Insimenator.org

Dear people, I'm getting a crapload of animation requests and there's no way I can do it all!!

On the other side I'm SURE some of you would love to play with this, and are talented enough to come up with really good stuff and new ideas - and even if you aren't too sure about your skills, simple animations can be lots of fun!

You'll find a "tutorial" in the .rar file below; it isn't a step by step tutorial, those are listed below, but it should help you get quickly started if you have a basic knowledge of SimPE and Milkshape, and avoid common issues.
In the .rar file is also included a test object in which you'll just need to replace the animations with yours according to the instructions; 3 are regular animations, and 3 more are set in a loop.  

Big thanks to Wes_H for allowing me to beta test his plugins and for his continued hard work, and to Beosboxboy for the html formatting :)

Needed tools

- a recent version of SimPE
- Milkshape 3D 1.8.1b (there are some issues with 1.8.1a)
- Wes_h's Unimesh (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=122399) and Animesh (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=239060) plugins.


Tutorials and must read

- the Milkshape help: for your first steps with animations in Milkshape, there's an easy to follow tutorial in the help files, which you can download from the Chumbalum site and just put in your Milkshape program folder. While the chosen example is simple, the explanations are quite complete. You don't need to bother with the part about setting up the skeleton and assigning the vertices since you're going to use Unimesh extracted meshes, so you can just jump to the "create a walk animation" part.

- the Animesh exporter program notes, for details about the use of the plug-in: there's no reason to rewrite here what Wes explains clearly and extensively.


While this is not immediately necessary, my advice is still to try John Brehaut's very well done sim animations tutorial (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=225478) that explains how to make your own test object (and skip the parts related to Miche's animation converter), and from there Echo's perfect BHAVs tutorials HERE (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=142907) and HERE (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=222531) ; you may find that new interactions aren't as daunting as you thought, and this will be an inspiration for more elaborate stuff.

For objects animations, please refer to Echo's tutorials HERE (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=239160) and HERE (http://www.modthesims2.com/showthread.php?t=239168).

Thanks Marvine! That tutorial will come in handy. Your spiral staircases (and not to mention everything else you make) are amazing. I've been recently creating some new animations however I won't be able to put them in the game until SimPE supports Bon Voyage.

Thank you so much marvine i love all your tutorials it's easy to follow and useful.