Hi,
Well, I was just wondering if it's possible to create a model and animate it using bones in an external program, Milkshape for example, export it, and use the animations. I know Extra cannot use bones in scripting...but can you use its animations? And if not, is there a method to somehow take the animations from a bone-animated model and export it so that it captures the vertices instead of the bones?

--thanks, Carlos

Yes, of course.

Animate your model with Milkshape. You know, it uses only bones for animation.. so.. after doing your work, export it via the in-build exporter to MDL7 and load it in MED. Then you have simple vertex animation.

The trick is, that you can blend with A6 different frames of a model. So you could achieve a similar effect like when you blend bones-poses. In addition, it must be 2 years ago, someone achieved some kind of fake bones animation: he/she uses one main model which has been shown on the screen. Then two fake model which are using two different animation cycles like running and shooting. Then he/she defined which vertices of the model belong to the upper and lower body so that he could seperate his animation routine for both cycled. He read out each frame the position from the lower body for the running cycle and the same for the shooting cycle and the he merged this vertex position data in the main model. So he had two different animation cycles in one model. This is kinda tricky, but it works. In addition he/she added some kind of rotation, so the user was able to change the upper body rotation with the mouse (pan and tilt).

Search in the forum for it, you should find it. And if not, you got a recipt for this.

Ciao, -Christian