OK....we have the last piece of the puzzle in place!

It was a struggle, but we have got there. I have just successfully taken an animation from it's original CAS form that was one of the broken horse ones. I have converted it to MS3D, and from there to an SMD format.

( see Alletun's tome of knowledge for the how to )

This was imported to Max as JUST a skeleton. You can import the mesh...but you really don't need it unless you want to really see the workings. Mesh and animations are imported seperately. No big problem.

Next...I corrected the erroneous feet on the horse, and removed any motion that would cause a problem when I create the chariot version.

The resultant thing was exported from Max... but ONLY the animation. No need to export any mesh.

Open up MS3D and open up the model that will form the actual mesh in the end. Import the SMD file, but ONLY check the skeleton box. We don;t want the triangles or renaming bones...no. NExt, you will notice a new bone is added called 'smdimport'. Delete that. It's not linked to any other bones, and is not a problem....just don't want it!

The animation is fixed.....nearly.

Professor S over at TWC came up with a good way to fix the nasty 'hidden' animation frame that would otherwise create a nasty 'kick' to a new animation. It basically involves reversing the animation, adding a new frame at the end which 'becomes' the bad frame. Remove the keyframe and delete the added frame by returning the last frame number to it's proper number. Finally...re-reverse. It screws up the mesh, but we only want the bones. Convert the messed up mesh back into a CAS file, and the job is done.

Just have to repeat the thing for the transitional animations around the walk, and modify the death animation so the horses don't hover in the air...and add in the extra bones and bits for a real chariot.Problems solved, and just a bit of hard work to go

Happy days.

Now I know all the process works, it's time to put all the things I have collected together to make myself a real chariot complete with a pair of horses to grace the battelfields ofthe Warhammer universe.