prop animations

[XANAX]

since I've messed with .ani files maybe we can make
wheels turn?
tracks move?
helicopter blades rotate?
etc. & all that cool stuff

it would be so awesome

[whippersnapper]

since I've messed with .ani files maybe we can make
wheels turn?
tracks move?
helicopter blades rotate?
etc. & all that cool stuff

it would be so awesome

Yo, what up ? Anims ?

Can be done, no doubt but it falls back ultimately (assuming coders are into the work involved) to the overhead impact on minimum sys reqs to the game as well in an 8 player MP with at least 800 + of these type added events to everything else going on and what would be those ramifications to effective Net GP ? At the very least it would have to entail the addition of an Option in the Graphics Menu start of game to turn these off like with Shadows etc..... but still there would be the question of an 8-player MP were some had it on and some off. Really dunno, so take this for little better than an off-the-cuff puzzled ramble.

Regards, whip
.

[Per]

Go for it!

I don't think it will make any big difference performance-wise, actually. (This may be a bit counter-intuitive at first, but you have to realize that with modern 3D graphics systems, everything is redrawn anyway for each frame, and so swapping certain elements between individual frames, as you do in animations, does not necessarily hurt performance.)

[Zarel]

For most models, it would mainly be texture animations, though.

[i-NoD]

For most models, it would mainly be texture animations, though.

Yeah! Unsure about using 3d animation but I thought about making some texture animations sometime ago, since it's much easier to implement... let's say for object 'default' action... like moving for vehicles, production for structures, research for lab. I had a working prototype for vehicles with my ScavJeep, the texture still contain three copy of the wheel (dirt in different places and so on...), it's just an another variation of team coloring tech. The main obstacle on this way is how to combine current team coloring with texture animation without enormous amount of frames... i was how ended up with the TCMask patch... but there is some stall lately

[Avestron]

Go for it!

I don't think it will make any big difference performance-wise, actually. (This may be a bit counter-intuitive at first, but you have to realize that with modern 3D graphics systems, everything is redrawn anyway for each frame, and so swapping certain elements between individual frames, as you do in animations, does not necessarily hurt performance.)

So does this mean that the same 4 pie files are constantly being called to redraw a unit the terrain?

If so then would an alternation between several propulsion pie files (3 files for hexagonical wheels/ 2 files for octagonical wheels), each in a different stage of rotation (one intermittant stage for octagonicals, two intermittant stages for hexagonicals) generate an illusion of motion, particularly if the rate at which the program interchanges these is based on land speed?

Just wondering.

[Per]

Avestron - you do not need different PIE files for that. Each PIE file may have several meshes (called "levels") inside it that you can use for animation. See for example the oil derrick PIE and corresponding ANI file.

[Mysteryem]

XANAX, it would be very helpful if you explained how do so.
Pie slicer crashes all the time whenever I try and animate anything in it, I'm not sure but I think creating seperate submodels or Levels also crashes it. Does this happen to anyone else? I've attempted to edit the files manually, but got wierd results.

[XANAX]

pie slicer is very touchy I only use it for fixing some errors


I like blender better, it's just easier

[Avestron]

Avestron - you do not need different PIE files for that. Each PIE file may have several meshes (called "levels") inside it that you can use for animation. See for example the oil derrick PIE and corresponding ANI file.

Thanks for the explanation - I'm guessing that levels in PIE is an equivalent to layers in Blender.