Editing Animation folder

[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.)

[KnightErrant]

I realized the very next thing you are going to want to do after making
bone_lever is to assign vertices to it.

Bone Assignments:

Go to the joint tab and select bone_lever by double clicking it so the name appears
down in the edit box next to the rename button. Then go to the model tab and click
the select button. Down near the bottom of the model tab, in the group named "select options",
click the vertex button. Now use the mouse to select the vertices of the lever by dragging
a box around them. (You might have to do this procedure several times with small drag boxes to
avoid selecting vertices of the arm.) After selecting some vertices, go to the joint tab and
then click the assign button. You can go back and select more vertices while keeping the joint tab
open and repeatedly assign until you get them all. Once done, click away from the model in one
of the viewports to unselect everything. On the joint tab, check the checkbox named "Draw vertex weights".
Then double-click bone_lever and all the vertices assigned to it will show up red. This is how
you check your assignments. You can run through all the other bones to see how their assignments
show up as well.

[Tanauser]

Done

and the articulation is working ; but let's do it the easyest way with the Right elbow like you started ...I follow you

[Tanauser]

but the the hand is not moving or responding anymore so how do you associate vertices to joint (I mean make them standing together with the new joint_child)

[KnightErrant]

Are you in the keyframer? That is, did you click the anim button?
If you do rotations without being in the keyframer you are changing
the model, not making animations. Click the anim button, then go to
the joint tab and double-click a bone to select it, then to the model
tab, click rotate, then rotate about some axis by some amount of
degrees and see how it looks. There are edit boxes on the keyframer
where you can set how many frames you want (there are tooltips if
you hover over them). After doing a frame, go to the menu item animate
and select set keyframe to save that frame, then go to the keyframer and
step to the next frame and work on that. Try doing like a 5 frame
animation as a test, and then play it by clicking the > button.

[Tanauser]

I don't understand I think I'm lost ; whatever I rotate with the Right arm (hand , elbow , uperarm); the Gun comes with it...(its like if it was weld to the arm) I have tried to assign the gun again "Bone_weapon_weapon01 to musket ...it doesn't work


.I have to go back from the begining
1) Open the merge Ms3d file (with the animation) selecting 5 frames /second
2) Click on the anim button ? so the model get in position
3 ) selecting the R_elbow from the joint Tab (dble click)
4) click on the Rotate or move button from the model Tab to give the motion I search?
5 ) Save the frame animation by clicking on the set keyframe from the menu Animate