10:20 pm

well i know scaling animations work as thats how i animated chiletreks 8472 passive embryo. things tend to mess up is scalesod is used tho (not always) never tried animating verticies so didnt know that bit

posted on July 9th, 2011, 7:30 am

The tutorial is great but I'm asking about texture based animations like the ones sprites use. I need to know how to set the Command node and which way to map the texture. Do I crop it or scale  the verts down or what? Also How do I properly scale a model before export since the model doesn't seam to be the same size in milkshape and max?

posted on July 9th, 2011, 3:58 pm

well i know scaling animations work as thats how i animated chiletreks 8472 passive embryo. things tend to mess up is scalesod is used tho (not always) never tried animating verticies so didnt know that bit

Hmm perhaps it was just the armada 1 exporter that had problems with scaling animations, or perhaps it was something else. That's good to know. In that case I might be wrong about the vertex animations as well.

The tutorial is great but I'm asking about texture based animations like the ones sprites use. I need to know how to set the Command node and which way to map the texture. Do I crop it or scale  the verts down or what? Also How do I properly scale a model before export since the model doesn't seam to be the same size in milkshape and max?

With texture animations I believe you first map a single frame of the animation to the mesh in milkshape or max.  You then need to change that filename for the single frame texture over to the texture file with all frames of the texture animation in a grid that corresponds to one of the texture animation nodes, I think that the BBOM has all the different texture animation node names in it.

If that doesn't work then I might be wrong about the first step and you should just map the texture containing all of the frames onto the mesh.

posted on July 10th, 2011, 7:30 am

Command Nodes:
Command nodes are special nodes the modify the export behavior of their parent mesh.
The are any node whose name
begins "c_". Specifically, they are:
"c_tm_[name]" Use the texture material [name].
"c_anim_[identifier]_[playback_offset]_nn" Texture animation.
"c_borg_[texture]" specify a borg assimilation texture for the parent node.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Thats all the BBOM has on texture based animations. But like I said I still don't know which way to UV Map or what the Identifier is. I think the other value is time. I also don't know if I also need the 1st C node too.

[Ozymandias]

posted on July 11th, 2011, 1:25 pm

Last edited by Ozymandias on July 11th, 2011, 1:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Code: Select all

Texture Animations Names

Keyframes can be specified explicitly, or can be automatically generated for common styles by using the @keyframes command.

Animation for shield remodulation
tex2x2rmd
Standard 4x4 animations
tex4x4_1.1
tex4x4_1.3
tex4x4_1.5
STANDARD ROW ANIMATIONS
2 row animation
tex2x1
3 row animation
tex3x1
4 row animation
tex4x1
4 row cursor animation
cursor4x1
5 row cursor animation
cursor5x1
6 row cursor animation
cursor6x1
7 row cursor animation
cursor7x1
8 row cursor animation
cursor8x1
8 row animation
tex1x6.8

STANDARD COLUMN ANIMATIONS
6 column animation
tex1x6
5 column animation
tex1x5
4 column animation
tex1x4
4 column animation
tex1x4med
2 frame column animation
tex1x2med
4 column animation - slow
tex1x4slow
3 column animation
tex1x3
2 column animation
tex1x2
STANDARD SQUARE ANIMATIONS
tex2x2
tex2x2slow
tex2x2slow2
tex3x3
tex4x4
CUSTOM ROW ANIMATIONS
vent
tex4x4.12
tex4x4slow
CUSTOM COLUMN ANIMATIONS
linear column animation
ztrantex
4 column animation
photanim
species 8472 phasers
spphaser_u
spphaser_v
CUSTOM SQUARE ANIMATIONS
tex4x4_smoke
tex2x2flip
shldieanm


Those are the identifies in stock A2 pulled from the BBOM. (Starting at the contents and clicking on texture animation  ). They are defined in the tex_anim.spr file which gives info on how many frames they have (offset I think) and the speed etc...

I'd ignore the playback_offset part of the name no idea what that does and just use a node like the following:

c_anim_[identifier from above list]_nn where nn is an incrementing number (nn is needed as you cant have two hardpoints with the same name)

I've done a quick experiment and to apply the texture animation to the model. Simply create a texture containing all your frames of the animation and uv map to the top left frame. Then attach the relevant command node to that part of the mesh.

Hope this helps.

Edit:

I also found this tutorial by Achilles that looks like a good way to create smooth animations using the auto key frame:

Here

posted on July 12th, 2011, 10:39 am

Yes and I think you inadvertently showed me what the playback offset is.

Example

Standard 4x4 animations
tex4x4_1.1
tex4x4_1.3
tex4x4_1.5

un these 3 animations you have different playback speeds or "offsets"

posted on July 12th, 2011, 10:54 am

Yes and I think you inadvertently showed me what the playback offset is.

Example

Standard 4x4 animations
tex4x4_1.1
tex4x4_1.3
tex4x4_1.5

un these 3 animations you have different playback speeds or "offsets"

Ahh I see, I always assumed the offset would be a way to skip the first frame in the animation or something like that and that number representing the speed was called the step.

Hope you get it sorted anyway.