Animated Props - Solved!!!

[denham2010 3]

UPDATE - I have uploaded the tutorial to the STEX. It is in the props section titled Animated Prop Tutorial (funnily enough!). I will get around to posting the tutorial to the BAT Workshop Tutorials forum as soon as I can.

 

Hopefully, someone with a bit of programming knowlegde, will be able to devise a tool to automate the bitmap extraction and reconstruction process described.

 

Anyway, have fun, and lets see some fantastic props start appearing on the STEX.

 

(Side note - It was late when I finished the tutorial, so if someone can check my sums and hex conversions in the tutorial, it would be greatly appreciated!)

 

D2010

 

[ORIGINAL POST]

 

Hi all,

 

Not sure if this have been done yet, but I can't seem to find any reference to it on here. Everything I find seems to say it has not been

done.

 

I have figured out how to make animated props.

 

Stay posted - I will upload an example to the STEX and also a construction pack with instructions very soon!!

 

 

EDIT: As promised, I have just uploaded my demo file to the STEX. It will appear in the next publishing cycle.

 

The file is in the props section titled 'Animated Prop demo'

 

It is only a demo, and all are welcome to pull the .dat apart to assist in making improvements (I am still working on the offsets to align the prop correctly on a lot)

 

Excuse the crude appearance of the graphics, by no means a limitation of the process, but my poor attempt at making alpha channels.

 

See a screen shot from the lot editor below.

 

I am also in the process of writing a tutorial for building the props. It is an involved process (with the tools I have anyway) and is not for the faint hearted I'm afraid (you can be dealing with over 100 bitmaps!).

 

Anyway, back as soon as I can with the instructions!

 

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//Cubeart.jpg align=baseline>

 

EDIT: Gee that was fast! The prop is now available in the STEX.

 

[mntoes 271]

Am I reading this right?. You can make animated props. This is the Holy Grail of Batting if you can.

Tell us How.......waiting..........waiting.......

 

 

[JohnB 66]

If this works you have hit a gold mine. Imagine animated roller coasters from Nomad. 

 

100 bitmaps eh. So you do need fsh files? Please explain.

[rp2005 165]

I can't wait to see how this is done.  You may well have set the direction for SC4 in 2006

 

[toxicpiano 125]

um i thought gmax had an animation tool, could you not make a bat with more than one frame and render it?

EDIT i remember someon made an animated exloding president bush head, and im sure that was done on gmax, im unsure wehter it was renderded though,  as it was promptly removed from the STEX.

[rp2005 165]

The exploding Bush head just used an existing in-game effect. 

Yes, you can create an animation in gmax, but getting it from gmax into SC4 is another matter.  To my knowledge this is the first time anyone outside Maxis has created a new animation for the game.

 

[Superstar 69]

I'm as well looking forwards to seeing how this is done, will be a great touch and new addition to the BATing world if it is really true

[Karybdis 34]

Sweet

Too few people have been making animated stuff lately and this is needed to boost it up. Thanks for taking on the work.

 

@rp2005 : No, we've made animated props before, and we've detailed the process, but nobody ever seemed to do it. I hope to god that this tutorial will change that though.

 

Unfortunatley you cant really get them from the BAT to the game, because the props are based on AVP/ATC files and not S3D files which the BAT produces. Animated models are even more complex because they're based on the EffectDirectory effect entries for that lot (this wont be covered in the tutorial unless I'm reading something really wrong), but we know how to do that too.

 

Generally speaking the whole thing is just really complex and a tut is in bad need.

[rp2005 165]

Date: 11/28/2005 2:51:06 PM Author: Karybdis

@rp2005 : No, we've made animated props before, and we've detailed the process, but nobody ever seemed to do it. I hope to god that this tutorial will change that though.

quote>

 

LOL!  I should have known better - there are so many things that seem to have been figured out by the original batch of modders, but have never been exploited for whatever reason.

 

Oh, well - I did say 'to my knowledge'

[Karybdis 34]

No problem

So far as I know, the biggest obstacle has always been the sheer number of bitmaps and file altering needed to do anything. As was said, somewhere around 100 bitmaps.

 

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I thought that it was only possible to replace animations?

Animated Casino lights would be cool.

[Karybdis 34]

Nope new ones are fine, But dont take my word on it, I'm sure denham's work will do a better job of explaining than I can

[ardecila 124]

This HAS been done before, by select members of the BSC. The whole flag modification thing, which i believe Geoffhaw did, was essentially the same process. The only difference is, he simply repainted an existing one. Same basic process, though.

[Buggi 684]

Kary is the god of file formats.

 

I'm just a Monkey.

 

[Ryan B 35]

Oh, I so want to know how to do this.  With this, I might be able to make some new traffic signals!

[Karybdis 34]

My god, the Monkey lives. Hello there buggi. Noticed you over on the supreme commander forums hehe.

 

Only difference with BSC is that it didnt involve modification of the AVP files, which I'm sure this will require for truely new anims.

