Help with modeling

[SuPa-]

Hi, I want to begin modeling but I need some help:emote_sad:
-How do I make and save multiple animations in milkshape and then make it so they can be played in WC3 Viewer or Magos?
-Also, how do I unwrap a texture on to a model? (Werewulf has explained this before but not in-depth to where I can fully understand it)
-Can you combine meshes?
-Another thing, any tips for making a model's movements more lifelike? My animations look mechanical and unnatural. Which means... they're bad
Here's a picture of my model (The skeleton and the skeleton's attachments to model are worked out)

 

[Kimbo]

-How do I make and save multiple animations in milkshape and then make it so they can be played in WC3 Viewer or Magos?

You must remember what frames you want your animation to end. Eg.
Your stand 1, starts at frame 1, then ends at frame 80, write that down on a note pad somewhere or read what guesst said if your using hes exporter.
http://wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=86308

When your in the mdl after you export you can manually put the conversions in, it should be 1 keyframe x 41= the sequence in the mdl.
So if your thing starts at 1 and ends at 20, it would be 41,820.
Remember if your making more than one animations, make sure their keyframes are appart, eg.

The start of Stand 1 ends at 45, the Start of Stand 2 Starts at 55, this is to prevent animation screw ups.

ALWAYS

Use this before you animate or your animations will screw up after export, and you can never fix this...trust me..iv spent hours on animating a single model and got majorly pissed off when i forgot to run Zero Joints.

-Also, how do I unwrap a texture on to a model? (Werewulf has explained this before but not in-depth to where I can fully understand it)

Add a new material, select a group then click assign so the material ID will attach to that group.

Then go up to the unwrap editor.

and select a group from the side(or use select faces), then go on your unwrap proggy thingy and select the group you have select to move its faces.

-Can you combine meshes?

Yes, select the groups and click on regroup to merge them, they cant be separated so easily after that so be careful on what you merge unless your certain.

-Another thing, any tips for making a model's movements more lifelike? My animations look mechanical and unnatural. Which means... they're bad
Here's a picture of my model (The skeleton and the skeleton's attachments to model are worked out)

okay, look at this quick scribble sheet i did.

You see how a joint with the bone and comparing it to the organic formation of the creatures arm? Well study that abit.

The eyes, thats just a scibble, but if your making eyes, make sure they join like limbs from the main head bone so you can control the eye lids as a child (so they flow with the head and dont go nuts)

The head..lizard..worm things? dunno..but thats just a quick thing to show, remember that when a creature strikes, that is when they are fastest, so at that frame, make it short.

as for the leg thing, well i started running out of room but this is just a basic sequence i can remember, may be wrong though, anyway, the Black is one leg, the red is the other, this is how they move if they are going at the same time.

If you have a for legged creature, the basic design is that the back left follows the front right.

 

[SuPa-]

I've got it so I view the skin and the model around the skin in the Texture Coordinate Editor, but how do I make it attach to the model?
It won't show up on it

 

[Kimbo]

okay, look at the first picture for unwrap that i showed you, you see that button near the middle called mech01.tga? click on that and apply your texture their, blp doesnt work so you must convert it to tga.

 

[SuPa-]

It's not working :-(
Here's an example of what I'm doing

 

[DwarfZealot]

right clik on the screen and set the view to textured

 

[SuPa-]

Lol, how obvious, and yet not
Thanx a bunch werewulf and dwarf

 

[SuPa-]

-Bump-
Still don't get how I make separate animations and how to be able to access them all in Milkshape
And would it work if all animations had 45 frames each?

 

[DwarfZealot]

just make all your anims on the one bar leaving a bit of space inbetween them all and then using the comment button you set the sequences so you put, walk,1-20,looping seperate everything with commas. It will be one continueous thing in milkshape but in the model editor it will be split up into the sequesces you made.... wow lots of gramatical and spelling errors in that.

