Uber - How do we set up animations properly on custom models?

So, in unity, one can export multiple animations like so:

1. myCharacter.fbx
2. myCharacter@walk.fbx
3. myCharacter@run.fbx
4. myCharacter@jump.fbx

And Unity will automatically bring them all in under a single character name. However, up until now I have not seen anything on the boards related to putting multiple animations into a ... .papa ??? Obviously you have animations working in your dev workflow - I was hoping you would work with us to get us to the stage that we can get our own animations into the game (death, idle, run, etc..) (animtrees info would be nice too )

Would it be possible for you to please make a step by step, or video guide on how to go from having multiple different 3ds max animations, to having a single custom model in-game using those animations?

I know you are busy doing other things like additional landing zone controls and the like but.. honestly.. if you could just spend an hour or so to help us out i'm sure it would be time well spent. Or, if there is no easy way for us to get animations in the game, could you please just let us know that you are working towards a tool/change that will make it possible?

This is a problem people have had here for many months.. i'm very sad that you haven't spent any time to support us.

Thanks...

You can create multiple animations for a unit, one per papa file. You can see examples if you look in /media/pa/units/land/<any bot unit>.

What animation files to use when (eg., walking, firing, etc) are detemined in the unit's blueprint, plus the anim tree file (also referenced in the blueprint).

Can't help you more than that with regards to the actual animations, as there's no blender support for animations yet.
Edit: I've dabbled a bit with animtree files, so if you have a specific question feel free to ask.

Thanks for the info. Honestly the biggest problem is that animations simply don't come into the game correctly. We need info about specifics on how to put our skeletons/bones together for it to come out properly to work in game. Literally a dev could just spend 1 hour and have a full guide on how to do this up, but they don't... Why?? Sigh

Much of this could be reverse engineered through using papadump on anims.

Gunship doing a barrel aileron roll

to export animation leave only skeleton and check 'animaion', 'bake animation', ' resample all'

*Aileron roll.

Love it.

So wait

Basically all that we're waiting on is for Raevn/Colin/Whoever to fix the exporter to support rotated bones and the bots are good to attack?

Wait... what are "rotated bones" exactly and isn't Uber already using some in their bot models? Are they just avoiding rotated bones somehow and haven't actually coded anything into the exporter to support them??

No, the blender exporter and importer doesn't support rotated bones. (Any bone not facing forward up)

Papatran and stuff should, all bots have rotated bones.

Why is everyong using 3dsmax saying that rotated bones are not working for their models then? I don't understand it

zxO by leave only skeleton do you mean delete everything but the skeleton?

Edit: Something screwy is going on.. the FBX file coming out from both your method and just using bGolus' 3ds script is 275 KB, but running it through papatran using papatran.exe --texture-mode strip -o animation.papa someFBX.FBX gives me a 104 byte animation papa file.... and no error message ~_~

Yes, you need to delete mesh and only have bones left. 104 byte file means you are not exporting animation.
edit: Do you actually have animation? Because if you just have bones standing still(without keys) it doen't count.

Zx0 those animations would be fun to add to Statera, only for fighters. Add a bit of character to them. Though they'd need a point between where they aren't doing a roll.

(Like TA! )

Here are two anims that can be used with any air unit without foldable wings or something like that
edit: probably will work with fighter_adv aswell since wings are unfolded in default position
https://www.dropbox.com/s/p1mtn54bwu8akh6/_anim_fly.papa?dl=1
https://www.dropbox.com/s/bf0fmizpk5l9y2i/_anim_fly_fancy.papa?dl=1

@zx0 yea zxO as far as I can tell the animation is populating through to the FBX correctly. Reason I say that is the FBX is 275 kB large (This is by exporting only the skeleton as my selection). It's about 30% the size of the model export, so seems to be correct. Additionally, opening the FBX back up in 3ds max gives me the skeleton and I can pan the animation left and right.

However, papatran gives me the 104 byte output.

Here is the .FBX of the animation: https://copy.com/eZYnvZDgASmhPgb1

Perhaps you can see what the issue is? Maybe try putting it through papatran on your end?

PS. How could those two animations you posted work for all aircraft? Do the aircraft in PA all use exactly the same bone names?

I guess as soon as we figure animations and such, Might be possible to start getting modded Commanders in then

All units in PA share a bone_root bone at the center of the model.

Stuart, right, but I thought all the bones had to perfectly match up between the animation data and the model's bones... or do the bones just drive whatever they are applied to via vertex weighting ingame??

I'm no modeler so I could easily be wrong, but my understanding is that the bones drive whatever they are applied to via vertex weighting.

Papatran exports only skeleton with root bone named "root_bone".
This anims I posted only have one bone but it's ok, all other bones should take default position (from file with mesh) when anim is playing. So since all other bones are children of root_bone when it is rotating, they are also rotating.