Hi. I recently did this little experiment to prove a theory that i have been thinking for a long time:

"Is it possible to make certain AI hold custom weapons without making the animations for them?"

I had this idea when i was creating an AI map using the ODST AI tags (thanks azjesse, http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=4223). Apparently not satisfied with the ODST being able to hold the assault rifle only, i made new .actor_variant tags by ctrl-c and ctrl-v the odst_assualt_rifle tag, then changing its weapon to the m134 minigun (thanks Kingfish999, http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3869). all without giving it new animations.

I thought it was going to fail, but this actually worked. To confirm, i made more ODST .actor_variant tags, each using a diff. weapon. And they still work.

From my experience with the marine_ai tags that come along with the original SP maps, they can only hold the assualt rifle and other weapons, not the custom ones made by the Halo community. As such, i concluded that this difference was due to something in the difference between the MC's biped and the marine's biped.

To further confirm this, i used the Elite MP tags (http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3739) to create Elite AI with custom weapons, since they may have the "similarity" between them and the MC's biped that made them able to hold all weapons and enter all vehicles the MC could enter and hold. I was right.

So, i came to this conclusion.

"Custom AI holding custom weapons can only be made if they have certain similarities to the MC's biped"

You can try to confirm this using the grunt MP tags here (http://hce.halomaps.org/index.cfm?fid=3358).

This is just a theory, so feel free to dispute it. I hope this topic helps people who want to try making an Elite or ODST holding an M249 or custom weapon that they have downloaded.

It's because the biped's don't have the model animations to meet with the weapon\vehicles seat tags.
An Elite doesn't have animations to correspond to a warthog's driver seat, thus it doesn't know what to do and will not do anything.
All you have to do is re-label the weapon or seat :P

lol not when you have a 255 animation cap.
the spartan comes stock with 253. not much freedom there

the fact of the matter is that all you need to do is set labels and set which markers to link to what, and you can do all that with gurilla. i made this without modifying any animations, just adding labels \ marker attachments: