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How to make cavalry?

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I joined this awesome website because I know it has the best models that you can find, but the real reason that I made account is because I want to know how to mount units. Such as rifleman on a bear for example.. Such things... I want to know do it myself. Thats the only real reason I joined... I want to mount units... If you know how to mount model on another model please contact me because im lost...
 

Dr Super Good

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In StarCraft II you can use some standard mount animations and create something similar to what Heroes of the Storm uses with both a riding and surfing mount animation on the models.

In Warcraft III you need to export both models and use your model editing skills to combine them into a single model that appears mounted. You will need to alter the model animations appropriately to fit with the riding. Watching some cowboy and renascence cavalry footage might help to get the correct posture and animations. You can generally remove the inside and bottom surfaces of the riding unit to save on file size and model complexity.

WC3 mounted units are generally fused to their mount. This makes animating them easier as I would imagine the mount becomes a protruding upwards bone. I am no modeller though and recommend you look at the bone arrangement for the Human Knight unit.

You will also need to make sure the correct footprints and riding sound are created. I am unsure how this is done but for most horse mounts the standard Knight footprint should suffice.
 
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I Think This is What You are Trying to Do. Just Read this Tutorial.
~~~<{- http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/tutorial-submission-283/wow-mount-system-semi-n00b-266313/ -}>~~
If you Need any Help, Read Any Here ---V
~~~<{- http://www.hiveworkshop.com/forums/tutorials/ -}>~~~

Sorry but that not what I needed. I said that I want to model one. It can't be solved with this mounting system. But thanks for the help anyway.

I did check modeling tutorials but my question is too specific.

In StarCraft II you can use some standard mount animations and create something similar to what Heroes of the Storm uses with both a riding and surfing mount animation on the models.

In Warcraft III you need to export both models and use your model editing skills to combine them into a single model that appears mounted. You will need to alter the model animations appropriately to fit with the riding. Watching some cowboy and renascence cavalry footage might help to get the correct posture and animations. You can generally remove the inside and bottom surfaces of the riding unit to save on file size and model complexity.

WC3 mounted units are generally fused to their mount. This makes animating them easier as I would imagine the mount becomes a protruding upwards bone. I am no modeller though and recommend you look at the bone arrangement for the Human Knight unit.

You will also need to make sure the correct footprints and riding sound are created. I am unsure how this is done but for most horse mounts the standard Knight footprint should suffice.

That's correct, but what exactly do I do to combine those two models? Thanks in advance.

Thanks for answering guys, but if you can be more specific about the action themselves. Such what I do in magos editor to combine the models. How do I add all the other model bones. If someone solve this, you solved my problems in the map. Thanks.

I would advise you edit your posts instead of multi posting so as to follow the forum code of conduct.


You use your 3D computer modelling skills to equivalently make a new model. This process is very much dependant on how artistic you are and your practice using modelling tools. Unfortunately I cannot give you many tips with this since I am not very good with arty stuff.

As far as I know magos editor is too basic for this task as it lacks proper model editing capabilities and tools. Maybe that has changed, I am using a very old version (1.07) from about 2007-2010. You will need a professional grade model editing program.

To start you are going to need to import the existing Warcraft III models into your model editing program. Unfortunately the official art tools are no longer supported due to the age of the game and they need a non-free program anyway. I think importers/exporters exist for commonly used modelling programs such as gmax and milkshape which may or may not be free anymore.

After you have the two models imported into your workspace you will need to manipulate them into place. The horse should stay where it is while the rider needs to be raised and moved approximately to saddle position.

You then need to start working on the riders legs. If you do not plan to animate them you can delete their bones now as you will later attach them to the horses body. Generally you will want to manipulate the rider into a riding pose, I recommend viewing source martial and relying on artistic talent to get it right. It is perfectly fine to sink the legs slightly into the model geometry and I doubt anyone will notice after you are done.

After your rider is vaguely in place you will need to merge the bones. I am not too knowledgeable about how bones function but as a guess you will need to connect the rider body bone to the horses body bone so that when the horse moves the rider moves with it. If the rider will have no leg animations you can work on removing not visible geometry and fusing it with the mount. Both rider and mount probably have to be separate meshes since they almost certainly use different materials.

