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Old 01-18-2011, 07:33 AM  
 
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Animating a rescue vehicle.

I need to animate a vehicle to move up a street. I could do it with func track trains but its a bit clunky. I think animating it with xsi is the better idea.

I hear with XSI mod tool 6 you can import VMF geomentry as a guide and animated a model. Is the leaning curve for this really hard, or is it easy to do?
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Old 01-18-2011, 03:35 PM  
 
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If you've never used XSI, then it might be hard, unless you put in the time. I haven't found any good tutorials for animation in XSI>source.

Also, it depends how much detail you want. If you want just a root bone animated so you can attach a prop to, that would be easiest, but then you get no spinning wheels I guess.
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Old 01-18-2011, 04:23 PM  
 
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Spinning wheels aren't that important. I just want to take the miliatary humvee and move it up a hill and some directions which would look quite odd doing it with a func_traintrain . So in XSI I can import the basic geomentry and make a path inside xsi and move the humvee along that?

Yes.. I can't seem to find a decent tutorials for what I need. All the tutorials I'm finding are for complicated things like animating a lamp with multitple moving parts.. Thats not something I'm willing to invest the time into learning atm. lol

Last edited by Keldorn: 01-18-2011 at 04:25 PM.
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Old 01-18-2011, 05:03 PM  
 
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Yeah, basically you just make an animation by moving a root along the path you would want, and setting a key at each change in direction. Then export the skeletal animation.
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Old 01-20-2011, 12:17 PM  
 
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I think I need a little help.

So I got mod tool 7.5 and learning the basic controls. I decompiled the crash course armoured escape van, it has.

garage_outro.smd 0.15mb
DeliveryVan_Armoured_REF.smd 3.5mb
idle.smd
phymodel.smd

I imported the deliveryVan_armoured_REF.smd and it has no animation. How do I get the animation in xsi to see it?

If I import garage_outro.smd then the screen is blank. It has no model inside it. I'm guessing the animation data is in garage_outro.smd, somehow that needs to be linked to the deliveryVan_armoured_ref.smd. I have no idea how.
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Old 01-20-2011, 12:45 PM  
 
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I remember seeing a model on here from someone it was the Cara Sedan 84 modiefied to be longer like a limo and it was animated.

Does anyone remember what thread that was? I think there was download available of the car. I need working source files to examine and learn from.
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Old 01-20-2011, 02:19 PM  
 
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I found this video, http://vimeo.com/11232782
(which is not even in english, it sounds like german or something) but the first minute of the vid helped alot to show how to make animation.


So I imported some VMF geomentry of a intersecting road, and I took a car model and figured out how to animate it along a the road and turn it into the intersection with the keyframes. The bit I can't figure out is how to get this animation exported in the model.
I just want to test this out and get this model in the hammer as a prop_dynamic with this animation but have no idea how.

I hope someone can help me out here. I'm lost with this. lol

arhh! Where is the documention.. Its so bad I had to understand a german video. Seriously why isn't this stuff documented by on the valve wiki..

Last edited by Keldorn: 01-20-2011 at 02:21 PM.
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Old 01-21-2011, 09:36 AM  
 
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So.. I got the model animated.
But in hammer editor the animation is wrong. It appears its being offset by something. I think there is something I don't understand yet about wieghtsmaps maby , I have no clue really. I guess I'm going to have to learn this by trai and error rather then a conclusive tutorial because there is none.
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Old 01-21-2011, 10:19 AM  
 
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I made the limo, but it wasn't animated, couldn't get it to work. It's your DUTY to update the wiki with what you've figured out. I mean, please update the wiki with anything you've figured out.
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Old 01-21-2011, 10:23 AM  
 
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Well here is what I figured out so far.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFgTvRvfag

Hilarous!
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Old 01-21-2011, 10:59 AM  
 
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Well, it's certainly animated.
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Old 01-21-2011, 11:20 AM  
 
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Good to see you figured most of it out, but yeah the exporting can be weird if you don't envelope the weights properly(usually to their parent bone).

When I do simple animations, I make sure to have each moveable part as its own object in XSI. So you might have a heiarchy like this(parenting):

- a root bone(null) for the whole scene.
-- one for the cars frame.
--- one for each set of wheels(or simply the front for turning).

Remember that position matters, to make animating easier...

Then animate, leaving the scene root in the middle untouched. It's important to never freeze the scene while animating(except "Freeze M" for texture projection objects). There are some animating tutorials on the web, so check them out.

Then when everything is animated from frame 0-whatever, you should set the envelope of each object(car/wheels) to it's parent bone. Do this by selecting the object and going to envelope>set envelope, click on the appropriate bone, then right-click to end selection.

After each is parented, the bone/null colours(maybe just blue) should correspond to the object. Then check to make sure the animation is still working. So now you have several objects with envelopes. Now you need select all the objects and merge them together, polygonmesh>merge. Slide tolerance to zero, uncheck normalize envelope weights, click both merges and delete, in that order. Now the bones should be multi-coloured, matching the vertices set to them.

Now you need to export. So you need three sequences, idle, start(or whatever) and end.

For the reference model, just export as model, with a name ending in "_ref". Make sure the animation slider is at 0. This will also count for the idle sequence.

Do the start sequence next. It should be named ending in "_start". Export as skeletal animation, with the animation slider at 0. As it exports the animation will play, and when finished, will be at the last frame.

The end sequence is a bit different. First add one frame to the animation length. Now, change 0 to what the last frame was. For example if the length was 0-200, now you need 200-201. This makes sure that the end matches the start sequence's end. Export this as skeletal, with "_end" at the end.

So you have 3 exported smds.

The QC would look like this:

$modelname "\my_car_animation\car_anim.mdl"
$surfaceprop "metalvehicle"

$model studio ".\car_anim_ref.smd"

$sequence idle "car_anim_ref" fps 1
$sequence start "car_anim_start" fps 15 //also could be looped
$sequence end "car_anim_end" fps 15

$cdmaterials "models\my_car_animation\"

//$collisionjoints "car_anim_end_phys.smd" { //don't use phys
// $mass 2000
//}

You can add sounds also, just look in model viewer in the events tab, and add in the qc string it puts out.

I can clarify this more for the wiki, hopefully someone will go through it and test it first.
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Old 01-21-2011, 11:52 AM  
 
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Thanks HellaLouYaah.

Thats the part I don't get about the enveloping and freezing. Once I did that the animation got messed up.
So for animation do I make a null and parent the jeep to the null and animate the null?
I was animating the jeep itself I think it that video.
Also is a bone the same thing as a null?
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Old 01-21-2011, 12:00 PM  
 
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Yeah parent the jeep to the null and animate the null. A null I guess is a kind of a bone, but a bone usual has an effector. Yeah so every vertices needs to be parented to a null/bone/effector to animate, and enveloped to a null/bone/effector to export so source can use it.

Oh yeah, there's also the animation editor, so you can tweak the interpolations.

Last edited by HellaLouYaah: 01-21-2011 at 12:03 PM.
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Old 01-21-2011, 01:05 PM  
 
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I think I'm getting better hang of this now. So this time I animated it and the animation was not screwed up.

So now the phyics, the model appears be non solid. I did include a phy.smd with the .qc , but it came from the decompiled jeep.

HellaLouYaah do you know how to make the model solid and the collision follow with the jeep as it moves?

Edit:
Actually it looks the collision is not even near the jeep in the model viewer.
http://i51.tinypic.com/5mk8xk.jpg
I think the collision mesh is at the end of the animation! Great another thing I have to figure out..

Last edited by Keldorn: 01-21-2011 at 01:21 PM.
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