Making animations with milkshape

I created something simple as a model, the main body is a box and it has few other shapes (another figures) on each side of the box. I want to make a 'death' animation with which all 5 sides of this object (all 5 without the bottom wall) are blown up like this:



Note that there are cylinders and other boxes i drew on the sides of the main body so i want them to be blown together with the sides, i mean the should be part of the sides of the box. Also i want to add a blue or normal fire for the explosion in the center of the bottom. I dont know how the joints(bones) must be arranged, how the skeleton should look for that kind of animation ,aslo how and from where to name the animations. I need to name the normal 'stand' animation where the box does nothing too.

You'll need to attach a bone to each side of that cube and then just move them away from each other during the animation.

You'll need each side to actually be detached from each other. The easiest way to do that is probably to select each side, one at a time, and go "Edit | Duplicate Selection" and then delete the original cube in the groups tab.

So here's what the problem rly is: (oh and btw all tutorials explaining walk animation only is THX only for 1 model im gonna make that will need these animations and no other animations are explained, wtf tutorials not helpful much again).

1) I was told about the 'Explosion' already existing in the program. 1stly this is useful only for glass broken animation as triangles flying in all directions,not for buildings or even metal models...

Anyway i tried to see at least how it would look (nah im gonna change this i dont like triangles and it makes 128 joins and this is the max and icnreases the model when i simpy want bigger parts like selected groups to explode not triangles and there is no option for that as the 'Explode' cvhooses only triangles). Ok even if i liked this already done anim, how do i apply it to war 3 ? WHat i did was 1stly : made the model, skinned, remapped the skins, all in milkshape, then worked on anim. So how do you make the model to have a stand animation, the animation i did with explosion to be death animation, war 3 to recignize that and where do you put the name for these naimations?

Also how do you make bigger parts to do some movements like part pf a building falling, smth rotating in explosion, then the fire and all special effects?

Fire and "special effects" will be particle emitter nonsense added after export, in Magos' or similar.

And I urge you to follow a general animation tutorial until you're competent with how it all works; the rest is guesswork. Took me over a year to get a semi-decent walk cycle, so be warned - this is not something you can pick up and instantly make super-mega-power models.

I have magos's war 3 model editor. So ill ask if i have questions with the particles later.

Now lets say i did smth: i just added the joints, made movements i wanted for death after clicking the animation button below and ofc moving,rotating the joints only. I changed the keyframes to 5 and used 5 diff frames instead of 30. I opened the model with war 3 model editor and from there Windows->Animation controller. I saw 2 names:

(Unanimated): the model stands
Stand: the 5 frames i did moving and breaking are in 'stand'.How do i set the unanimated to be actually 'stand' and this with the frames to be 'death' animation? I use also the help from milshape forums too but when it is about using it in war3, i can only get help here where you know how these animations work for warcraft with this 3d program.

Also can i slower the 5 frames because when i run the animation of breaking it finishes for 1 sec viewd in war3 model editor, you dont even see what happens for 1 sec. Yes the same is with max 30 frames for the 5 frames i made the thing happens rly fast.

I made smth even simpler - 1 wall dividing into 2 and going down the ground i used 3 keyframes. I opened with magos's prog and (Unanimated), also i saw you can change 'Unnamed' to what you want. I dont know how to make more than 1 naimation too. Anyway i tried the only 1 animation that i specially selected not to loop and when i loaded the world editor the wall started jumping up and down (down in the grogeound to the direction i set the parts of the wall to go) and all the time like crazy!

In short, (i still might have questions with milkshaoe anims but anyway) how do you make several animations(im asking the way you do it to a war3 model i know ill have to look for help for milshape animation techniques), name them, add them to your model and add the model with the animations toyour map with the animations doing rly when its stand - stand, when its death -death not like my case 1 animation that i wanted death and i dont know where to choose them and it starts moving in a jerky way and thats cause i actually did animateion but it is still unanimated (it counts as so) and when the no animation is motion it starts this funny moves.

Read here for how to define animations to be exported: http://www.wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=86308

Thanks. I did make the 'stand' and 'death using your thread. (although i need to make a bit better animations).
1)Now i need to know how to make particles (lightning- siphon mana) on the places of the lightning parts of the texture (you see blue 'lines' in the texture). How can i make particles lightnings to fill these spaces in the texture?

Imagine all sides of each wall have these lightnig thingies, i want to use lightning mana drain exactly within these thingies, that long in all walls.


I mean, i use Magos prog but creating the effects exactly on these places, i dont know how to do it. This is for the 'stand' for the death ill try to figure out myself how to create an explosion.

2) And how to add the thing i mentioned in 1 to only 'stand' animation and an explosion of some kind (lets say i chose smth from the mpq) to death animation only?