[denham2010 3]

Hey all, I am about halfway through my tutorial. Hope to post it before the weekend, but just felt I should add this to the discussion...

SC4 uses 2 types of animated props. The ones I can now develop are based on FSH, AVP and ATC files, as I have the tools to create these.

 

The other type, and I suspect they would be easier to create, just use animated S3D files. Unfortunately I don't have the tools to create animated S3D files, and the BAT only produces single frame S3D files.

 

I will include an appendix in my tutorial to show the 2 different .dat file set ups required, as well as exemplar properties to set up.

 

Hopefully, someone will be able to fully crack the S3D method to improve and greatly speed up animated prop creation.

 

Back soon with the tutorial!

 

[Karybdis 34]

The S3D format method is unfortunately not possible to work on at the moment since it is much much harder than these types of props.

It requires full editing of the S3d (which can only be done with Datgen6 atm)

and it also requires creation of new FX (effdir) files, which are decoded, but nobody likes typing in hundreds of characters by hand so its not been done yet ^^;;;. (so far as I understand)

[Voar Tok 4]

I'm looking forward to this!

[dev 47]

I smell a breakthrough...

[Karybdis 34]

Ah what the heck. Here's how to make your own animations for Models for anyone who's interested.

 

A model animation consists of 3 parts. The Base anim, the Registation type, and the effect

 

the Number of frames in the ANIM section of a model must equel the number of transforms in the REGP section if you wish to have an animation.

 

ANIM sections need not have anything relevant. All you're telling it is Frames Per Second, the type of animation (repeating, one shot etc) and the sections to use for that frame. Since this section doesnt actually animate, the sections per frame should be the same for each frame of the animation. Open your S3d In reader and just adjust the frame count as needed. Make sure all entries are the same as the initial entry created by the BAT or by Simcity4 depending on the object and just leave them that way. You can adjust properties like animation type as you want.

 

REGP just defines the point at which an animated part moves from or moves at, and has sets of transforms which move/rotate it. In addition it has a name fx_##_name, where the fx defines it as part of the effdirectory, the ## is the number of the effect in the REGP block, and the name is an entry in the Effdir file (Section 13 entry for interested modders). YOU WILL NEED TO TYPE THIS IN MANUALLY IN DATGEN4's HEX EDITOR. I cant emphasize this more. Reader does not show data for this section, and Datgen4's S3D viewer is the only way to see what you've typed. Open the REGP section of the S3D in Datgen and try to follow through with the values. You can see the general idea from the old S3D spec though it didnt cover everything I'm afraid and our new one was always restricted from being handed out. The First 3 32bit numbers show the coordinate that the motion is attached at. and the next 4 32bit numbers show its rotation.

 

EFFDIR's are more complex. See the spec in the known formats in the R&D section of simtropolis for info on it. You'll have to make S1 entries from scratch. I'm sorry about that but its true. If you DO to it though, you can have things like flying missiles etc.

 

I'm afraid it doesnt get much simpler than this, but it is possible to do. Good luck if any of you are interested

 

 

 

I'm afraid this is all I can give you for manual typing of REGP (From the original ModdSquad S3D work)

 

REGP (4 bytes)

DWORD - Size of regp area including header
DWORD - Number of effects in regp area

(Effect):
BYTE - Length of Effect name including the 00 ending byte
Effect Name ( fx_##_effectname )
BYTE - 00 (end effects name)
WORD - number of effects subgroups for this effect

(Effect Subgroup):
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
DWORD -?
...
...

 

 

As to what all the DWORDS at the end mean. Hint Hint. Look at Datgen REGP section for what could possibly take up 7 values.

 

[ardecila 124]

Ah, animated S3Ds! This is my ballpark now.

First of all, the 3ds importer doesn't work for animations. It simply nullifies the animation, and you get a static s3D. So, there's no way to create animated ones.

However, you can animate S3Ds through the use of the EffDir. Example - the wind power plant blades. They don't have animation in the s3d, but they rotate through the use of the EffDir.

[Karybdis 34]

well in theory you could rotate them with the REGP section too. all you need to do is change the rotational values for each frame on that part of the model

All animation stuff in S3D's must be typed in by hand as stated above using those methods ^^;; It can be done though.

[maetoch 0]

i am trying to animate a prop using denhams tutorial and i became stumped on a situation. in the tutorial he extracts bitmaps from .fsh files at various zoom levels. the prop im using is on a 6x6 tile. when i go to extract bitmaps from the zoom 3 level the images are chopped up. by this i mean that each bitmap has a partial image on it.

in the tutorial it says to extract bitmaps from files with the last numbers being 300, 310, 320, 330; with the first number 3 being the zoom level and the last two numbers specifying the direction of the render, south, east, north, west. now, im getting files with the last numbers being 300, 301,302,303...310,311,312,313...etc,etc.

what can i do to get these images into one? i thought about extracting each bitmap and piecing them together in photoshop then sizing them to the correct size but i dont know if this will cause the animation to jump.

anyone that can help me on this will be appreciated. thanks in advance.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Moved from BAT - Workshop Archive.