How to do animation Transfers

Edit by Xaran: Cookie was the first to do this then more recently I did it and then Mad[Lion] wrote this mini tut thing, extracted from my Dwarven Axer thread.

When Xaran said he only use text to transfer animation made me trying to transfer animation with only mdl editing.
At the end i figured out how to do it, this method is much more simple than the one i said before(using 3dsmax).
What you need to do is:
Copy the animation sequences from the model you want to transfer animation from, and replace it with the animation sequences of the model you want to fransfer animation to.Now comes the confusion part:
you have to reaplace the rotations,positions and scaling of each bone in the model you want to transfer animation to with the bone positions,rotations and scalings from the model you want to transfer animation from. Make sure to replace the animation for every bones correct. ex:
"bone_head" shall replace with "bone_head"
"bone_arm1_L" shall replace with "bone_arm1_L"(not "bone_arm1_R")
This may sounds confusing, but every war3 models almost have same structure of bones. What i mean with structure here is where the bones is placed in the mdl file, like "bone_pelvis" is always after "bone_root".

Important note!: when you replace the animation for a bone, keep their name,obj id and parrent id. Else the animation of the entire unit will get messed up.

Thanks Mad[Lion] for writing that, I'm not good at describing these things :P That's how I did it though I found today (Cookie probably already knew this) 3dsmax can be handy for working out where oddly named bones are on a model :D

here is something a bit hard:
Try to transfer animation from a grunt to an archer. Make the archer use axe, and can do exactly same animation as the grunt(the victory animation is hard, you will need to add new bone here).
Remove the bow,arrows and the cape.

If anyone can do this without messing up the archer, then he/she must be really good.
This isn't impossible, i can do it, xaran can. but its just that im too lazy to change the Ids and stuff.

For those who don't know how to add new bone, here is my teori(i have done it and it work).
You have to copy a bone in the mdl file, paste it at the end of the bone section(b4 helper section). now you have to change the ids of the helper to +1(cus one more object has been created).
When u change the id that means you ahve to change the parent ID to +1 too(only change the id if the parent is a helper).

I will try when i'm ready with my workshop skins.....

-Megaerathia

in mad lions post in the fron page, when you copy the geosets, wouldnt the geoset numbers be different?

Lol i tryed hunderd times but i dont know how to remove the arrows bow and cape!!!!!
[color=gold]-Megaerathia[/gold]

if you want to add the bone you have to follow a few guidelines:

A) always fix the objectid so it is in sequence with the rest
B) add the pivotpoint coordinates to the pivotlist. Objectid= matches the nr pivotpoint
C) fix the geosetid and geosetanim. If the bone does not have to be assigned to a certain geoset anim set it to None, if the bone shares multiple geosets set it at Multiple
D) fix the parent link and eventual globalseqid references.
E) fix the matrice section in the geoset

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Error guide

if you get the following errors even when the mdl exports correctly, you have to search in the following area of error:

A) Model crashes

1] Check if there are no gaps in materialId. Also be certain that they use a materialId that actually exist
2] Model uses animated texture sequence reference (after material section) but the animated texture sequence is not there (happens when you manually add a animated texture section and then turn it into mdx. Then when you turn it back in mdl the animated section WILL be gone, causing a crash)
3] Event emitters that are in the mdl but do NOT have a frame that allows them to emit (for example, SNDxKSTT has no frame assigned will cause the game to crash ingame. In WE it will show fine) If you get this error and the model shows up correctly in WE but crashes the game, go look in this direction. Can be footprint, ubersplats etc.

B) Model acts weird movement /does not follow bone correctly

1] Fix the position of the geoset and the pivotpoint of the bone
2] Check if matrices are correctly set /assigned to the right bone

C) Model shows sometimes reddish etc.

1] Model has incorrect geosetanim assigned. For example, the geoset 0 uses bone 0, there is geosetanim 0 referring to geoset 0. BUT the bone 0 refers to geoset 1 and/or geosetanim 2 for example

D) The model goes whacky and vertices/geosets goes to center of map or sticks to other unit models

1] Model geoset has bones assigned that do not exist or are incorrect refered (see C) 1] for example)

Perhaps... someone should write a step by step tutorial on how to transfer animations using two relatively similar models, then people can learn from there.

Do you have to copy over the units maritices to the new animations file??

Look, please do NOT write a tutorial
about this since it has already been
done. I followed the walkthrough
MaD[Lion] wrote eariler in this thread
and I learnt how to do it based on that
information.
I repeat please do NOT write a tutorial
about this! If you don't have the spirit
of expirimenting a little in the .mdl
and just take a few shots at it, then
just give up and save others the time
of answering it 100 times!
It has already been answered in this
thread how to do it!

The thing that happenes when everybody
knows how to do it, is that it becomes
like geoset-merging. It was once a rare
thing that only few had mastered, though
now even a newbie can do it, with the
1-2-3 geoset tutorials that are out there!

That's not a bad thing. Spread the knowledge. There's no point in limiting who can do it. They'll make a tutorial if they want.

*cough* Elitist.

Heh, I'm honestly a wee bit eliteist myself, it makes me angry that I can't do things that others can do... But yeah, I guess helping newbies is a good thing, and writing a tutorial would be good... you know... for people who could understand it, and for the ones who DO understand it... and can branch off from that knowledge, those are the people who deserve to be able to learn.

Make sense? I guess...

Oh, btw... I figured out how to swap anims with different models as well, today... All on my lonesome... though I still don't understand certian things about the .mdl... I'm learning on my own, but for the people who need a little nudge in the right direction, give em something to learn from, you know?

Btw... I probably WILL write a tutorial about it... provided I take some time off from my exploration.

Wow... that was pointless... But oh... yeah, so... yeah.

^ ^
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ure a mod Xaran, just press the button