Joint animation in Milkshape?

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BlooM:
Hi Marvine

Would you be willing to explain how the animation on the joints work in Milkshape?
I cant figure it out....and would like to experiment with them.
I always go ingame to see how they operate on a uvmappedoutfit but it takes so much time..
thank you

BlooM

wes_h:
You can do this only with recent UniMesh body mesh imports (where the joints look like connected lines instead of just circles).

Save your work, of course, as an .ms3d file. Now, on the bottom right corner is a button that says "ANIM" on it. This toggles you in and out of animation mode.

So, press the button in. Now, go to the joints tab and select "show skeleton". Now double-click on the joint labelled r_thigh. You should see the bones for the entire right leg change color. In animation mode, when you select a joint, you select all the "child" joints, too.

Now, click on the "Model" tab and pick "Rotate". Select "origin" and "local" in the place below the buttons.

Make one of your views the right projection (via a mouse right click). Click down in that window (left mouse click) and drag the mouse to the left a little. The entire right leg should bend at the top of the thigh and move out like a straight leg kick.

That is the basic animation. On an item like a knee, you can bend it and zoom in to see if your assignments look good. Remember that the game and MilkShape will animate the body mesh slightly different, but mostly alike.

To make a playful animation you make a set of movements, and then in the animation menu set a keyframe. You would advance the slider at the bottom (if you do not see this, you can select it in the options somewhere). You would set another set of joint positions and set a new keyframe. By creating the movements in a logical, sequential manner you can make the mesh do things like a kick or dance, and save these as a .ms3d file and play them back, even capturing them as an AVI.

Or, you can export them as a half-life .SMD file and use Miche's animation converter (available in a test thread at MTS2) to place them in the game. This is not simple or easy, but it has been done.

There is a tutorial in MilkShape help about the animation. Parts 1 and 2 are largely irrelevant, as the UniMesh importer creates the bones and assignments from the Maxis game file automatically. But Part 3 of teh tutorial will give you a pictorial view of animating a mesh.

BlooM:
Woot, Thank you soooo much Wes!!!!!!
This is soooo C000llll

wes_h:
I think it is pretty cool, too.

You can add a head (hair and face) and animate them at the same time. And you can add textures from the game. MilkShape now supports the "skin and cloth" (transparent clothing arreas show underlying skin) texturing. Just export the textures from SimPE as .PNG files, create a material and add the texture file (or two of them), and then apply the material to the group.

You can string movements into whole animations, and capture them as AVIs. Adding a textured plane behind the Sim would make any backdrop you want.

Props? You can import and texture the mesh for any objects you want (limited by system RAM and MilkShape's 64,000 vertex limit).

BlooM:
Wow!!!
I used simclothing before to get the uvmap corrected somtimes and the skintone, didn't know bout the transparancy tho, incredible!
Guess, i just start to use it to correct boneassignements.. and work my way in i hope :P
Thnx again Wes

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