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Any tips regarding creating animations for Arma 3 from experienced modellers?

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My question is not about scripting animations in, but about producing animations itself, for Arma specifically. As I know that @smookie did it initially on his own for his animations addon (now part of Arma 3). Any experience somebody could share with a rookie? Specifically, whether it's possible to create some simplistic animations at home, with inexpensive equipment, or perhaps without equipment at all? Let's suppose we don't care much about resulting quality, whether it will look awkward or something; we are fine with some crude, schematic animations, the main criteria is it to be as easy to produce as possible. What needs to be done to receive a final Arma animation file with ".rtm" extension? What is the format of this file, how to produce it? Is it some kind of standard file format to store motion capture data? Is it possible to get motion capture data from some other game, or from some kind of generic motion capture collection library and re-purpose it to use in Arma? How it's done?

 

For example, here are libraries like this http://mocap.cs.cmu.edu/motcat.php or this http://mocapdata.com/

Is it possible to somehow turn those MOCAP files into Arma's animations easily, and how it's done? In particular, none of those files have ".rtm" extension. Will they need to be converted to be compatible with Arma engine? What tool is used for this? How can one make sure those animations will fit Arma's models, and if they don't, how can they be easily modified so they start to fit?

 

Another question is regarding adding new items (as 3D models) to the game and "teaching" default models to hold them in their hands. For example, making a soldier's model to carry a hammer or a knife  in the hand and strike with it. I believe atm you can't hold in your arms anything except firearms and military equipment. Is it possible to implement with addons, and how difficult it may be? I suppose you could borrow a free to use model of, say, knife anywhere on the internet and simply import it into your addon, then you could simply add a new animation "striking with a knife", tweak it a bit to fit Arma's soldier model and it's done? Or is it more complex than that?

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Everything can be done,  it just depends how much time and effort you're willing put on it. Most of people give up when they realized that it's not easy and it will take a lot of time. 

 

Personally I make everything in blender and use OB to export. If you use blender just look at YouTube for tutorials. 

 

For a tip I would say start with something simple like a jump animation. 

 

And oh yeah i'm already working on a knife/melee mod :) 

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1 hour ago, Bnae said:

And oh yeah i'm already working on a knife/melee mod :) 

 

Can it by any chance be this one http://www.armaholic.com/page.php?id=27262 ?

Seems like it's most advanced melee addon at the moment, but I've heard it has serious issues in MP (animation lagging etc). I also don't agree with approach they chose, adding direct control for melee combat, as I had some thoughts about creating something suitable for hard core scenarios and community, so my idea was about making it a fast-paced decision-based action with some limitations (no free movement and dancing around hitting each other on the battlefield like in bad Hollywood movies, strictly defined rules of combat sequence etc). I thought about asking them whether I can borrow parts of their work, both script-wise and animation-wise. Of course, if I'll be able to overcome the learning curve :)

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I know what you mean. MP is always little bit tricky because there is a chance that the server is using other mod as well. 

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I've set up some working environment with Blender, Masce's Armarig, FHQ arma toolbox and RTM import mod for Blender , but when I try to import some animations in .rtm files I've got from another mod, it says that binary RTMs are not supported. Is there some workaround here? May be I need to somehow "unpack" them first? Or should I use 3DMax instead? Is there any reason to use such complex hi-end thingy as 3DMax over Blender in case of Arma modding at all, by the way?

 

Update:

Seems like the only way is to somehow convert RTMs in binary format to regular RTMs. Can't find how it's done though..

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You cannot use binarized files. You need to contact the author of the mod for unbinarized version and ask for a permission to use it. 

This is why I suggest you do your own animations. Nothing comes free 

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reRtm from mikero can do that

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1 hour ago, .kju said:

reRtm from mikero can do that

 

That doesn't really help if you want to release something someday. You still need permission 

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@.kju , thanks a lot, will try it.

 

@Bnae

That may help greatly if you are learning things, like me. What I need atm are some examples close to what I would like to do myself and some ready files I could use for any kind of proof-of-concept work. I don't have any plans to release something any time soon. Any authorship rules hindering studies or progress are of no good, imo.

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There's also A3 Samples (Steam) so no need to unbinarize anything.

Sure you can go and snoop around others work but wont get anywhere from there. 

I suggest you actually get your hands dirty and watch some tutorials. There's a lot of people who will happily help you when you have an actual question.  

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@Bnae , I doubt I'll be able to find everything I need in others work anyway, so if I'll decide to undertake that task (I'm still pondering over it), I will need to do a part of it myself. Yet, I don't see much sense in re-doing everything from scratch, when it's already done by somebody out there. Asking them for borrowing it is much easier :) We don't re-invent the wheel to design a new car these days :)

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the binarize process is an optimization and not protection. not intended to be and not on a practical level

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