Animation help - request

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I have no idea where to post this, but I'd like one mesh to get animated, I don't have the sklls/tools to do it unfortunately. The mesh is of a cut Unreal creature that's actually kind of important, not as much as the dragon though. But those things were basically used as the dogs of the skaarj, kinda like those creatures you see in the Predators movie...
except this was way before it.

I believe in the Unreal novels those creatures are refered to as Nelsian slaves. The real mesh has two legs, just like nali cows and nali rabbits and the upak predators...
so they belong into the same two-legged-only creatures fray.
It only ever had a broken one frame animation of walk/run. All it needs is really simple animations, not even as smooth as nali cow, so I'd really need help of anyone who can animate at all..

Please help me make this creature live again.

[UnrealGGecko]

I'll move it in the General Discussions section for now, as I'm not quite sure where it should be either


I hope the someone can help you with this, I'm really interested as to what it is and how it can be used now,

[JackGriffin]

Good to see you Leo. Enjoyed chatting with you on server, hope your trip went well.

Is this in the stuff you shared with me? I'll look at it if you want. I can do simple anims, depending on the source being without errors. Email me if you still need it done.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I just did.

[JackGriffin]

Tomorrow (Tuesday) is my day off this week. I'll open it up in the morning and see what state things are in and get back with you.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I was lead to believe you can animate. Apparently not. You made yourself a martyr in the eyes of many. That trip ended up in me sleeping on viaducts and munching on horseflowers.

Thank you very much.

[papercoffee]

I was lead to believe you can animate. Apparently not. You made yourself a martyr in the eyes of many. That trip ended up in me sleeping on viaducts and munching on horseflowers.

What's the meaning of this?

[JackGriffin]

Leo is a unique sort of guy. I find talking to him to be pretty interesting, so long as you understand that normal conversational rules on tone and subject may not necessarily apply lol.

Leo sent me the model via email and I responded back via email and not here. In short, the mesh is just that: only a mesh. I can do simple animation things but this has no animation information at all. It's going to need to be remade in Max using Leo's object file as a reference. That's just more than I know how to do.

Someone should step up though. This needs to get done, it's very much a legacy project and whomever does it would be directly preserving a chunk of Unreal history. Leo is it ok if I ask at Old Unreal? I will not share what you sent me, just the request.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I already have a thread there to begin with. And someone just offered help actually..

It doesn't need to be re-made. It needs to be animated. It needs animator, that's what it's about. Using playanim (needs exisitng mesh animations of course) or some tricks is not going to cut it and if you thought that was what animation is about that's not the case. I said the original model had one frame animation. But it had no skin or uv map data.

So I already more than said what one was getting into.

[JackGriffin]

OK, I take it back paper. He's being a dick.

It doesn't need to be re-made. It needs to be animated.

That's not a choice here, you are going to remake it whether you like it or not. It's like saying you want to animate a wooden box. There's no skeleton, nothing. With huge luck you *might* be able to back-convert the file you have to .obj and with a little more luck it *might* not have any errors in the back-and-forth conversion. It's been my experience that coming from .obj to compilable .u file then back to .obj never goes right and there are always errors to fix. That's probably more so the case because of the age of the source material. It's why you almost never see animated objects getting extended in UEngine and new things added. It's very hard to do because the imported 3ds files are often imperfect. Guys that try almost always end up remaking the object they are working on if they can't get the original Max/Maya/Blender files.

You could stand to be a bit nicer too. I spent a chunk of my morning looking at the model and trying to create some options for you. I did it because I was trying to help you out and now I really feel irritated, especially having to see you talk shit. Why don't YOU spend the time to learn how it's done and then you can stop canvasing other people to continue your little pet project. At least I do my own work on projects I take on.

[papercoffee]

Ok ...please calm down you two
To be honest you two are pretty complicated... in a conversational matter. But I managed to work with both of you.
I'm certain their is just a misunderstanding.

Ps. Sorry I'm drunk.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

I stand by what I said. The options you listed are not the only way to do it. You do not need to have a skeleton to animate it. All the other re-works are proof of that. That's just, quite frankly a modern convenience and the reason I don't do all this is because I hate those programs. I can do simple mesh editing on programs that are suited for it, but I'm not gonna jump into all that fray.

I did the research on this, this mesh has been worked on and it's possible to put a skeleton in it anyway. No need to be re-done from scratch.
besides really, the way many older meshes were animated on simply vertex grouping basis and not a skeleton. Don't be a dick yourself!

[Higor]

Hey Leo, if you can... ehhhrmm... 'get' MilkShape3D on it's full glory, animating is very easy.
Create skeleton, assign vertices to bones and make frame by frame.
Export to .3D and you get a Unreal LODMesh, ezpz.

[Leo(T.C.K.)]

Hey Leo, if you can... ehhhrmm... 'get' MilkShape3D on it's full glory, animating is very easy.
Create skeleton, assign vertices to bones and make frame by frame.
Export to .3D and you get a Unreal LODMesh, ezpz.

Well at least you can confirm to this smart dude right over there that it is possible to do without completely re-doing the mesh from scratch.
So I've only proven my point.

[Higor]

Well you still need the 'fake' skeleton lol.
And sometimes it's best to keep the MS3D file just for the skeleton, you never know when you're going to reuse it with a different model.