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| Red Faction : [RED] Editing : Animating ang getting model back into RF |
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| DVL_IAC |
  Posted 2nd Oct 2005 5:44am |  |
L4Y Member
Post 531 / 1417
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Hmm, I made a gun model and got it into max, can someone tell me how I can animate the model and get it working in RF?  I have very little knowledge of 3DS Max so I would need as much detail as possable in how to do it.
This model was made in RED and imported into max
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| D2k |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 7:09am |
L4Y Member
Post 410 / 1923
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ok first off... you need to select the mesh, click on that little tab on the top right right that looks like a hammer. and press "reset x form", make sure your mesh is selected and hit the "reset selected" under xform... then in the heicharchy tab the thing (thats to the left of the wheel) press "affect pivot only", center to object... collapse the stack of modifiers... make sure your model is aligned relatively straight up and upright pose before hitting the reset pivot...
note: before you reset xform and pivot point make sure the mesh is a 'editable mesh'
now you NEED a root bone, its the base of the animation unless you want your animated gun to only rotate around... the root bone should never be moved or touched, just place a box at 0,0,0 and turn it into a editable mesh, reset xform and pivot name it "BDBN-Root"... this will always act as the 0,0,0 spot for the first person dimension...
You have your gun mesh and it needs a refrence bone, select your gun mesh and in the edit tab (or somewhere) press duplicate and name it "BDBN-GBDY" (gun body) once you duplicate reset xform and pivot again, collapse the stack. hide the actual mesh for the gun and only show the gun's bone and the root bone.
now link the gun body TO the root bone using the link tool on the top left next to the undo button... click and select the gun bone and DRAG to the root bone, it should be linked. if you can move and rotate the root bone and the gun bone moves and rotates along with it then its working, if its the other way around you have to re link the other way around. remember its child TO parent, ALWAYS. (not in the real world though )
unhide the main gun mesh make sure everything has been turned into editable mesh and resetted xform... the pivots are fine if you already did those by hand and have them in a good spot. add the rf bone to the gun MESH, not the bone (nows a good time to name your gun mesh "gun-mesh" ) add the RF bone modifier to the gun mesh, click "ADD BONES" select the gun bone and the root bone and hit add, and if you dont get a message about being some type of greedy bastar.d then your doing fine. If not then remove the bones and delete the rf bone modifier and relink the 2 bones.
anaways, with the rf bone modifier selected go into vertex mode, and since this is just a gun and aparrently from the looks of it you will only be able to move bob and rotate it you want to set the vertex influence for the gun bone to 100 for all the vertexes on the gun mesh since it isnt complex or organic it wont require multiple influences...
once you do that save and reopen the max file. and if you can move around teh gun bone and the mesh goes along with it thats fine
now
NOTE: since we are dealing with a around 90 degree first prrson angle putting the gun aiming DIRECTLY straight and level will look exactly like that in RF, so try tilting the gun 10-15 degrees inward and about 10 degrees upward. trust me. you will want to get used to doing this when puttign your weapon in its default position before you animate everything. unless you love restarting...
now for the animation were just gonna do the basic "default position" in the time configuration set the time to 2 frames, on the bottom time bar (make sure you have the gun bone selected and right click the slider and press add key or whatever the hell that button says. make sure you check position and rotation, uncheck transform unless your doing something with transforming which will probably end up as a disaster in rf anaways... when the key is set on that time frame you will see a icon representing its exsistance... click on it holding shift and move it over to key 2 to duplicate it. or later when working with more complex animations with a biped i recommend right clicking the time slider specifying a source time and destination (it will dupe the key for you without any problems that doing the prevous way i suggested at duplicating)
now would be a good time to export the gun mesh into rf at the top of the rf bone modifier theres a export button, press it if you dare, name it "Gunbazookathing" or whatever you want to, then move the v3m to the ccrunch folder for processing... now the commands for converting any mesh is "ccrunch "meshthingie.v3m" read below on directions on how to operate command prompt if your DOS handicap... keep in mind ccrunch works in the same manner as mvfreduce, just type in the command and a target file...
then after you set your keys save it as "Gun-DefaultPosition.max" or whatever your flavor is. now click and choose the mesh for the gun again and select the rf bone modifier... scroll down to a mvf paramaters section... set the ram ni and out to 0 because ramp in and out features suck, then hit export, choose any dummies RELEVANT to rf and name your mvf "Gun-DefaultPosition.mvf... now do a thread search for my epic post about exporting the mvf in the game, which explains how to operate some basic DOS commands and execute the conversion from mvf ro RFA... 
note that you can only animate 1 mesh per vcm/mvf, you cannot have multiple bone structures set up (something like 2 guys doing something in the same mesh or animation)
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due to the alarming incompetence of the search engine inplemented in l4y i had to track the topic down manually, well heres the post...
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getting mvf's to rfa is easy. however it can be a pain if you dont know your way around DOS.
ok lets say you have a animation in 3DS max, youre finished with the animation and want to export it. well you select the mesh that has RF bone applied to it and scroll to the bottom of the RF Bone modifier properties to the MVF exporter section. there is 2 little boxes called ramp in and ramp out. these tell the animation how smoothly you want it to transition into the next animation... They are hard to work with so just set them both to 0... 
