[Romlel]

So, lots of people are doing Mechs, and I was wondering how to make generals understand to animate legs.

At first, I thought that it was an animation to prepare, but after reading the Titan Tutorial, it seems that you just have to do bones and skeleton and let generals do the animation.... Will try to understand it.

1. Is it possible to change the animations (A Heavy Mech don't walk like a soldier)
2. Is it possible to apply this kind of animation on a 4 legged Mech ?

thanks a lot for help.

[Flyby]

All you need to do is setup your bones according your meshmodel and then animate the bones to suit your likings.
However , this sounds a lot easier then it is, because making a believable new animation is going to require some hard work.

[Tebrey]

it can be done. It will take hours of practice. then hours more to get it right. I know...

So far i've done 2, 4, 6, and 8 legged vehicles and infantry.

You will need to animate them in Gmax. Then export the walking animation separate

Here are some animimations you may want to practice making:

Walking
Idle
Trans_walking
firing
dying, exploding, etc.

I usually go for 120 frames of animation for walking. makes it smoother.

Remember that the frame rate can be altered from within Generals, and any given animation sequence only needs to be made forward, since you can have generals play it backwards if need be.

hope this helps.

[Henford]

im having a go at a heavy assault mech for the USA, it looks pretty easy but then again I just about have the hang of animation infantry also and animating a mech is a lot easier than making believable human animations
(remembers standing in front of the mirror with a tennis ball trying to get the movement right for the grenadier)

[Romlel]

Thanks for all your help guys, I will try to understand all of that this evening.

I'm sure I'll have plenty of questions for you tomorrow

[Romlel]

Ok, I had a "cute" giant pink box walking around the map... Not too difficult to do. With TWO_LEGS the animation slows down with the unit.

-How can I prevent my Mech from "sliding" in its feets. How can I know the length of each "walk cycle" and the max speed to put in order to make it walk properly (not like Michael Jackson )

-Is there a "turn animation" and if so, how can I animate the MECH to rotate on itself properly.

-Now, for the 4 legged mach, how can I oblige it to make a large circle to do a U-Turn (not rotating on itself). With "MinTurnSpeed" and "TurnRate", we can describe this but it doesn't work (the mech always stops for turning)

Thanks

[Tebrey]

-How can I prevent my Mech from "sliding" in its feets. How can I know the length of each "walk cycle" and the max speed to put in order to make it walk properly (not like Michael Jackson )

-Is there a "turn animation" and if so, how can I animate the MECH to rotate on itself properly.

-Now, for the 4 legged mach, how can I oblige it to make a large circle to do a U-Turn (not rotating on itself). With "MinTurnSpeed" and "TurnRate", we can describe this but it doesn't work (the mech always stops for turning)

Okay, the first one is easy. Experiment.

For the second, I cannot imagine one.

My mechs turn in place when completely turning around, but do not look bad. How many frames of animation do you have for them?

here is my custom locomotor:

;--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Locomotor BasicWarbotLocomotor
Surfaces = GROUND RUBBLE
Speed = 30 ; in dist/sec
SpeedDamaged = 25 ; in dist/sec
TurnRate = 90 ; in degrees/sec
TurnRateDamaged = 60 ; in degrees/sec
Acceleration = 30 ; in dist/(sec^2)
AccelerationDamaged = 8 ; in dist/(sec^2)
Braking = 50 ; in dist/(sec^2)
MinTurnSpeed = 10 ; in dist/sec
ZAxisBehavior = NO_Z_MOTIVE_FORCE
Appearance = TWO_LEGS
StickToGround = Yes
GroupMovementPriority = MOVES_MIDDLE; Moves in the middle of a group, behind small arms, ahead of artillery
End