Editing Animation folder

[KnightErrant]

Hi Tanauser,

(1) Let's just start with the basic stuff. You can change the animations
in the keyframer to something that better approximates the Winchester
action. You animate by rotating the bones or joints. You can experiment
on your animated file and just don't save the changes. Say you want to
change the first frame. You hit the key that looks like ||< (you get a tooltip
if you hover over it). Go to the joints tab and click on the joint bone_Relbow
to select it, then go to the model tab and press the rotate button. You
should see something like this:



The way the human skeleton works you'll mostly rotate about the x-axis.
The units for those boxes are degrees. (Milkshape's coordinate system is
x-axis to the right of the screen, y-axis is upwards, and the z-axis is out
of the screen.) The rotations are relative to the current pose so you could
rotate by 10 degrees three times in a row to go 30 degrees total. Go back
and forth from the joints tab to the model tab selecting different bones and
experimenting, just don't save your model.

(2) At some point when you do have a completely redone animation you'll need
to extract it out from the Milkshape .ms3d file into a .cas file. Say your file
is called "bluecoat_animby_shoot.ms3d". Run the python animationutilities,
click the animextract button.

(If you get an error fussing about the line:
float_vec3.fromfile( fidcas, 7 ) at line number 1091, that's my fault.
Open animationutilities.py with any text editor and search for that
string. It only occurs once in the file. Comment it out by putting the
symbol # in front of it and saving.)

The animextract button will put up a file chooser, Mouse to your file
bluecoat_animby_shoot.ms3d and select it. It should produce a .cas
file named shoot_modified.cas, the _modified is so it doesn't overwrite
your original. Basically, whatever follows the _animby_ part will be the
name of the output file with _modified added to it.

(3) The animation family (defined in a moment) for a unit is specified in
the modeldb file. For instance, for armored_sergeants near the bottom
for that entry you would see:

5 slave 
56 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Kite_slave_diff.texture 
56 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Kite_slave_norm.texture 0  
7 normans 
58 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Kite_normans_diff.texture 
58 unit_models/AttachmentSets/Final Kite_normans_norm.texture 0  
1 
4 None 
10 MTW2_Spear 0  
2 
18 MTW2_Spear_primary 
14 fs_test_shield 0 
16 -0.090000004 0 0 -0.34999999 0.80000001 0.60000002

The red name is the name of the animation family.

(4) If you now go to descr_skeleton.txt, you can find the definition of the
family.

type		MTW2_Spear
strike_distances 1.40 2.20 3.2 3.5 4.0
locomotion_table soldier

anim		default													data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_basepose.cas

;;;Defend
anim		eager_defend_lo_stab									data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_stab_med.cas								-fr	-if:6	-evade	-prob 10		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_stab_med.evt
anim		eager_defend_mid_slashlr_light							data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_slashlr_med.cas							-fr	-if:7	-evade	-prob 10		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_slashlr_med.evt
anim		eager_defend_mid_slashrl_light							data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_slashrl_med.cas							-fr	-if:6	-evade	-prob 10		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_slashrl_med.evt
anim		eager_defend_overhead_stab								data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_stab_hi.cas								-fr	-if:6	-evade	-prob 10		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_defend_stab_hi.evt

;;;Reaction
anim		knockback_from_front										data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_front.cas		-fr		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_front.evt
anim		knockback_from_right										data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_right.cas		-fr		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_right.evt
anim		knockback_from_back											data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_back.cas			-fr		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_back.evt
anim		knockback_from_left											data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_left.cas			-fr		-evt:data/animations/MTW2_Spear/MTW2_Spear_knockback_from_left.evt

(There's a lot more there, I just cut it off.) The first word after anim is
the action command which is followed by the path to the .cas file that
performs the action.

Basically, you would copy a MTW2_Musket directory to a new directory
named MTW2_Winchester. Then edit descr_skeleton.txt, copy the
MTW2_Musket family entry, name the new animation family
MTW2_Winchester, and change all the .cas path names for that entry
to point to the directory MTW2_Winchester. Then you can edit
whatever .cas files in that directory you want and they only apply to
units that specify MTW2_Winchester as their animation in the modeldb file.
In other words, you still have unchanged musket animations for all
other units.

There's some more steps but this is probably too long already.

[Tanauser]

Good evening
I can't see any joint or bones at all ; I can't have them appear
All I see is this

I can rotate the forearm....but
I don't catch the process on how to give the new animation to the model

[KnightErrant]

It's always the details I forget. Go to the joints tab
and check the checkbox that says show skeleton. If they
come out as huge blue boxes go to File -> Preferences
and on the dialog that pops up, click the Misc tab. and then change
the joint size entry to 0.025. Then the joints should appear
normal.

[Tanauser]

I did so

[Tanauser]

So I found that the model the nearest to the movement I need:


question appear
1) How do I save each rotation ?: I guess I would need 4 frames in front & 4 frames back with the right hand, that 8 changes


This ms3d gives me 21 frames ; let say I want to start the movement at frame 15



guessing : I start changing n°15 (rotation under -Y ), than I go to n° (-Y)16 , (-Y)17, (-Y)18 than backward 19( +Y) ...22 (+Y) So after the job done do I just save the file , and that's it ?


