Animations in 3dsMAX

I've got a few Q's

1- How do you envelope joints/bones to meshes? I've searched many tutorials and most seem to use Character studio to do this. I don't have CS installed, so is there a way to do this without it?

2- How do you get the World Editor to recognize animations? When I imported my model there was no tab for selecting different animations like "Walk" "Stand" etc. Is there a way to enable it through the MDL? I cross checked it with a War3 MDL and it looked exactly the same to me...

3- How do you keyframe animations? I know how to keyframe, but I'd like to know the exact conditions that will port into the MDL. Is it based on Joint rotation information? Placement of Vertices?

4- Can I animate without the use of bones, and if so How? I tried this method with basic keyframing and it didn't seem to work. I know that Stand animation is default between 0 and 1000 but anything I do doesn't seem to export through.

Thanks

Okay, well I looked through Nicoli_S's tutorial above (Why isn't it in the tutorials section where it's supposed to be??!!) and it answered most of my questions.

Now I really need to know what the problem is that I keep running into. The animations I have won't export because of some wierd rigging thing. It says something about "Runtime error - Exceeded the vertex countSkin:Skin"

What does this mean and how would I go about fixing it??

Come on Mirc and get into #Dex !! All you need there are provided and it explains basic animating and rigging your models with bones =)

Current version is 1.85m which should export correctly.
Ask for reps, citizen etc in that chnnel if ya need help. Or contact me on #wc3campaigns to get ya started

After a long while I've figured a few things out. So far this is what I learned. I will answer my own questions above.

1- How do you envelope in Max? (Attaching Mesh to Bones)

- There maybe be other ways, but the method I use is simply like the one in Nic's tutorial. Select your mesh and apply the Skin modifier under the Modify panel. Do this to each individual mesh, and add only the bones relevant to the mesh. So if an arm has 2 bones in it, just add those two bones. Do not select more than one mesh and apply a skin modifier, this does not seem to work.

2- How do you get the WE to recognize animations?

- As long as you have your animations named the same as in Warcraft 3 (Stand, Stand - 2, Walk) it should recognize them. Make sure you locate the exact frames in 3ds you have your animations as well. Also remember to change your timeline to 960, as this is what War3 recognizes.

3- how do you keyframe? What are the conditions?

- This is the most important part, as I had most trouble because of this. Once everything is enveloped, you might think "Oh, I just rotate and move bones and everything is good!". Not quite.

In the animation bar, check your Key Filters and turn off position, Scaling and IK keys. If you're going to animate, try to do it with rotations only. If you need to key positions, do it sparingly and make sure you have it under control. Animations might get messed up if you accidentally key positions every time.

4- Can I animate without bones?

- This is a gray area. You can not animate by just moving the mesh, every mesh MUST be attached to a bone. It doesn't matter if you have one bone in the middle of nowhere, all meshes have to be bound. On the other hand, there are other methods of animating by using IK (inverse kinematics) and other helpers (Basically anything that helps animating without manually moving bones). The problem is that Dex doesn't completely recognize helpers and this aspect is still a bit buggy (to my knowledge). I wouldn't jump to this yet, and if you wish to animate I would suggest just using bare bones.