animation problem desprite help needed

[bada]

ive been wondering how to create animations such as the dreadlord death animation where he turns into bats that fly away in all directions.i know bone animations and keyframes (all the basics) and grasp them easily, i currently use milkshape, but might consider gmax for my animating if itsd easier. if you would be so kind as to answer me, or maybe even forward me a tutorial.

thats all

 

[TDR]

I think a better solution for this will be to make your own particle texture with a bat silhouette flapping his wings, for example, and use that when someone dies.

 

[bada]

particle texture? i know particle emitters.how would i go about making a particle texture?

 

[Deleted member 126647]

Export clouds8x8mod.blp from the Warcraft III MPQ, and then paint over the clouds with different stages of the bats' animation. Then, if they are all in order, as the particles move, the bats will look like they are flapping.

 

[TDR]

You don't necessary have to paint over an existing particle. Make a new canvas in, say, photoshop with the width and height numbers that are at the power of 2 (64, 128, 256, etc) and then activate the grid (by pressing ctrl + ') and from the Edit menu -> preferences -> Guides, grids and slices change the "Gridline every..." to 32 pixels and set the subdivisions to 1. Now the canvas should be devided into little squares. Each of those squares represent a frame of the particle's animation. The top-left square is frame 1, the one on his right is frame 2 etc. I suggest you paint them in white and after you're done flatten the image (that's if you used layers) and copy it to the alpha channel.

 

[HappyTauren]

or maybe edit model so you delete everything other than bats, and death animation, which you would call "stand". That way, when someone dies, attach it to origin!