2) when I will be done I guess I'll have to create a special folder in which I will put this Change + all animation LESS the original reloading ?; save the folder under a special name and put it at the end of the unit in the modeldb. ??? ...later

[Tanauser]

The problem I meet is that the rifle is moving along with the hand





so when I rotate the hand I move the rifle also even if I reassign the weapon in order to make a new articulation in the wrist

So I have tried to create a New joint in the middle of the hand (joint tool >>>add a new joint between the selected one and it's parent)




but I cant find a way to join it with the rest ....!?
For now I freeze investigating before you tell me more, maybe I am going the wrong way ....

[KnightErrant]

Hi Tanauser,

What you want to do, that is, animating the lever of the Winchester, is going
to be a lot of work for a detail many users may not even zoom in to see. An easier
thing is to just animate the right arm to drop down a little after each shot to
give the illusion of cocking to eject the spent round and chambering a new one.
Most players watching a company of bluecoats firing that way would understand that
they are seeing a rapid firing repeater rifle in action.

I'm not encouraging the easier way, just pointing it out as a fall back. If you
try the harder way and later decide it's too much work, you'll still have learned
a lot about using Milkshape and animations so it won't be a wasted effort.


Now, the mechanics of making joints. You are quite right, if you go to the model tab,
click joint and then click in a viewport, you get an isolated joint which isn't good
for anything. You need to add the new joint into the "bone hierarchy" of the model.
I'll explain that in a moment. Right now you just want to have a new bone coming off
of bone_Rhand, the terminology for that is that bone_Rhand is the "parent" and the new
bone is the "child". Go to the joint tab and select bone_Rhand by double-clicking it.
Then go to the model tab, click the joint button, then click in a viewport where you
want the new joint, somewhere near bone_Rhand. Once you click you should see blue lines
connecting bone_Rhand to your new joint. Since it was selected when you clicked, bone_Rhand
is now the parent of your new bone. You can go to the joint tab and double-click on
the new bone (probably called joint24 or something like that) and then in the edit
box below you can select the name joint24 and then type in a new name, like bone_lever
or something descriptive, and then click the rename button to the left to rename it.

A tutorial on the bone hierarchy:

Bones (or joints, a better and more descriptive terminology) form a tree structure with
one root node or joint. For human models with CA's standard skeleton, the root joint
is bone_pelvis. All other bones are children of bone_pelvis or of its children, down
several generations, so to speak. Americans and the English will know this children's song

"The hip bone's connected to the thigh bone,
The thigh bone's connected to the leg bone,
The leg bone's connected to the ankle bone,
The ankle bone's connected to the foot bone..."

It's actually kind of like that. Here's the hierarchy in CA's standard order:

   1  [0]              2   [1]                 3  [2]              4  [3]
bone_pelvis     -->  bone_RThigh     -->   bone_Rlowerleg   -->  bone_Rfoot     

   1  [0]              5   [1]                 6  [5]              7  [6]            8  [7]
bone_pelvis     -->  bone_abs        -->   bone_torso       -->  bone_head    -->  bone_jaw     
                                                                            \
                                                                             \       9  [7]
                                                                               ->  bone_eyebrow 


   6  [5]               10  [6]               11  [10]            12  [11]          13  [12]
bone_torso      -->  bone_Rclavical  -->   bone_Rupperarm   -->  bone_Relbow  -->  bone_Rhand      

   6  [5]               14  [6]               15  [14]            16  [15]          17  [16]
bone_torso      -->  bone_Lclavical  -->   bone_Lupperarm   -->  bone_Lelbow  -->  bone_Lhand      


                      
   1  [0]             18   [1]                19  [18]            20  [19]
bone_pelvis     -->  bone_RThigh     -->   bone_Rlowerleg   -->  bone_Rfoot

The first number above each entry is a 1-based index of that bone and the second number in brackets
is the index to its parent. The bracketed numbers are the hierarchy tree array for the skeleton.
They tell the game engine which bone is whose parent so it can multiply all the right rotation matrices
together to find out how to move a given vertex when an animation is played.

Actually I've simplified it a little to explain how it looks in Milkshape. In a .cas animation file
there is one more bone called Scene_Root that lies above bone_pelvis. It's position is always (0.0,0.0,0.0)
and it is never animated. The way the above is encoded in a .cas file is

Scene_Root          0
bone_pelvis         0
bone_RThigh         1
bone_Rlowerleg      2
bone_Rfoot          3
bone_abs            1
bone_torso          5
bone_head           6
bone_jaw            7
bone_eyebrow        7
bone_Rclavical      6
bone_Rupperarm     10
bone_Relbow        11
bone_Rhand         12
bone_Lclavical      6
bone_Lupperarm     14
bone_Lelbow        15
bone_Lhand         16
bone_LThigh         1
bone_Llowerleg     18
bone_Lfoot         19

In reality, the hierarchy tree array is a zero-based indexing into the bone name array with Scene_Root
included. Those integers in that order is what you find in every .cas file containing a human animation
for M2TW. This is a whole bunch of explanation to tell you that when you add bone_lever into your skeleton
we will need to add one entry to the hierarchy tree array right after the number 19. That number will be 13,
the zero-based index to bone_Rhand, which is it's parent. (This applies much later when the new skeleton
gets exported to a family of .cas files.)