Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

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Senshi
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Senshi »

Of course you can only edit individual animations, however, the other ones will look wrong, as they are not affected at all. So the "transition" might get weird.

As said earlier, I currently have some issues with Max7 I have to beat into working yet. And I currently have not enough time to work on that, but maybe next week. New PR campaign at wargamer-project is about to start and lots of things remain to be modded, still, while new semester at university starts...

Regarding import/export...I don't remember it being that tricky, actually? Dunno, as my previous walls of text are purely from memory. What problem do you face exactly?

EDIT: And obviously, I just now stumbled over the underlying issue that killed max7. It's up and running now, so I might geht that import/export stuff covered this WE even. A pity Archimonday pulled down his tutorials from youtube, they really explained everything. They were not easy as Archi made some hiccups along the tutorials as well, but that was actually quite refreshing and helpful, as it showed quite well how even minor mistakes early in the process can return as catastrophic sh*ttrains some hours later during the process...which makes animating one of the most frustrating BF mod jobs.
Sgt.Killboy
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Sgt.Killboy »

...I used to think UVW unwrapping is the worst job. Now I know better.

Well, and no need to hurry with the animation stuff. Other than our Minister Oettinger tells us, we can allow that everybody does as he pleases...rofl...Would just be great to have things uncovered in 2 month or so, to get things done.
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Senshi
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Senshi »

Just concluded a long-lasting battle with CamStudio and Premiere Pro with a very bloody marginal victory, high losses (of nerves) on my end and high losses on the enemy side (data corruption).

Result? An almost flawless, 10 minute-video showing the basic setup steps for animating. I recorded spontaneous on the fly in a single session, so please excuse the severe mistakes in spelling and pronounciation (school English only...), as well as countless mid-sentence pauses when I stumbled on unexpected problems. Oh, and of course excuse the mistake I make at the end of the vid (~8:10min). Annotation for that bit: When merging the gunskeleton.max into the soldier.max, do NOT import the "Bip 01 R Hand" (select "skip" when asked). After that, you will be notified that there is already a "Bip 01 R Hand" in the scene and if you wish to reparent the gun parts to it. This is exactly what you want, so accept that kind offer of Max7 :) ! Only then will the gun be properly glued to the hand as shown in the vid in the end (when I rectify my error).

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Senshi
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Senshi »

Step Two - Importing Animations done

I also created a playlist that will contain all the vids in the correct order as I add them: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p ... A7F4291CEA

Sorry for varying quality, but I still need to get used to this recording-stuff...I do things pretty fast in this video, so you might to pause it every now and then to keep up with my thought process there... :oops:
Sgt.Killboy
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Sgt.Killboy »

Wow!

My curiosity was bigger than my fear of magic!

:D

Thats pretty awesome and helps a lot, Can't wait to see the next parts of it. I already discovered some things I'd have done totally different in a very time consuming way.

Thanks a lot Senshi!

EDIT: Oh...I just see, there's a second one...huh! Great!

EDIT 2: Great! Things will be much easier now!
Last edited by Sgt.Killboy on Sat May 07, 2011 11:09 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Senshi
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Senshi »

Glad to help. This actually can be quite fun :) .Oh, and advise: Watch at least in 720p, makes reading the values and text a lot easier. The original footage is "real" 1080p, so if your bandwidth allows, go for it for maximum detail.
Sgt.Killboy
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Sgt.Killboy »

Well. Talking about bandwith...UMTS in german E-Plus network might give you an idea of my bandwith...or in this case bandnarrowness ;)

I guess I will download the stuff anyways, and store it on my HDD for better handling!

Now talking about the soldiers and their setup, i got some more questions about problems we just stumbled across in EoD. Maybe i will have to start a new topic on that, to keep this animation one like it is, although my questuins taouch the animation part as well...well...I'll start a new one...thats better I guess.
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Swaffy »

Yes! Awesome! Loaded the 1080p video in 1 minute, added to my favorites list.
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Senshi
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by Senshi »

Tried making the 3rd part just now, but camstudio messed up the video quality so I'll have to redo it -_- . Part Three will focus on the animating itself and just give some very short hints, as following me making a full animation would be insanely boring and time-consuming (A reload animation can easily require 3-7h of work, depending on complexity and focus on detail). Even the simple one I did just now took me almost 30min. I'll spare you this in the next try and focus on the three or four things that are important: HI Solvers, Link Constraints and keyframe management.
Step 4 will be exporting of the animation and Step 5 will probably be an insight on animation code. Maybe the last one will be a text-and-picture-tut.

If questions regarding elements of the tuts arise, feel free to ask me and provide feedback!
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HJGF
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Re: Animations Editing Tutorial[s]

Post by HJGF »

Good job. They were really useful but I still have problems with the prone position...I made a new firing animation. It works right when crouching and standing but when i prone it doesnt works, any idea of how to fix?

In advance Thanks.
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