Then comes the painful task of animating it. In the case of walking you use the horses animation and then maybe manipulate the rider bones into some riding posture. More complex riding animations might have his legs moving and him moving in his saddle but that is up to how much detail you want (wc3 knights just raise their sword). When standing you might want to combine fidget animations to some extent and add some extra sequences to make up duration disparities between the fidgets. When attacking you can probably recycle most of the riders attack animation with some basic horse movements (like braying) as would seem natural. Death you use the horses dying animation and then create a natural death animation for the rider (like being thrown off, falling to the side, slouching in the saddle etc). The decay and bones animations can probably be made by manipulating the riders decay and bones into an appropriate next to the horses.

After all this you can export it to mdx and then try it out in the editor. Due to the amount of from scratch editing needed I recon this could take anywhere from 4 hours to 12 hours of work depending on your skill level.

Lets say that I want the archer model in warcraft 3 will be on that mage horse. How do I bring the archer to the horse? What I need to do to copy all the archer bones into the model with magos? Can you tell me step by step? Maybe I will understand better then. Sorry if im not understanding but im new to this site and all modeling...
 
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Dr Super Good

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27,180
I would advise you edit your posts instead of multi posting so as to follow the forum code of conduct.

That's correct, but what exactly do I do to combine those two models? Thanks in advance.
You use your 3D computer modelling skills to equivalently make a new model. This process is very much dependant on how artistic you are and your practice using modelling tools. Unfortunately I cannot give you many tips with this since I am not very good with arty stuff.

As far as I know magos editor is too basic for this task as it lacks proper model editing capabilities and tools. Maybe that has changed, I am using a very old version (1.07) from about 2007-2010. You will need a professional grade model editing program.

To start you are going to need to import the existing Warcraft III models into your model editing program. Unfortunately the official art tools are no longer supported due to the age of the game and they need a non-free program anyway. I think importers/exporters exist for commonly used modelling programs such as gmax and milkshape which may or may not be free anymore.

After you have the two models imported into your workspace you will need to manipulate them into place. The horse should stay where it is while the rider needs to be raised and moved approximately to saddle position.

You then need to start working on the riders legs. If you do not plan to animate them you can delete their bones now as you will later attach them to the horses body. Generally you will want to manipulate the rider into a riding pose, I recommend viewing source martial and relying on artistic talent to get it right. It is perfectly fine to sink the legs slightly into the model geometry and I doubt anyone will notice after you are done.

After your rider is vaguely in place you will need to merge the bones. I am not too knowledgeable about how bones function but as a guess you will need to connect the rider body bone to the horses body bone so that when the horse moves the rider moves with it. If the rider will have no leg animations you can work on removing not visible geometry and fusing it with the mount. Both rider and mount probably have to be separate meshes since they almost certainly use different materials.

Then comes the painful task of animating it. In the case of walking you use the horses animation and then maybe manipulate the rider bones into some riding posture. More complex riding animations might have his legs moving and him moving in his saddle but that is up to how much detail you want (wc3 knights just raise their sword). When standing you might want to combine fidget animations to some extent and add some extra sequences to make up duration disparities between the fidgets. When attacking you can probably recycle most of the riders attack animation with some basic horse movements (like braying) as would seem natural. Death you use the horses dying animation and then create a natural death animation for the rider (like being thrown off, falling to the side, slouching in the saddle etc). The decay and bones animations can probably be made by manipulating the riders decay and bones into an appropriate next to the horses.

After all this you can export it to mdx and then try it out in the editor. Due to the amount of from scratch editing needed I recon this could take anywhere from 4 hours to 12 hours of work depending on your skill level.
 
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If you are new to modeling I would advise you to forget it. It would take serious dedication and a lot of learning to actually produce quality models like that.

If you are doing this for a map I would recommend simply finding unmounted and mounted versions of models in the model section. For example there is an unmounted knight and there is a mounted footman and a mounted archer.

It will take a lot less effort to learn how to change a few skin paths to make the high elf archer a night elf archer than to create a whole model by yourself. If you are making a map the models are by the far not the biggest or most important part and spending a lot of time on them can be better used for actually developing its features and testing it.
 
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As Proxy said you can do it in Matrix eater. All you need to do is geomerge the two models(rifoeman and bear) and then give it specific animations. You could transfer a rifleman animations with both bear animations but this is a little more harder to do.
 
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Thank you stefan, can you go in more details please in the process of merging the geosets? I actually did combine footman with horse but than I saw when he die he is doing weird thing. If you want I can send you the mdl.
 
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I didn't really mean actually to make a rifleman model on a bear, I just want to know how to make something ride on a mob, but good point.
I succeed transfer attack of the footman on a horse but I don't know how to continue...
 
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