Hello fellow game developers!

My friend and I just got the trial version of GameStudio, and are trying to make a simple adventure game. We have, however, encountered a small problem, which we would like a bit help with, as we didn't find anything about it in the manual and neither at these forums. So, here goes:

We would like to know how to take an animated model from (for example) MilkShape, export it into an .mdl file and then import it into WED to use for different animations for different actions, for example hitting, dying, walking etc.. Now to the question: how is this achieved? We know how to import custom made models and use them, but how to do the custom animations? Any help is greatly appreciated, as we are new to the 3d programming world. And - forgive our noobishness

Thanks in advance!

Not sure about Milkshape but if u have a copy of 3DMax, or Maya its easy. Go to the downloads page of the main site and look for the plugin for the program you want to use, that way when u create the models and the animated frames you can export as .MDL

This file can then be imported and used in the WED engine

the link for Max plugin is

http://download.conitec.net/max6tomdl.zip


:-)


Also

what you want to do is ensure that for each animation stage you have the frames follow on from each other in the same Model. for example frames 1-10 are walk, frames 11-20 are run, framse 21-30 jump etc.


then you need to write a script to cycle the frames over and over depending on what key is pressed. Check out ent_animate command in SED manual and look at template scripts for animation, I recomend doing the scripting tutorial as well too :-)

Hiya

@Luke: Uh, Luke? He said Milkshape, and that they are using the Demo version of A6. Now, call me crazy, but I'd guess that if they don't have the $$$ for Milkshape and a version of A6, I doubt they have the $3500+ for MAX or the $2000 - $7000 for Maya.



Ok, now for animations, I don't use Milkshape, so this is a guess. Have you tried to save/export out of Milkshape as "vertex animation" and not 'bones'? MED seems to like it's own version of bones, and that's it. I have *never* successfully imported a boned model into MED. Ever. Not even without animation. But 'vertex' animated objects seem to be a LOT easier and more reliable.

Student license of 3D Max costs about £100 actually i think... ;p

But what about gmax? it's from discreet too and it's free but i've never used it so i don't know about makin animations ant exports from it

gmax has been removed from their line-up, its no longer free, you can only purchase 3ds max. and its easy to import from milkshape with bones intact.

in milkshape, export in ascii format, to create a "txt" file. then import that file in Med. a dialog box will pop up, click ok, and your model will be "built" in MED, and now can be saved as a mdl. all bones will work perfectly.

I've found G-max about a mounth ago, downloaded it and during instalation I've send email for activation code... and after one day They've send me that code

Thanks for all the replays we appreciate them, we have, however, found out that we cannot use bone animation in the trial version of GameStudio, and milkshape cannot use any vertex animations. But now we have encountered some other problems. We have implanted a weapon model with an animation, but we cannot get the animation to work. This animation is a vertex animation, and when we import it into the game as a model the animation works fine, but not when we use it as a weapon. The way we have imported the model are through the biped player weapons, we have just browsed a new model as the first weapon.
Also when we import a model we cannot apply a texture to the model, how is this archived?

btw I'm the friend he mentioned.

we found a way to fix the animation for the weapon. we just renamed the frames in med to shot 1-6 instead of attack 0-5. But we still need to know how to apply a texture to a model?

You should be able to Skin it in MED (the modeling program bundled with 3DGame studio), there are some great tutorials on this on the downloads page.

:-)