This looks awesome and fits in very well with the other GDI mechs. Almost makes me want to create a new unit for my mod just to use it _________________ QUICK_EDIT
the model is really good, however the SHP has 3 major problems.
1. the animation is no loop. attached is a gif showing the problem.
To get quite easy a loop, make sure the legs are at the outer most position on the first frame. Left leg on the farthest rear position and right leg at the farthest front position. Then start the animation from there and let the left leg move for 6 frames to the front and the right leg at the same time to the back. Use then the next 6 frames to get each leg back to its starting position.
On the 12th frame where each leg has found its starting position again, rotate the camera and start the walkloop again.
2. Animation design is not that well suited for ingame usage. Since turreted SHP units don't move the turret up and down or left to right and keep it always fixed in the centre, make sure the hip of the walker section doesn't moves and stays fixed in its position too.
It looks odd if the turret stays in its position and the hip moves in all different directions, giving it a completely unconnected appearance ingame.
In other words, you can't make a turreted SHP unit with a chicken walk.
3. messed up pixel. Some black pixel of the mech were converted into the transparent black of the color palette, thus causing holes in the mech.
To avoid that you have to create a new palette which you use for conversion only and also set the background color in 3dsmax to green.
Then convert the frames with XCC Mixer or SHP Builder using the special palette. This way you can also avoid that during the conversion, red pixel are converted into non-remap red pixel etc.
raven.gif
Description:
the 2 frames which are the last and first frame of the loop have a red circle added and show the broken loop in the legs movement
Filesize:
4.89 KB
Viewed:
9426 Time(s)
palettes.PNG
Description:
screenshot of 4 of the many different palettes i use for conversion (note the transparent black changed into green) mostly i use unitmod.pal on the top right
The animation looks flawless now.
However, the 30 frames for each facing make it very slow and don't suit such a fast looking mech.
So i would suggest you try reducing the number of frames to 12 again.
With WalkRate>1 you can later still make the anim slower, but not faster than WalkRate=1.
\EDIT
I just noticed that the hip is still moving a bit up and down, though i don't think this is such a big problem as it doesn't moves that far.
However, in your future projects you should make the hip stay on the same height. _________________ SHP Artist of Twisted Insurrection: Nod buildings
Is there a way to tell max to render the turrets start frame numerically where the legs left off?
EX: legs anim 0000-0240 > turret 0241-0272> etc.. etc
I've been manually renaming.. and it sucks.
I always rename too, but i use IrfanView for that.
This has a batch conversion/rename option, with which i always gave the frames a consecutive numbering.
Especially on more advanced projects where you use multiple 3ds max files for the same object, you need such a tool. e.g. when creating a unit with walk, firing, stand frames and each using a different particlesystem. Then you don't want a single max file with 500+ frames to render.
I don't know why you have the shadow problem.
XCC Mixer with the custom conversion palette is doing the conversion perfectly fine.
Attached is the SHP i got after converting your png-sequence.
However your shadow 3ds max files are not set up correct. Take a look at my example and copy the exact material values.
Right now the ground plane (in the walk max file), on which the shadows are cast, has no texture at all. Thus it isn't pure black and after PNG-SHP conversion you this way have to do another color-conversion step in SHP-Builder.
This plane is also the area that got purple in your wrong conversion picture, as you can still see the black background corners where the plane ends.
In addition you have to create another black material (see my example files) which doesn't allows shadows to be cast on it and assign this material to the whole mech, so you can't see it anymore.
Even if it's very dark, you can still see the whole textured mech. So removing this would give you another color-conversion step in shp-builder.
Finally set the background color in 3dsmax for the normal illuminated model to green, so you can be sure no black mech pixel got converted to transparent black.
And you should reduce the number of frames for each walkloop.
And you should reduce the number of frames for each walkloop.
I would but unless you mean not completely re-animating the mech.. I don't know of another way.
I don't know if you noticed, but the rig in my model is that from your Medusa, just slightly raised, TBH I am very bad at animating on my own, thats why I used CAT tools before. (resulting in the chicken walk mech)
As far as the conversion went on my side.. I just tested, and got a bad result again even when using your plane and materials. this time the shadows were there, but parts of the plane were still visible in the form of what looks like snow. guess that might come in handy for making a snow anim.. lol
Anyways the mess has been sorted out manually in shp builder, and the shp is updated in the first post, I am going to move on to my next project, I might be terrible at the easiest part!! but damn it I got the hard part down!! QUICK_EDIT
Joined: 01 Feb 2007 Location: National Reference Laboratory for IPNV
Posted: Thu Sep 23, 2010 12:43 am Post subject:
Actually you don't need to redo the animation to rescale it.
You can use that menu to do it.
Or if you activate the slider just below the animation keys, you can move it to resize your animation. I only highlighted one of the ends, but you can use both. QUICK_EDIT
Yeah I'm familiar with that menu, I just wasn't sure how best to edit the keys themselves without screwing up the animation, but I got it worked out now. QUICK_EDIT
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GDI Raven scout walker
