Creating a very basic animation in Milkshape for export to UT99 - Help please

[ShadeS]

Hi everyone

This is my first post on the forum - I hope I'm doing this correctly.

I'm trying to create a very basic animation on a mesh in Milkshape - a rotating box - which I can then export as 'd.3d / a.3d' format for inclusion in a mutator .u file.
I'm stuck.
I can create a box very easily but how I can get it to rotate 360 degrees in 30 frames for an animated sequence escapes me . . .
I have a little experience of animation . . . I should be able to set a keyframe at 1 and then a keyframe at 30 (with the box almost enirely spun around) and then the software should interpolate to create the missing frames for the animation.
The use of joints is needed somewhere, but even adding some of the vertices (or all of them) to a joint and attempting some sort of animated movement fails to work (I don't get any animation of any kind).
If a kind person who know Milkshape might give me some basic pointers, I would appreciate it, please - I've tried looking for basic information on the net, on youTube and tried to access the milkshape forum (but it's down).

I want to create some simple objects to act as health pickups in the game - This will be for the Tactical Ops add-on of UT99.

Thank you for any assistance - even if it's 'don't bother, try a different program'

Van Diesel

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Automatically merged

Ok, I'm getting somewhere.

The fact that 'Operate on selected joints only' was causing me a problem.
I am now getting spinning animation by rotating the model on a joint in the centre.

The issue I seem to be having now is that the animation I am exporting (.3d format) doesn't seem to be able to be imported with working animation.
(Well, this is the test I am using to see if it works or not).

Van Diesel

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Automatically merged

PROGRESS!
Although Milkshape would not import the animation, it did export it correctly - or so it seems - I loaded the compiled Mutator (.u file) into UnrealEd and it shows the correct animation in the Mesh browser!!!
Deep joy!

[papercoffee]

Just wait a little bit maybe someone can help with your problem.
Most people use blender nowadays.

[Deepu]

Unreal engine uses each frame for animation, so first
Without using joints,
1. Open the milkshape 3d then create a box
2. export the first frame as .obj file
3. rotate the same box to another value then export to .obj file
4. do the same process which reaches the 30 frames, I think rotating a box is easy and make it for 30 frames if required
I think there are 10 frames that are enough for rotating a box.
The final step will be, import the exported .obj files to U3Dbinread then test the animation, after that save it to an unreal.3d file.

U3Dbinread.zip

(1.14 MiB) Not downloaded yet

BoxMesh.zip

(5.22 KiB) Not downloaded yet

[UTPe]

Hello, maybe this tutorial can help.

cheers,
Pietro

[ShadeS]

I appreciate everyone's help - Thank you.
I'm now having some success adding the models into the game.

Another quick newbie question, please . . .
I'm modifying an existing mutator and using some of the existing code.
Could anyone tell me why the 'default properties' don't feature in the text code? And where they should be placed?
I mean . . . I managed to extract these properties using UTPT but they are not viewable in UReadlEd browser as part of the actor class (nor even examining the .U file as pure text).

Where should they be correctly placed to operate properly, please?

Mine currently read like this:

defaultproperties
{
DrawType=2
Mesh=LodMesh'HealthPick1'
CollisionRadius=20.00
CollisionHeight=32.00
bCollideActors=True
}

Thank you

Van

[OjitroC]

I think we need more info on what it is that you are modifying.

From what you have said, it looks like you are creating a new health pickup for Tactical Ops. So presumably you have done this by subclassing either a Botpack.TournamentHealth class or a s_SWAT s_SpecialItem class? I assume the latter as the s_SWAT code is obfuscated and this fits with what you have said.

However, if you have done this, then the default properties should be inherited from the parent class - hence it's not clear exactly what it is that you are doing.