Paladin with footman animations

[Brombie]

Greetings!

As the title says, I'm trying to give rise to a paladin with animations of a footman. By using oinkerwinkle's animation transfer tool, I'm trying to transfer any similar animations such as footman to the paladin model - yet, with no good results.

I can guess the bones of each models doesn't co-operate properly. I'd wish to know any other solution to my problem, which is the failing attempt on transfering animations i keep doing.

Any help is appreciated.

 

[Mulgrim]

did it animate at all when you transferred? maybe you did it wrong because they look like they'd have a similar enough skeleton

 

[Deolrin]

You have to rename the bone set of one model(preferably the Paladin, which is the base model) to be equal to the other model's bone set. You can do this using the Node Manager, in Magos' Model Editor.

 

[Mulgrim]

but how will you know which bone is the right one to name?

 

[NhazUl]

They (as most Blizzard humanoid models) have the same bone names. Like the name for the right wrist that animates the right hand is Bone_Hand_R.

By default, most humanoid models have bones/helpers for:
The chest (Bone_Chest)
The pelvis and the base of the legs (Bone_Pelvis). This includes the butt.
The head (Bone_Head, duh)
The shoulders (Bone_Arm1_R and Bone_Arm1_L). L and R mean left and right.
The elbows (Bone_Arm2_R/Bone_Arm2_L)
The wrists (Bone_Hand_R/Bone_Hand_L)
The pelvis/thigh bending (Bone_Leg1_R and Bone_Leg1_L)
The knees (Bone_Leg2_R/Bone_Leg2_L)
The ankles (Bone_Foot_R/Bone_Foot_L)

The paladin, however, has two bones (Shoulder_R and Shoulder_L) that animate his shoulderpads. He's Chuck Norris after all. They are parents to Bone_Arm1_R and Bone_Arm1_L, respectively. That means the hands will follow their movement as well.

Now, we don't need these for the footman animations. Then we will just remove them. But this is currently impossible since they have child bones (the skeleton of the arms).

So open the model in Magos' Model editor. Go to Node manager and right-click on Bone_Arm1_R. Select "Move Left" to make it no longer child bone to Shoulder_R.

Do the same with Bone_Arm1_L and Shoulder_L. It's ready.

Oh, and always do the above in MDL format, or otherwise it could screw up.

 

[Mulgrim]

so the footman has no shoulders? just sticks coming from the sides?

 

[NhazUl]

No. So to say, the paladin has two pairs of shoulder bones. Simply because he's broad and his shoulders are more detailed, so their vertices have their own movement, instead of following the movement of either the upper arm or the chest.

 

[Mulgrim]

i get it thanks for explaining

 

[Brombie]

Thanks for replying.

I tried to transfer yet again with the given suggestions, I renamed the Paladin's bones to the similar as the footman (most of which are namned "mesh[number]").

And then I try the animated file, it's completely dead. The shoulderpads are also switched to not be a parent of the respective arm child.

I have also tried to transfer animations without renaming and just a shoulder movement, yet same thing.

I just can't understand the issue. I guess I'll just accept it and try other models.

 

[NhazUl]

Try with Arthas, he has the bones named.

 

[Brombie]

The result of arthas end up with the same result as the other paladins. Well, he does actually move, but it's the wrong bones with the wrong action. My conclusion is that the parent bones are the foremost issue.

I'll not give up, though!

 

[NhazUl]

Ah, yes, I know now. Blizzard messed up the footman when making him left-handed from right-handed (I hate that). So they screwed up the arms. They are incorrectly named. How can you figure out which bone animates part of the left arm and which part of the right? Well, go right-click-> Edit Node. Check out the Y value. If it's positive, the bone is from the left half, if it's negative, it's from the right half. Then rename the bones corectly and try to transfer.

I use other methods that don't use that buggy and in some cases unusable Oinkerwinkle, if you want, I can tell you.

 

[Kuhneghetz]

Try the Bandit since that model's animations are like a righthanded version of Footman.

Alternatively, you can use mdlvis to re-attach the Paladin mesh on a Footman (or Bandit) rig.

 

[Brombie]

I've tried to transfer yet again with no good results. So, I'm quite open for other ways of managing the animations properly.

I downloaded and tested mdlvis, it's great to be able to edit bones, geosets and animations in one program. Can't figure out how to manage the tools yet though.