Animating help in milkshape 3D

Although my Gmax/3Dsmax always freeze up or crash, I am far from giving up. It seems I always bump into a new obstacle though. I have hardly any experience with milkshape, so I'll need someone who has milkshape 3D experience to help me out here. Here's my problem:

I have a model file, no animations.. just a model.



I have another file, that includes the skeleton ONLY, with the joints.. etc. The skeleton is actually animated. Heres a picture of the running graphics:



I can open the model file, and then click import and import the skeleton.. which can then be animated to look like this:



What it basically does is replace the skeleton in the model with the skeleton from the file, and can then be animated.

Heres for all you milkshapers. When I export the animated model as .3ds, it saves only the model in the frame it was saved in. So when I save the animated model and open in Gmax, It shows Goku running, but hes not moving, and the animations do not work. When I export the model in the format it was in, it doesn't even save the model, just the skeleton. One more problem.. I try and convert the skeleton to .3ds and it says theres nothing to save, so I can't save the model and the skeleton seperate and merge them later to animate it. I'm completely lost on what to do next... can anyone PLEASE help?

Well.. I seem to learn faster than most, so here's an extremely quick update:

I can open the model and import the moving skeleton, and save it as the milkshape model format (.ms3d). It saves the animation as well, and works again when I open it. But when I export to .3ds I keep the same problem as I had before, where it only saves the frame the animation was in when I exported to .3ds format. Anyone know of anyway to convert milkshape files to .3ds files and maintain the animation?

One more thing, how can I reposition skeletons in Milkshape. My original model is standing on the grid, and the skeleton for the run animation is below it.. so the grid cuts right through it. When I import the skeleton into the model, the model aligns with the skeleton, and the grid also cuts through the model. Is the grid supposed to be the ground level, or the origin? If its the ground then I need to learn to reposition skeletons in milkshape, if its the origin, and supposed to cut through the animations then I should be fine with where I'm at.

I just need to get a few questions answered at a time.. kinda post by post walkthrough.. lol.

If all the animations work in Milkshape, you should just be able to use the Milkshape export plugin.

The origin cooresponds with the ground. To reposition the skeleton, just make sure that you are out of animation mode, select the root joint, and move it up.

I have a Milkshape exporting tutorial here.

Once you get that exported, I might be able to fix the normals using a 3ds max tool. The milkshape exporter doesn't do them quite right.

If you go to the milkshape forums, they will tell you the only file format that will preserve animations between milkshape and Max is half-life .sdm. You can download a suitable import plugin for Max if you look it up on the web.