Animation / Mdl Problems

As you can probably tell from the progression of my last 2 posts, I've been working up to a more complex model editing than what each of my individual posts might suggest...and this is the finale.

I have my Skeleton model (from War3.mpq minus the weapon and shield):



I have my backpack model (stripped from Guldan's .mdx)



And I have two problems:

Problem #1 ) When the skeleton dies in game, it just disappears.

Problem #2 ) When I attach the backpack to the skeleton and the skeleton runs around, the backpack doesn't move with it (obviously, because its got different animations, or whatever) but I don't know how to fix that. Any help?

.Mdxs are attached

Note: All I did was literally delete the vertexs that correlated to the items I didn't want...which means all the bones and other stuff are in there..If someone can help me remove those as well (to remove the useless stuff in the .mdx) I would greatly appreciate it.

Deleting the second geoset messes up the GeosetAnims, which control when geosets are visible or invisible. At least in Wc3Viewer. I have no idea why, and I have pondered it for quite a while. Did you confirm that it also works incorrectly in game?

2. Are you using the geoset merger program? It will give you an option for what bone it should follow. Set it up as shown in the attachment. You might want to get rid of that geoset with the shoulderpads in it first.

Yea, I fiddled with the geoset merger, I don't remember how I did it though...it was likely incorrect.

Edit: I tried to duplicate what you had in that picture, but it resulted in the attached model.

Perhaps I should just go through the process of actually attaching the backpack to the skeleton model, reworking the bones, and redoing the animations? Yes? No?

No, there is no need to reanimate stuff, since the bones are already moving around fine. Did you solve your first problem? You should do that one first. I guess I forgot to tell you how to fix it. The way I did was to instead of removing geoset 2, replacing it with an empty geoset. Also, leave its GeosetAnim alone.

I'm not sure what is wrong with that model besides the same old GeosetAnim problem (#1) and an incorrectly specified texture. The geoset merger can work here; I did it myself before writing that last post.

I can post my edited skeleton if you want to compare yours with it.

I actually have it fixed now, the textures weren't loading because I didn't have the path to the Guldan model correct.

I'm not sure about the death animation.

Edit: nope, death animation doesn't work.

What about it doesn't work?

The actual death animation doesn't execute in game...the unit just disappears.

In WC3 Viewer, however, the death animation plays as it should.

Quick (related) question: How do you create an empty geoset?

I posted an empty geoset above. Just paste it over the one you want to make empty.

So the death animation thing sounds like it's still part of #1. I can't be very helpful, since I only have the viewer to see these things in. If you post the model I might be able to do something.

Just a quick notification: I get an error code on the line for your Tvertices in the "empty geoset" code that you posted.

I noticed that other Tvertices are a set of 2 numbers seperated by a comma, but yours is { 0,0,0 } so I shortened it down to { 0,0 } and it worked after that..figured I'd mention that to you.

Edit: The problems I was experiencing with the death animations were where I went through and actually deleted entire geosets instead of replacing them with empty ones. This threw the animations out of sync with one another and caused the death animation to be lost in the process, which is why they just disappeared when they were killed.

Fixed now though, thanks again Guesst, +rep.

Ok, glad it worked. There was no reason for having 3 numbers there, that was just sloppy copying and pasting.

Figured I'd add to this: I went back and re-used the pasted code you had above for the empty geoset and found another error:


TVertices 8 {
{ 0,0 }, <-----
{ 0,0 },
{ 0,0 },
}

Missing that bold comma.