Animation is really ANNOYING!!!!

[Bwian]

Must admit...I didn't get this one... but then, I DIDN'T mess with the horse ;) All ,y small sized mounts are based on the Camel skeleton. This proved to be a lot more stable.

When I imported the anims from the Horse, I thought I had a corrupted animation file and re-installed just to check!

For the turn left/right anims, I did this:

Open up two instances of Max. In one, I have the stock anim. In teh other, my fresh and ref-posed model. First move to start position, then VERY carefully copy teh translation moves of the root bone. Do teh same with the Z axis rotation of the base bone around the root. Then you can worry about the rest! Don't know if that worked ... or if teh camel and elephant just don't suffer so badly as the horse!

I also do NOT edit the existing skeletons, but would rasther slavishly copy out all the rotations than suffer the wierd and unpredictable hiccups that the stock skeletons exhibit. I have often wondered if teh incredibly small size of teh units when imported into Max makes for some rounding off errors or some such.

Also...for those who hadn't figured it out... if you rotate a bone, all the children of that bone receive that rotation. This can get a bit confusing if you don't work from the root out to the feet/head etc.

THis was one of teh problems I hit trying to make a 'mech type' walking animation.... I forgot the rocking from side to side aspect, and my anim looked like he was skating! It was teh side to side rocking motion that gave the impression of weight to teh steps.