Animations!!!

[PROMETHEUS]

As long as I have seen this subject from what I have understood we cannot create new animations that can be used side to side to the old ones , but just edit or overwrite prexhisting animations .....

for example if I want to make a horseman throwing knives I cannot so without overwriting the other archer or javelinman animation .... this means , we can improve animations but not create really new ones .....

Am I wrong?

[Lord Adherbal]

I've added plently of new animations (crossbowmen, rescaled speeds, ...) and it works fine. So yes you must be wrong.

[PROMETHEUS]

Any detailed full tutorial on the whole steps to make this be working?

[wlesmana]

You create an entirely new skeleton in the animation pack. It's default animations are based on whatever skeleton you copied. Then you edit the animations (replacing them) with whatever you made in 3DSMAX. Since this is a new skeleton, it doesn't overwrite other existing skeletons.

There's a tutorial in Scriptorium section of this forum. Making new skeletons is pretty simple and easy. So's updating it with new animations you've made. Making the animations themself is a huge PITA.

[Bwian]

There are 2 components to an animation:

1) There is the basic skeleton. This determines where the joints are and the relative postions of limbs etc. This we cannot currently change. We can create a duplicate and we can scale it, but we cannot, say, add 2 extra animated arms or change the proportions of the skeleton to make the arms longer in relation to the body etc. I hope this will change at some point in the future, and I know people are working on it. This , though, is currently not possible.

2) The animation. This controls how each bone joint rotates to show the particular movements. There are lots of these in the animation, with different ones used for each movement. Each animation is called by teh game to move the limbs/torso of the model when a certain action is performed. Run, walk, attack. That sort of thing. The rotations are applied to the skeleton to produce movement.

So, in short, there are things we can do, and things we can't.

You can completely re-design the attack, movement animations ( There is a good tutorial in the tutorials section ) and so on and make a completely new animation set to have your new movements. The animations also control the speed. If your run cycle takes longer, then the movement rate of the unit will appear differently. Same with the speed of shooting for archers etc.