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How do I give a model a "birth" animation

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I'm not a modeller, I just want to do something I thought would be pretty basic - give a building a build/upgrade animation when it doesn't normally have one, from an existing animation.

The model CoralBed.mdx has a birth animation, and it looks like its NagaBirth node runs it as an attachment referencing NagaBirth.mdx. I want to give that birth animation to the model MurlocHut01.mdx.

I've opened them both in War3 Model Editor, and given that node to Murloc hut, but all that did was merged it into his stand animation. Looks like I have to give it a birth category first. I did so in Sequence Manager, but now what?

Looks like I need to mess with geoset manager? What do I do here?
 

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No, you don't really need to mess with anything other than the Node Manager. Oh wait, you really need to.

Open up the NagaBirth attachment node (for the murloc building).
I'll assume that you didn't miss to put the Naga Birth model file to the attachment path.

You probably missed out the Visibility part.

From scratch, the Visibility will have this:

0: 1

And dropdown menus.

Global Sequence ID: (None)
Interpolation Type: None

You can leave the two dropdown menus the same way it is, the thing you'll need to change is the text part (I forgot what that field is called ._.).
It is like

Frame: Boolean (0 is false or won't show while 1 is true or will show).

So obviously, this part will control on what frames/interval of a sequence it will show or not. The problem is, the MurlocHut01.mdx lacks a Birth sequence (check Sequence Manager), so you'll need to create one. We will just copy the Birth sequence from the CoralBed.mdx which has an intervals From: 0 and To: 60000.

But wait, we won't just copy it just like that. You'll need to check if those frames (0 to 60000) are taken or not. The sequences are:

Death: From 65033 To 67300
portrait -1: From 600 To 1067
Stand -1: From 67 To 333

If you look at it, the intervals 0 to 60000 is already used by portrait -1 and Stand -1 sequences, so you'll need to adjust it. I suggest an interval of From 68000 To 128000 (same difference as 0 to 60000)
Don't forget to set the name to Birth and check the Non-Looping tickbox.

Now that we have a Birth sequence, let's get back to the NagaBirth attachment node. Open the visibility and copy and paste this:

67: 0
600: 0
65033: 0
68000: 1
128000: 0

Explanation:
67: 0 // the From interval of the Stand -1 sequence
600: 0 // the From interval of the portrait -1 sequence
65033: 0 // the From interval of the Death sequence
68000: 1 //the From interval of the Birth sequence
128000: //0 the To interval of the Birth sequence

Like I said, if a frame has a 0 value, it will not show, while if it has a 1 value, it will show.
With the birth sequence, the NagaBirth will show from the first frame of the sequence and will hide at the last frame of the sequence.
For the other three sequences (the ones that have only the From sequences set with a value), they are fine even though you didn't set a value to it.

Example:
Blahblah sequence with intervales From 0 To 9001

0: 1
5000: 0

It can stop right there.

Also note that, the frames should be numerically arranged.

Now that the visibility of the NagaBirth is set, there are still some polishing to do. The creation of another sequence could freak up other stuff that uses visibility too (Geoset Animations, Material Alphas, Particle/Ribbon Emitters, etc.)

But with the case of this model (MurlocNaga01.mdx), the only thing broken will be the portrait background. To fix that, go to Geoset Animation Manager. Here, find the GeosetAnimation which is set to the portrait geoset, open it, click the Alpha button and hide the portrait geoset from the Birth sequence:

67: 0
600: 1
65033: 0
68000: 0 <--

You might also want to hide the particle emitters too, but that's not a problem for this model anyways (it doesn't use the Visibility thing to show or hide the particle).

Next thing is, currently the Birth animation isn't the same as the CoralBed ones (it just stands right there without the growing animations with watery effects and stuff). But I'm too lazy to type.



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