The Project Reality Animation Export Examples provided below
The will to work things out on your own
Project Reality Animation Export Examples
These animation export files are only to provide you with examples of how Project Reality sets up and dose weapon animations for different types of weapons so you can learn how to apply these to your own animations. Using these animations for any other purpose is a breach of copyright law. By downloading these files you agree to only use them in this manner.
Note: You need CamStudio Movie player to play the encoded .avi files, it is available here.
You will also need the following BF2 tools to be able to import and export to and from the bf2 engine.
Spoiler for Bone Selection Mini-Tut:
Most of what is explained in the video, however one very important thing is the ANIMATED selection sets of which for third person animating, is quite tricky to remember the first time.
Exporting is tricky in that there are certain bones you need to export depending on the kind of animation.
Stand
Standing fire
Zoom
Zoom fire
Prone Fire
Reload
Prone Reload
Idle animations
Stand deploy
All those animations require you to ANIMATED select all the bones EXCEPT for -
Next is the crouch still animation.
The problem I've encountered is that once you export the crouch still (and also the prone still animation, since they're
exported in the same way) you are UNABLE to import it again, so be careful.
Same ANIMATED selection, except this time also DESELECT the root bone.
Do the crouchturnleft, crouchturnright in the same way as the standturn equivalents. However this time you need to select
ALL the bones for export.
-----
Zoom fire animations are what I would consider my favourite, don't ask why..
Exported in the same way as the stand animation. Also, if you want to line up the sights with the eye, bring the sights to the right eye bone, and have the point where he's looking just under the bone. Once you exported the zoom fire animation, take the last frame of the zoom fire animation and copy it throughout the sequence and export that as your zoom animation.
Do the same with the prone_fire animation.
-----
The last and probably most tedious is all the other animations, like running, crouch walking and prone crawling. For these you need to select ALL the bones for exporting. To make life easier, set up IK constraints between the left ullna and the weapon, and also save the finger positions so you can easily import them again without having to tinker with them by eye every time.
-----
Unfortunately, I've been unable to work out how to properly export the Crouch deploy and prone deploy animations without them looking all super funky.
Chapter 2 - Setting up for Export
PASSWORD IS pr
Explained in this video
Weapon Export Rundown
Pivots, where to put them?
Importing into a preexisting MAX animation scene
ANIMATED Selection Sets
Chapter 3 - The BF2 Editor
Explained in this video
Object Editor
Animation Editor
Foley Syncing
A useful tip if the editor is refusing to load the correct animations is to "Add Effect" (the plus sign close to the BAF animation's name), and add a randomly named effect and it will reload the proper animation for the weapon you've loaded. Because the editor doesn't save anything unless you tell it to, you don't have to worry about unintentionally adding an effect.
Chapter 4 - Animation System Files
Chapter 5 - First-Person Animations
PASSWORD IS pr
Chapter 6 - Animation Principles and a complete reload animation from scratch
PASSWORD IS pr
If you are really nerdy I can highly recommend buying the book "The Illusion Of Life" - Disney animation. This is where these 12 principles originate from.
In terms of applying these principles to the world of 3D rather than 2D, here is a pretty good article on the subject:
[R-DEV]OkitaMakoto: "Talking squad level tactics in bed is actually a little known aphrodisiac"
[R-CON]Pantera : "maybe you might learn that we are not super intelligent beings chained in UKF's basement being forced to work on this".
They are not program specific, but core concepts of animation in general (originally made by the disney artists for 2d cartoons). Highly applicable for 3d as well. I can recommend getting the book as well as the "Drawn to Life" series.
I feel the urge to stress a Newtonian rule while I'm at it:
Every action has a reaction (For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction)
HangMan: BF2 Editor, it has very strict limitations memory wise, and crashes all the time. Its like a girl. Treat it with respect and take it slow and you'll get places. Rush and get ahead of yourself and it will turn around and punch you in the mouth
[R-CON]Wilkinson wrote:Tottaly. I downloaded like 3 and it maxed out 3 Gigs. Shit good thing 500 GB SATA's are so nice to me
haha i downloaded them like 4 times before i realized i had a corrupt download
HangMan: BF2 Editor, it has very strict limitations memory wise, and crashes all the time. Its like a girl. Treat it with respect and take it slow and you'll get places. Rush and get ahead of yourself and it will turn around and punch you in the mouth
How do i bring up the menu thing at 1:27 in the first video?
I have the BF2 tab, and there is bf2 export, lightmaps etc etc.. But under those there is no "Necessary Tools" like at 00:31 in the second video. Where would i get it?
Last edited by Tomato-Rifle on 2009-06-15 13:42, edited 2 times in total.
great vids but i will never seem to get my head round this...
HangMan: BF2 Editor, it has very strict limitations memory wise, and crashes all the time. Its like a girl. Treat it with respect and take it slow and you'll get places. Rush and get ahead of yourself and it will turn around and punch you in the mouth
if you are using the current POE2 tools and max9 (well there my specs) then dont try importing the bundeled mesh try finding the con file and iimport that (that will in turn import the meshs in max)
HangMan: BF2 Editor, it has very strict limitations memory wise, and crashes all the time. Its like a girl. Treat it with respect and take it slow and you'll get places. Rush and get ahead of yourself and it will turn around and punch you in the mouth
, i also think i already have have CamStudio.
