How to animate

Tutorials for Halo CE.
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JK-47




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How to animate

Post by JK-47 »

This tutorial is going to show you how to animate 3rd person models. Most people think of animating as something difficult, but rest assured, basic animations can be very simple.
I'll be showing you how to animate, and then inject the animations into Halo.

In this tutorial, I'll be using 3ds max, but feel free to try it in Gmax. Other programs I'm using are HaloAnimationEditor, Tool, and Guerilla. So make sure you have those.

Everything I use in this tutorial is supplied in the download below.
http://files.filefront.com/Tut+Filesrar ... einfo.html

Before you go on with the tutorial, make a copy of your cyborg.model_animations file located in your halo ce tags\characters\cyborg folder!! It's an important step you have to take later on

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1 - Open up 3ds max.
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2 - Now open up the master chief file I supported in the download.
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3 - Now select the whole model (click and drag the little marquee box over the whole model)
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4 - Now select the "Auto Key" button.
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5 - Now just move the whole model a little bit. This will create our first key frame on our timeline.
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6 - Now that we've created our first key frame, we can get to animating. We will do this by creating key frames every few frames on our time line, and create the movements in between the two frames. If that just confused you, keep reading on.

7 - On your timeline, move the bar that says "0/100" over until frame 10 is highlighted.
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8 - We did this, because it's going to mark where our next key frame is going to be once we move the model. Every movement we make on the model makes a key frame (hence the reason we selected the auto key function)

9 - For this tutorial, we're going to be making a simple "walk forward" animation for Master Chief.

10 - Now, what we're going to do is just move his leg forward as to give it the appearance that it's moving forward. This may be your first time, so it may not be perfect, but that's alright. Note that you can edit multiple things between the key frames at different times, so you may go back and edit the arms after moving his leg. Also note that the key frames don't exactly have to be on the numbers displayed on the timeline. You may put key frames in-between to give it more detail.

11 - What I'm doing for the animation is I'm selecting the foot, and lifting it up to make it look like hes bending his knee. I then move it forward, then down. Then I move it back to where the other leg is, and I do the same with the next leg. It's not the prettiest walking animation, but it works.
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12 - That's all we're doing animation-wise. If you would like to give the hands some movement, go ahead. But keep in mind they will be attached to a weapon, and will stay that way. So don't do anything crazy with them.

13 - Now export this. Go to file, export.
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14 - Go to your Halo CE folder, and then go to data-characters-cyborg-animations. You're going to want to export it as a .JMA, so locate that under your list of formats (save as type drop down box). Then save it as "stand pistol move-front" (without the quotes, of course). Reason being is, you need to give reference to the specific animation in Halo, so you can replace the normal "stand pistol move-front" animation.
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15 - Now open up tool.

16 - If you're not already in the Halo CE root directory, to get to it type this in:

Code: Select all

cd c:\program files\microsoft games\halo custom edition
(if your halo custom edition folder is somewhere other than that, type in where it is other than what I just showed you)

17 - You should now be in the Halo CE root directory.
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18 - Now type this in:

Code: Select all

tool animations characters\cyborg
This will compile our .JMA file into a file that can be put into our cyborg animations using Guerilla.
You should get a bunch of warnings when you try to compile the file. It's basically telling you that it's missing all those animations, and when you compile the animation file, the only animation MC will have is our walk animation. Don't mind it, I'll show you how to fix it later. Just press "y" for yes. Now press the up arrow key to re-type in the last command, and press enter.
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(mine has more animations exported because I had some other animations I was working on in my animations folder, don't worry about it)

19 - Now open up Guerilla.

20 - Go to File-Open.
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21 - Go to tags-characters-cyborg_mp.
Then open up the cyborg_mp.biped file.
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23 - Once it's open, go down to where it says "Animation Graph", and click the box with the 3 dots in it and it should bring up a box asking for a file. Go to tags-characters-cyborg, then double click on the "cyborg.model_animations" file.
Now save the file.
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24 - You now have your animations injected. But before you compile a map and watch them go, you have to make sure you have all the other animations within the file. So now open up "HaloAnimationEditor".
Assuming you listened to me, you should have a copy of a clean cyborg.model_animations on your desktop.

25 - You'll see a target animation tag option. Click the box with the 3 dots, and go to the cyborg.model_animations file on your desktop.
The reason it's the target animation, is because its the file we want to inject the new animations into.
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26 - Now for the source animation tag, click the 3 dot button, and go to your Halo CE folder, then go to tags\characters\cyborg, and find the new cyborg.model_animations that we compiled with tool.
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27 - Now click the "Load Animations" button.
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28 - It should bring up a box saying "select a locatoin to save the new animations in". Pick any location you would like, it doesn't really matter. Just make sure you name it "cyborg.model_animations". I'm just saving mine in my Halo CE folder for now.
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29 - Now, find a field titled "Target Animation Block". In this field, you're going to want to find the animation called "stand pistol move-front" (remember when I told you to save your file under that name? This is why).
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30 - Now, under the Source Animation Block, find the file called "stand pistol move-front" file (shouldn't be hard, as it's the only file in there).
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31 - Now click the "Replace Animation" button. What that does is it injects your animation into the target animation file. Then notice in the white box at the bottom, it will show that it has been replaced.
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32 - Now click "Compile New Animations Tag", and it will bring up a dialog box telling you it's finished.
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33 - You now have a full cyborg.model_animations tag. Just copy the tag compiled with HaloAnimationEditor (remember when it asked where you wanted the new animation tag? That's the file you need). Just copy the new file, and paste it over the file located in tags\characters\cyborg. You should now have your new walk animation. You can only see it from a third person view, hence the whole tutorial is for 3P animations.
Just build a map, and it will automatically put the animations into the map.

Yey.
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L0d3x




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Post by L0d3x »

This would work for a cyborg, but can you use the same supplied thing for let's say a jackall?

Nice job on this tut btw, very detailed.
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Corvette19




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Post by Corvette19 »

Oh My Gawd... JK-47... I was wanting to learn how to 3P animate, and there were none... I love picture tutorials like this!!! I owe you many things. You have the tutorial Exactly how I wanted it!! How to just edit one type of animation, with that animation editor. I <3 U!!!
BTW for MOTM I plan on adding FP-Animations, so that means I can make 3P animations that match the new FP.


I havn't posted something with that much expression since '06
Xfire = corvette19
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JK-47




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Post by JK-47 »

L0d3x wrote:This would work for a cyborg, but can you use the same supplied thing for let's say a jackall?

Nice job on this tut btw, very detailed.
Yes it would. You would just have to scale down a skeleton to it's proportions.
Corvette19 wrote:Oh My Gawd... JK-47... I was wanting to learn how to 3P animate, and there were none... I love picture tutorials like this!!! I owe you many things. You have the tutorial Exactly how I wanted it!! How to just edit one type of animation, with that animation editor. I <3 U!!!
BTW for MOTM I plan on adding FP-Animations, so that means I can make 3P animations that match the new FP.


I havn't posted something with that much expression since '06
I'm glad it helped :p
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