Making new animations .... how is it done!

**quadrille** · 05-25-2005, 00:35

On an elephant skeleton

Sure looks amusing, but it's apparent it's not a new skeleton. And the four armed sword fighters have two static arms from what I could tell, likely weighted to the torso.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but from the information I've gathered in this and other threads it appears no one has actually managed to do any anatomical modifications yet. That's where I was hoping Vercingetorix would come in to the picture.

**Bwian** · 05-25-2005, 09:15

Quadrille...thats pretty much my reading of the situation. I have used a similar trick to make a 'Scout Walker' type robot. I basically just used the rear leg protion of a camel skeleton, and only weighted teh bones I wanted. It works OK...but you are limited to the camel proportions.

I also abandoned a fantasy based Myth total War project purely on those grounds. You just can' t make the fantasy creatures look right. You need Ogres to be bulkier, Dwarves to be stockier, etc.

I saw the screenshots from the LOTR mod, and their Dwarves looked like children. It was a good try, and the best that could be done...but it still just didn't looke right to me.

There are many improvements that could be made to the basic skeletons, that would open doors for fantasy mods ( my Robot one included ) The ability to lay out completely new skeletons in completely new patterns is all that prevents us!

**hoggy** · 05-25-2005, 11:32

so far I've just been using existing skeletons on Blue Lotus, camels, elephants and such with different scales. Units like the 4 armed warrior are there in hope of future development (or otherwise I'll just weight them to the existing arms) Is it possible to use current skeletons but have the animations move the bone origins? ie. If you did a troll say with very long arms could you use the human skeletion but make all his animations specifically positioned for long arms?

**Bwian** · 05-25-2005, 12:20

Hoggy....as far as moving the actual pivot locations go, no. Thats what we hope Vercingetorix can do, and is essentially the last step needed to actually make a new skeleton.

At present, if you try and move the pivot location in either the animation or the base model, it is ignored in game. Vercingetorix has confirmed that the actual pivot locations are defined in skeletons.dat, but we currently cannot edit it.

What I hope, is that the hints around us being able to supply a 'reference' skeleton and have that read into a new animation editor version to create a new skeleton actually becomes possible.

We may end up being limited ot the same number and rough hierarchy of bones, but I could live with that just fine! Most of the 'things' I want to build would work ok with re-sited pivots.....

**wlesmana** · 05-25-2005, 16:19

hoggy> you can entend the mesh and for some limited movements it could work ok. But in most cases, especially when there's a joint involved, the warping of the skin can look very bad.