 

[SuPa-]

Oh, I get it
Thanks a bunch guys
How would I copy key frames, and then paste them on frames 46-91... i just tried and it didn't work (about all animations are going to include the stand animation--- the model I'm currently doing is a bee)

 

[DwarfZealot]

I've had this problem before, correct me if i'm wrong but i think copying keyframes just dosen't work.

 

[SuPa-]

Ok... I'm trying to export my model with the program werewulf gave me the link to... when I open it, it says I have to open it with a program... What program do I open it with?

 

[DwarfZealot]

Magos model editor
Edit: here is a link: http://hiveworkshop.com/resources_new/tools/4/

 

[SuPa-]

I alrdy have magos... And I tried importing it... It doesn't work

 

[DwarfZealot]

k i don't reealy get what you mean can you try to explain it a bit better

 

[SuPa-]

U got it wrong, I didn't get wut u were saying... I do now
--- How exactly do I open it in Magos?... if that's wut u mean

 

[bada]

if your using the milkshape WC3 exporter for milkshape you have to put it in the main mikshape directory (tht would be something like c:/program files/milkshape/milkshapeWC3ex) only put the .dll file in, then re open milkshape if you had it running, look under th files tab then under export, scroll down until you see the warcraft 3 exporter. if your file has animations you must include them in your models comment, and example is here http://wc3campaigns.net/showthread.php?t=86308

 

[SuPa-]

K, ty.....

 

[TortXL]

Hey! Sometimes vertexes in Texture Coordinate Editor just dissapear! Is it a "Milka"'s bug or i did something wrong again?

 

[SuPa-]

Long time, no post. Ok, when I try to have multiple animations, it doesn't work, and only shows the first one. This's what I have typed
stand,1-45,looping,walk,46-90,looping
What am I doing wrong?

 

[Kimbo]

Stand,1-60
Stand 2,70-100
Walk,110-130looping
Attack,140-163,nonlooping
Talk,180-200,nonlooping
Death,210-350,nonlooping

to go to the bones tab and comment on the model, the word LINEAR

 

[SuPa-]

ty . I don't believe anyone told me I hadda put them in columns.

 

[SuPa-]

sorry for double post
Does anyone know how to make a model disappear at the end of a death animation? (if you can)

 

[Deleted member 126647]

Set the visibility to 0?

 

[SuPa-]

how do I do that?

 

[Deleted member 126647]

I'm not sure in Milkshape, you'll have to wait for Wulf to pop in again.

 

[Kimbo]

Rdz may know.. i tried setting it in milkshape and it doesnt work or iv done something wrong, just when you export use magos to do the geoset anim thingy, thats what i do.

 

[Deleted member 126647]

What kind of model do you want to disappear? Usually models decay and move under ground.

 

[Pyritie]

On Magos' editor, you just open up the Geoset anim, go to Visibility/Alpha (damn my memory), and type in the keyframe you want it to dissapear at.

1: 1
1234: 0

this means that anything which has a keyframe of 1-1233 will be visible, but anything from 1234 onwards will be invisible.
1 means visible, 0 means invisible.

Hope this helps.

 

[SuPa-]

Is it possible to animate things with vertices in Milkshape?

 

[Rao Dao Zao]

You could put a bone on every vertex?

And the geosetanim stuff mentioned in the post at wc3c only actually does stuff if you export to an MDL, doesn't register for MDX.

 

[SuPa-]

The attack anims are being a pain. Well, actually, it's not the anims themselves. The problem is, I can't get them to not loop.

Attack -1,61-90,nonlooping

Even though I put it at that, it still loops. What am I doing wrong?

 

[Rao Dao Zao]

The current Guesstsporter only marks the last sequence as 'nonlooping' for some reason (at least, when you export to MDX, haven't done a direct MDL in yonks).

Use Magos' Model Editor to change that.

 

[SuPa-]

How do I change how far a torch's light shines? I tried to change the stuff on the light node but it didn't seem to do anything

 

[Pyritie]

I'm guessing either something like distance, or perhaps try density. I forget what it's called. Try comparing the Torch doodad and the Torch Glowing and see what they do. The Torch Glowing has a bigger light than a Torch.