MS3D code and Advanced Animation

JudgeX · 2002-02-23T08:07:39

Now that the problems with the normal animation have been taken care of, I''ve started looking into handling an actual usable form of animations. However, I need some input and some help before I begin a full implementation. The first option I came up with was to fill a model with about 300 frames using different imported SMD files from half-life (and creating my own using the 3dsMAX SMD exporter). Of course, then, I''d need a way to use Bret''s awesome code to play the animation from frame x to frame y on command, which seems really difficult (I don''t think there''s an easy way to throw in a couple of paramaters on the existing functions or anything, it looks like almost a whole rework of the animation portion of the loading code). My second idea was to forego having frames whatsoever in the milkshape file, and manually importing the SMD files by adding in an importer. Don''t laugh too hard yet, try opening an SMD file, they''re simple text, a list of bones and coordinates at each frame... that''s it. This seems like it would be fairly easy to do, and it would be more versatile, as the models would be far smaller, and many models could share many animations. I really can''t figure out which of these two ideas would be most difficult to implement, and I''m looking for a lot of help here. Honestly, I see advantages to both of them, the first one seems slightly easier to implement(though I have no clue how at the moment and would REALLY appreciate input) and the second seems more difficult to implement, but with larger payoff, since you could dynamically load the animations and put the models through them. Any input will be greatly appreciated. Thanks, JudgeX

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Started by JudgeX June 24, 2001 05:57 AM

122 comments, last by JudgeX 22 years, 1 month ago

Anonymous

January 23, 2002 10:02 PM

Ummm hi, I was real excited about the smd loader, but then I looked and there''s been no updates since 2001, any progress on it?

Anonymous

January 24, 2002 08:17 AM

Can whoever has the smd loader mail it to me at bucky@buck2k.com?

thanks in advance
-Bucky

max621

139

February 03, 2002 01:56 PM

I''m interested too....
e-mail it if you ever get it done

max621@barrysworld.com

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Anonymous

February 23, 2002 08:07 AM

I think it''s totally worth looking into abstracting the animation in some sort of handler/manager.

Like, with what we''re doing (as we learn, obviously... ::ahem:

... we have the timeline of keyframes that Milkshape gives us, but then we (or he does, actually, being Captain Art&Content) specify individual animations in a seperate "config" file (along with a bunch of other info that we want to apply to the model). As for the animations...

ex:
----------------
//Animations
$ANI_DEFINE "run" 1 30 0.75 "true" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "idle" 32 100 10 "true" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "aim_raise" 102 106 0.25 "false" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "recoil" 107 115 0.5 "false" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "die" 117 130 1 "false" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "slump_rev" 150 132 1.55 "false" "false"
$ANI_DEFINE "slump" 132 150 1 "false" "false"----------------

That''s, uh....
"nameoftheani" start_frame end_frame default_time doLoop doRebound

You can get all *sorts* of creative, of course (and we plan to, this is just our please-juses-let-it-work implementation), but then you can call individual animations with whatever model animation manager you cook up. And if you''re particulary smooth, you can play the animations at speeds other then their "default"... so if Jobob the avatar is running *really* fast, you can call that run ani to play at a faster speed than the default.

Anyhow. Enough 5am babbling. :>

~Rayme

MS3D code and Advanced Animation

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