Animations

How do I make animations with 3dsmax and the art tools. I have made a stand and walk animation but how can I put them in the game?

I need a bit more info on what the problem is. Have you been following the Documentation? Have you seen the animations in the Previewer? Is your mesh setup correctly?

No, i cannot see the animations in the previewer. The documenation sasy something about notes but i don not understand it.

Okay...NOW we are getting somewhere. You need to know how to set up "note tracks". What version of Max are you using? Do you understand how to use the "track view" ("dope sheet/curve editor" in 3DSMax5)?

Ok, about your problem

It seems that for Max 4 it's easier/different, but if you are using max 5, you can open the dope-sheet somewhere on the top, i think it's under "graphs" or something like that, anyways, then you'll get a new window. In this window, you have to scroll down to a BIG folder named "objects", it should be near the root of the folder-list. Then open that folder, and there you can add a new Note-Track, that's done by finding that option in the menu's, it's something like "Note-Tracks" -> "Add". Well, when you now see a new "track" in your object-directory, you can choose the add point tool in the toolbar, and simply add a few points along the time-line. F.ex.

Add 1 point at frame 10, another point at frame 50. Pick the selection/move point tool. Use control to select both points, press the right mouse button on either of them (with both selected), and there you can finally write the animation-property.

F.ex. if 10 and 50 are the beginning and end points for a stand animation, you just write "Stand"

if it's a walk animation, you just write "Walk" and in the next line "Walkspeed 250" (check documentation for spelling, i may be wrong). And you just simply put your whole animation-bar as notes there. So you'd add more points along the lines for every animation you have.

Then in the previewer (one always gets some errors the first time, like if end/beginning points don't represent the same frame or soemthing) you can use "+" and "-" to simply "scroll" the animations.

Hope this helps.

Cubasis

edit: ps: Hey, and also i might add that....for me i suddenly automatically had a LONG list of "example" note-tracks in my dope-sheet... i don't know what triggers their creation, but they were there, and they included complete "typical" hero-note-tracks, unit-note-tracks, doodad-note-tracks, even building-note tracks. So you can look there for reference, to see how they should be.

THX, that helps alot, but there is an error when i want to see the model in the preview.

"The following objects use float key controllers and so will not animate:

Quader06"

What does that mean?

Bones are only read by the previewer if they have TCB rotation and Linear or Bezier Postion controllers.

Translation ^^ if you needed one:

You need to select all the bone-objects (one by one), go to the motion-tab on the right side, and in one of the areas are a list of stuff, rotation, position and size stuff...by default they all use "bezier". What you want to do, is firstly select the rotation line, and then press the button above which brings up a list of choices, and you should choose TCB-rotations from there, you can also change the "position" controller to "linear" in it's list.

This you need to do to every bone-object that you plan to animate.

Cubasis

Well, but i donot use bones. It is a simple animation. I do not knwo how to work with bones.

well, you don't ever use max'ish bones when animating for wc3.

That's why i talk about bone-objects, what you really just do is create a simple box...select it, go to utilities, find the user-property-editor, and mark it as a bone. You "have" to do this to animate stuff.

I reccomend doing the tutorial in the documentation, they are pretty detailed about this. Although i thought i heard it mentioned that one could animate meshes directly, i'm not sure about that, and the documentations don't explain it.

Cubasis

Big THX! Now it works. :)

It's me again...

How can i add frames? 100 frames are much too low to animate the model.

Find the animation-properties button near the time-bar buttons (play, pause and those buttons). One of the buttons opens up a window where you can set up alot of stuff about the animation stuff. Including end-point.

THX! Is there a frame or time limt for the death animation? My model disapears sunndenly durning the animation.