Unit animation

[RabidMonkey]

I have been looking at all the mods being made for MTW and they all look great, especially the new units people are creating. These help to make the game new and interesting and have got me playing MTW again.
I would like to start creating some new units of my own, so i downloaded the BIF editor but even if I use one of the original BIFs and change it I could spend weeks on creating one unit (I like to have detail on the unit)
I would love to hear some hints and tips on how people have sped up this process and what programs you use (do you just use paint? or something like Flash?). I am sure there are other people who have just started modding and could use some help from experienced modders. So we can also create some great looking units

[Lord Krazy]

Wellington's animation guide in the stikies
has a wealth of info about the animations in MTW.

I use photoshop to edit the animations.

I'd love to hear tip's and hints how
to speed up the process too.
All I can think of is more people.

How long it takes depends on what you wish to achieve.
Speed and detail are not my strong points,
togeather or not. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

If you can use graphic software you
well you should have no problems
apart from time and conviction.
We all suffer from that. http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/wink.gif

I'm not being smart it's just how it is.

Read the guide (not in one go ok) http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif
Figure what you want to do
and if you need any help from there
(if you don't your well ahead)
then let us know in a bit more
detail, on what your planning and
we will try to get you the rest of the
way.



LK http://www.totalwar.org/forum/non-cgi/emoticons/smokin.gif

[RabidMonkey]

Thanks Lord krazy

Its great to see how helpful peope are on this forum, theres a lot of modding information to be found. Wellingtons animation guide is great and should stop me from wasting to much time figuring out the basics.

To start with i would like to make a celtic warrior unit for the Patrician mod ( i think it needs some real gauls to fight the romans)

I would also like to start a mod that is based on ancient china as this area of the world interests me. i would probably need some help with this though So ill start off with creating the celt unit and see how i go.

Has anyone tried using a program like Flash? It could greatly speed up the process of creating multiple frames but i cant seem to get the bmps to work once they have been through Flash.