Then hit export select any dummies that are critical for RF usage such as "Muzzle_1" or "Shell_Eject_1" or something like that (if you even used them) if you have no dummies just hit select none and proceed. Export and name your MVF. once saved move it into the "mvfreduce" folder where the rftoolkit is located.
now open the command prompt and then pathfind to the mvfreduce folder you created. ill give you a couple commands to get your way around.
"cd.."
this command lets you roll back to the parent directory, usually command prompt for XP starts at "C:\Documents and Settings\Username" use this to get to the drive root, which is just "C:\"
then
cd rftoolkit
to change to that dir
however this method is easier and faster
in general if you want to go directly to a DIR or if you have 2 drives and lets say the rftoolkit is located on the F drive then just type in. "cd /d F:\rftoolkit" this tells you want to switch the main drive to F and go to the rftoolkit folder. yes the slash patterns matter use "\" for pathnames, and "/" with the "/d"...
anaways... when you are in the rftoolkit folder run the command
"mvfreduce -d .00003 -e .00003 -c parkerFlipoffANIM.mvf"
"-c" tells you want to reduce the flipping off animation for parker, which he gives you the finger; to a RFA file.
the "-d" and "-e" commands are how much you want to reduce the keyframes in the animation, yes yes the readme says to put it to .00007 but i dont like that one cause it does it too much...
anaways if you want to do a batch of a bunch of animations just type in...
"mvfreduce -d .00003 -e .00003 -c -a"
the "-a" tells mvfreduce to run through all mvf found in the mvfreduce directory...
on a note the mvfreduce will ask for a DLL if you dont have it. go to http://www.dll-files.com/ and get it, throw it in the windows\system32 folder and then try again.  |
My AP 1 - NEW
AQuest update 7/17/08 |
Modified Oct 2nd, 07:53am by D2k |
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| Terry_X |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 7:48am |
L4Y Member
Post 66 / 81
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this should be made a tutorial Good Job D2k |
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| goober |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 1:18pm | |
L4Y Member
Post 612 / 265
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ooooooooooooooo if i make models in RED can you make me some weapons? |
For anyone reading this in 2019 or later: The RF community is alive on the Community Discord
[Faction Files] |
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| adambehrend |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 3:45pm |
L4Y Member
Post 92 / 97
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Modelling is the easiest part.. you are asking people to do the animations and bone-rigging? |
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| DVL_IAC |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 6:59pm | |
L4Y Member
Post 532 / 1417
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TY D2K! I will definately be following that tut later to see if I can do it.    |
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| Robert |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 7:58pm |
L4Y Member
Post 18 / 24
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You can make models in RED and import them???!!??
This is new to me..
How??
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| Vidi44 |
Posted 2nd Oct 2005 9:22pm |
L4Y Member
Post 301 / 668
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D2k, you should get NCF to make your reply a Sticky on the RED help forum (even though it is for Max, L4Y has no Max section).
Also, I must congradulate you on the length of your post, you make an old essayist very proud. |
"Don't go there. It's ugly, and it never stops being ugly."
"Naps are good" - Visual C++.NET for Dummies, page 1 |
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| LordSeafood |
Posted 3rd Oct 2005 2:03am | |
L4Y Member
Post 279 / 1792
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| Quoting Vidi44 | | Also, I must congradulate you on the length of your post, you make an old essayist very proud. |
The only difference is his had a purpose and was on point |
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| Ranswer3 |
Posted 3rd Oct 2005 3:32am |
L4Y Member
Post 99 / 249
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| Quoting Robert | You can make models in RED and import them???!!??
This is new to me..
How?? |
Make your model in RED, save it, export it as VRML, import it in 3D Max. |
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Beatonator  |
Posted 3rd Oct 2005 9:49am |
Post 746 / 3716
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Hey D great tutorial. I only skimmed it after half way down but I didn't see where the arms came into it? 
Whoever said Modelling is the easy part, well not for me. I can't model very well at all, can't texture it either. I can import a weapon and animate it though, although the first time I did it wasn't amazing, but I only got 2 Vertices wrong, and the weapon was the size of a truck in 3rd person view |
Trying to find old players. Anyone about? Drop me a PM or reply to this thread:
>Link< (or head over to RFrun.net's comment section!) |
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| NotRED-FROG |
Posted 6th Oct 2005 10:43am |
L4Y Member
Post 53 / 119
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| Quoting Vidi44 |
Also, I must congradulate you on the length of your post, you make an old essayist very proud. |
LOL
| Quoting Robert | You can make models in RED and import them???!!??
This is new to me..
How?? |
RED has a function called "Export Level Geometry"
Select the File Tab then it should be on the bottom, unless the "old" RED has it somewhere on the top..dont know. I have made myself a lite version with quicker acces to everything. (eko beta has an older "Red optimized" version in the Extras folder (mods/eko/extras)
Buttons have been enlarged, strings changed for better and easier understanding etc.
I'm not sure if it is allowed to make things like that public. Some people where saying THQ wouldnt allow a modified version of RED. Well I havent changed the code or something... I don't know the rules.
wow am I off topic? Think I'm off post, too
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