Torchmodders
Mod Projects => Help Wanted => Topic started by: Red on December 01, 2015, 01:44:33 pm
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I'm wondering if anyone here who specializes in animation might be willing to help me out.
I want to be able to use the emote animation "Despair" (where the character leans forward menacingly) for an AOE cooldown skill I'm working on called "Missile Salvo."
I've read that the emote animations do not have the key frames required to trigger events in the code, so they won't work with skills. I've also read that its possible to add the key frames, though that's something that's beyond me at this point.
So, if what I'm looking for is actually possible, and if anyone has the desire and expertise, I'd love to have your help with this. Thank you!
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Hi Red! I can't seem to find a "despair" emo-animation. Closest I saw with a menacing leaning forward was "EMO_Y-U-NO".
But in any case, giving an animation a "hit point" can be done by editing the animation's entry in the .ANIMATION file of the model. Below is the entry for the EMO_Y-U-NO animation in the file HUM_M.ANIMATION.
[ANIMATION]
<STRING>FILE:emo_y-u-no.skeleton
<STRING>NAME:Emo_Y-U-No
<FLOAT>DURATION:2
[KEY]
<STRING>NAME:HIDEWEAPONS
<FLOAT>FRAME:5
[/KEY]
[KEY]
<STRING>NAME:SHOWWEAPONS
<FLOAT>FRAME:56
[/KEY]
[/ANIMATION]
You can see this entry has 2 KEYs, one to HIDEWEAPONS at frame 5 and one to SHOWWEAPONS at frame 6. Giving this animation a HIT point that can be used to fire off skills can be done by adding similar lines of code...
[KEY]
<STRING>NAME:HIT
<FLOAT>FRAME:"x"
[/KEY]
Where "x" is the frame in the animation where you want the HIT to occur.
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Thank you for explaining that - that makes much more sense to me now. And you are right - it was the Y-U-No animation I was talking about - been playing the animations today and realized my mistake.
Given this information, I probably will not need outside assistance afterall. (Sorry about that - I'm still very intimidated by anything dealing with animation.)
Question: Will changing the keys change it for all base character types?
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Read this wiki post for more details about custom animations: http://torchmodders.com/wiki/doku.php?id=animations_-_customizing_existing_animations
Original tutorial found here: http://forums.runicgames.com/viewtopic.php?f=57&t=56060
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Thank you! I'll read up!
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Question: Will changing the keys change it for all base character types?
Yes.
If you want to use a standard human model(in the standard directory) for your class, you need to make a clone-animation.
http://torchmodders.com/forums/modding-questions/cloning-animations/msg2480/#msg2480
You can call it Special_Salvo.skeleton
I think it's the easiest way.
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I'm still very intimidated by anything dealing with animation.
Even without getting into actual 3D modeling, there's some stuff you can do to get more animation varieties.
One of them is what we talked about earlier, inserting new KEYs. So you can take a non-skill/non-attack animation and give it HIT KEYs to use it in a skill.
You should probably clone that animation's .SKELETON file, rename it internally and use the renamed file for your purposes, so that the original animation's behavior is still available for its originally intended uses.
You can also try "chopping up" animations if you only want certain parts of them, by converting the .SKELETON to XML first and getting rid of the KEYFRAMES you don't want. Or you can try changing the keyframe_times (also in .XML) so you can insert pauses, etc.
Just a warning, manual editing of these .XML files is VERY TEDIOUS, but it's doable ???