Quote: --- Original message by: Advancebo
Primary Firing would be if you have barrels.
It would have the same amount of key frames as the number of barrels.
Exported as:
stand fixed fire-1.JMO


Secondary Firing would not be needed unless you plan on having an actual moving object for it.
Depends on what it is, if its a barrel like above or some complex firing mechanism.
Exported as:
stand fixed fire-2.JMO

Hatch opening can be any amount of keyframes you want.
Exported as:
stand opening.JMA - When you are exiting the vehicle
stand closing.JMA - When you are entering the vehicle

The opening and closing is coupled with "stand fixed idle.JMA", which tells what the vehicle is like when unoccupied.

Turning would be 3 frames.
0 - Default
1 - Turning Right
2 - Default
3 - Turning Left
Exported as:
vehicle steering.JMO

Accelerating has 3 main parts:
stand acc-left-right.JMO - What the vehicle does when turning left or right, such as on the Warthog's Chaingun.
stand acc-front-back.JMO - What the vehicle does when moving front or back, such as on the Warthog's Chaingun.
stand acc-up-down.JMO - What the vehicle does when moving up or down, such as on the Warthog's Chaingun.
Each has 3 keyframes, and they are in the order that it says:
0 - Default
1 - left/front/up
2 - Default
3 - right/back/down

Rolling is not needed.

Another animation you may need is "stand fixed aim-still", which defines where the vehicle's weapon can aim. The Warthog's Chaingun demonstrates that, where you can aim 360 degrees, but you cant aim straight up or straight down.
For a full 360 aiming:
0 - Default
1 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, and down.
2 - Aiming Right 90 degrees, and down.
3 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, and down.
4 - Aiming Left 90 degrees, and down.
5 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, and down.
6 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, at normal.
7 - Aiming Right 90 degrees, at normal.
8 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, at normal.
9 - Aiming Left 90 degrees, at normal.
10 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, at normal.
11 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, and up.
12 - Aiming Right 90 degrees, and up.
13 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, and up.
14 - Aiming Left 90 degrees, and up.
15 - Aiming Backwards 180 degrees, and up.
__________________________________________
For 180 degrees aiming:
0 - Default
1 - Aiming Right degrees, down.
2 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, down.
3 - Aiming Left , down.
4 - Aiming Right degrees, normal.
5 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, normal.
6 - Aiming Left , normal.
7 - Aiming Right degrees, up.
8 - Aiming Forward 0 degrees, up.
9 - Aiming Left , up.
Export both as:
stand fixed aim-still.JMO

For the actual landing gear coming out:
Suspension Animations.
Depending on where each suspension is, such as the Warthog and Scorpion has 4, but the Pelican has 3, you name each on differently.
0 - Default
1 - Extended Down
2 - Extended Up
Then you export it for the location each suspension each. You have to make one for each suspension there is, the Warthog has 4 suspension animations, the Pelican has 3.
So export as:
suspension front.JMO - For the wheel
suspension left back.JMO - For the left beam
suspension right back.JMO - For the right beam.


Hope this helps.

Quote: --- Original message by: CtrlAltDestroy

OK, just for the record, i'll set things straight with animation types:

First, lets run down on a little thing called frame info. You may have noticed these dx, dy, d-whatever things in the animation tag. 'd', for those of you who are familiar with calculus, means the derivative of--or the rate of change in--something, which is precisely what frame info is. It tells the game, frame by frame, how much an objects transformation is changing. dx, for instance, is the change in movement in the x direction. Similarly: dy for the y axis, and dz for the z axis. There is another called dyaw, which is the change in yaw rotation (or z rotation). Frame info provides additional data to an animation that may be useful for the engine to apply to various situations. For example dx frame info in a running animation may tell how fast a biped is moving (which is what the game uses to determine how fast an AI runs).

JMM is a base animation with no frame info data. This is ideal for FP animations as it does not cause tool to store redundant data (ie: JMA stores dx,dy frame info data, which is used for bipeds).
JMA, as mentioned previously, is a base animation with dx,dy frame info. It is ideal for running/walking animations in bipeds, as it tracks x (forward/backward) and y (left/right) movement data.
JMT is a base animation with dx,dy,dyaw frame info. This is used in turning animations for bipeds, where frame data is needed to track yaw (z axis) rotation. Much like how dx,dy frame info allows the game to determine how fast an AI moves, dyaw allows the game to determine how much the biped turns, along with the dx,dy frame info that JMA provides (hence dx,dy,dyaw).
JMZ is a base animation with dx,dy,dz,dyaw frame info, it provides everything a JMT animation does, but with the addition of dz frame info, which obviously is movement on the z axis.
JMO is an overlay animation. Aptly named, these animations 'overlay' themselves onto base animations or otherwise. Rather than animating the object with absolute transformations, they use relative transformations to modify an animation already playing. An example of an overlay animation is the first person moving animation. Rather than wasting time animating 'moving' variants of the reload, ready, fire, idle, etc. animations, a simple moving overlay animation is used to simulate the "sway" of the gun, regardless of what animation is playing.
JMR is a replacement animation. These animations are more like base animations than anything, but with a few differences. In a base animation, even if some nodes are left unanimated (still throughout the entire animation), in the final product ingame, they will appear as "still" throughout the entire animation. Replacement animations, on the other hand, ignore unanimated nodes. This is useful in many cases, for example: If a reload animation for a biped (tp, not fp) was made to be a base animation, many variants of it would have to be made: reloading while still, reloading while moving forward/backward/left/right, reloading while crouching, the list goes on... With a replacement animation, one can just animate the upper body movement (spine, arms and what have you) and leave the lower body still. This allows the game to play the base animation of running, crouching etc for the lower body and play the reload animation on the upper body. Much more efficient.
JMW is a world relative animation. This is useful for cinematic animations (read: NOT recorded animations, thats a whole other subject). World relative animations are played relative to... well... the world (ie: the origin [0,0,0] point of the level). This allows the animator to animate, say, a pelican directly on the level geometry and have it work flawlessly ingame.


Hopefully this clears up any confusion with animation types (if you took the time to read all that lol)






Edited by CtrlAltDestroy on May 18, 2009 at 02:01 AM